Deaf Caribbean Academic Network: Making language policy work for deaf communities in the Caribbean

加勒比海地区是成千上万聋人的家园，他们使用手语而不是口语进行交流。尽管人们倾向于认为每个国家都有自己的手语，但实际上情况要复杂得多--即使是一个相对较小的加勒比海岛屿也可能有两到三种手语。我们关注两个问题。首先是关于加勒比地区使用的不同类型的手语。加勒比海地区面临着许多自然灾害，如飓风和火山。想象一下，你是一位聋哑的母亲或父亲，正在照顾你的家人。有紧急情况，你周围的人都在做准备，但你还在努力弄清楚发生了什么。你打开电视，但屏幕一角的小翻译正在做一种你不懂的语言的手势。或者想象你是一个聋哑的孩子，在家里做手势--但当你去学校时，老师不会手势你知道的语言。老师可能会跟你说话，所以你听不懂他们在说什么。或者老师可能使用一种你也听不懂的不同的手语。这些都是加勒比地区聋人面临的一些严重障碍。然而，如果语言政策是有效的(例如，如果政府确保以正确的语言为每个聋人提供正确的信息)，这些障碍就可以消除。第二个问题是，聋人很难获得教育，所以他们往往没有听力同龄人所具备的资格。加勒比地区有几个聋人，他们有知识，他们进行研究，但他们无法在学术界站稳脚跟。我们的项目旨在解决这两个问题。首先，我们建立了一个聋人加勒比学术网络(DeafCAN)，由特立尼达和多巴哥、波多黎各和牙买加的聋人组成。他们彼此分享他们的知识和经验，我们让他们与来自世界各地的专家联系，他们可以帮助他们找到共同开展研究的方法。第二，我们收集聋人的经验--例如，当试图用正确的语言获取信息--并利用这些经验帮助政府在未来制定更好的语言政策。我们的聋人网络的工作预计将对边缘聋人的生活产生重大影响，通过分析他们对手语政策的观点，我们找到了使该网络在这个项目结束后继续前进的方法。

The Caribbean region is home to many thousands of deaf people who communicate using a signed language, rather than a spoken one. Although people tend to assume that each country has its own sign language, the situation is actually much more compliacted - even one relatively small Caribbean island can have two or three sign languages.We focus on two problems. The first is to do with the different kinds of sign language used in the Caribbean.The Caribbean faces many natural disasters, such as hurricanes and volcanoes. Imagine that you are a deaf mother or father, looking after your family. There is an emergency, and everyone around you is making preparations, but you are still trying to find out what is happening. You turn the television on, but the small interpreter in the corner of the screen is signing a language that you do not understand.Or imagine that you are a deaf child who signs at home - but when you go to school, the teacher does not sign the language that you know. The teacher might speak to you, so that you do not understand what they are saying. Or the teacher might use a different sign language that you also do not understand.These are some of the serious barriers that deaf people face in the Caribbean. Yet these barriers can be removed if language policies are effective (for example, if the government makes sure that the right information is provided in the right language for each deaf person).The second problem is that deaf people have struggled to access education, so they often do not have the qualifications that their hearing peers have. There are several deaf people in the Caribbean who are knowledgeable and who conduct research, but they are not able to get a foothold in the academic world.Our project aims to solve both of these problems. First, we set up a Deaf Caribbean Academic Network (DeafCAN), with deaf people in Trinidad & Tobago, Puerto Rico and Jamaica. They share their knowledge and experiences with each other, and we put them in touch with experts from around the world who can help them to find ways to conduct research together.Secondly, we collect the experiences of deaf people - for example when trying to access information in the right language - and use these to help the government make better language policy in future.The work of our DeafCAN Network is expected to have a significant impact on the lives of marginalised deaf people by analysing their perspectives on sign language policy, and we find ways to keep the Network going beyond the life of this project.