Deaf awareness drive focuses on sign language

September marks Deaf Awareness Month and to mark the occasion, the Eastern Cape government has partnered with the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) to launch their new Deaf Awareness Fridays campaign, which kicked off last week.

The purpose of the campaign is to raise awareness for South African Sign Language (SASL) as well as the struggles faced by members of the deaf community.

As the department, we are the

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custodians of languages and we are responsible for their promotion, preservation and development.

Sign language therefore is one of our strategic policy priorities,” said department of sport, recreation, arts & culture (Dsrac) MEC Fezeka Nkonyeni.

Nkonyeni said it was Dsrac s

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responsibility to promote language

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plurality in SA, and that the Deaf

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Awareness Fridays helped play a part in this effort.

At the same time, she said, sign language was often marginalised. The constitution advocates for

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equal treatment of all languages.

However, sign language is still underdeveloped and unrecorded. For many years, the language

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has been systemically excluded across all spheres of life, even in deaf schools.

This has been caused largely by misconceptions, stereotypes, negative attitudes and ignorance and by the disregard of persons with disabilities,” Nkonyeni said.

She said she believed the new campaign would go a long way to destigmatising deafness and help others understand what deaf people have to deal with.

These awareness campaigns will also go a long way towards affording sign language pride of place among the country s diverse languages,” said

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Nkonyeni.

PanSALB EC provincial manager Xolile Tshongolo thanked the department for their assistance.

Sign language ought to be known and expressed by all, even those who don t have a hearing

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challenge.

I urge government to translate all

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government documents to all languages for ease of communication and understanding,” said Tshongolo.