Employment for Deaf people in Europe: Research Findings from the DESIGNS Project
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The Erasmus+ funded DESIGNS project team took an action research approach to examining the situation of deaf graduates who are sign language users, employers and sign language interpreters to inform our end-goal, the production of researchinformed training materials for these stakeholder groups within the national contexts of Ireland, Germany and the UK. The research team drew upon the quite sparse empirical literature that exists on deaf signers in employment, crossreferencing that against policy data and census figures (Chapter 2). We find a trend of increased participation in higher education as a result of increased provision of sign language interpreters in this sphere (typically facilitated through disability legislation). As a result, more deaf signers are achieving higherlevel qualifications and seek to enter the workforce in a range ofprofessional roles. In turn, there is a commensurate increasing demand for interpreters to facilitate interactions in the workplace between deaf signers and their non-deaf, non-signing (hearing) counterparts.