Sign Language Interpreting in legal settings: new scenarios within the european legal framework and the efsli experience
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Persons who are Deaf or hard of hearing use sign language as their mode of communication. There are no reliable statistics in each Member State. An esti-mate for the European Union is 750,000 Deaf sign language users (Wheatley & Pabsch, 2010). On average, Deaf sign language users make up about 0.1% of the whole population in any given country. This does not include people learning a sign language as a second language or children of Deaf parents or other family members. In Finland there are for example an estimated 5.000 sign language users; in France 100.000, and in Romania 20-30.000 (Wheatley & de Wit, forth-coming 2012). Sign language interpreters in Europe provide interpreting services between sign language and spoken language. The rights of sign language users are further protected by laws and national acts in a certain number of European countries (Wheatley & Pabsch, 2010). In addition, access to justice is a right recognized by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD 2007) and by the Charter of Fun-damental Rights of the European Union (2010). These crucial developments have opened the doors to new scenarios for the Deaf community and sign language interpreters working in legal settings within Europe. The European Forum of Sign Language Interpreters (efsli) has been involved in projects and activities regarding the work of sign language interpret-ers in legal settings as a member of EULITA (European Legal Interpreters and Translators Association) of the TRAFUT Project (Training for the Future) and as the European umbrella association of sign language interpreters and their associa-tions across Europe.