About Sign Language
Sign language is a fully-fledged language used by deaf or hearing people to communicate. It is not universal: each country has its own sign language (for example, DGS in Germany, ÖGS in Austria).
Key points:
- It is a visual language: It uses hands, gestures, facial expressions, and body movements to express words, sentences, and ideas.
- It has its own grammar: It’s not just translating spoken Deutsch (or any other spoken language) into signs. The sentence structure is different.
- It allows full communication: You can tell stories, discuss science, art, news… just like in a spoken language.
- It is natural and alive: Deaf children can learn it as a native language if they are exposed to it from a young age.
In short, sign languages are real, rich, and expressive languages, perfectly suited for visual and bodily communication.
The state of sign language support at congress has been frustrating for many years.
This page aims to highlight issues and possible solutions.
Many people jump to the conclusion that the congress organizers are simply unaware of this issue. And we understand that: it is difficult to imagine how a conference can have its own mobile network and no support for sign language. So awareness is all it takes?
Sadly, we are painfully aware. This might even be the most well-known and feared rabbit hole that we have. And everyone that comes out of it gets to design “The Place that sends you mad” for next congress as a treat.
So why is that?
The Challenge
Sign language availability starts with talks. And live sign interpretation is hard work that needs professionals. Each talk requires two interpreters at a time so they can take breaks. And due to the technical topics, these interpreters will likely also need time to prepare and read up on MINT-specific signs. Snf still: we will likely have many technical terms that simply do not yet have signs because they have not been signed about.
Because chaos communication does not end with talks and this is the real challenge: Every info-desk, every bar, every assembly project communicates with you. And it will take some time before enough people in our community know how to sign.
Because this needs to be our goal: Usage of sign language should be normalized. For that we need a community of sign language users and native signers to grow and guide that community. But those native signers can't easily become a part of our community, because it is not yet accessible.
Sign languages, just as much as spoken languages, come with cultural nuances and hidden rules that are impossible to learn if you are not using it daily while communicating with native signers.
Why we failed so far
This is not a technical issue
We excel at finding technical solutions – that’s why we have such good networking – but this is a social problem that does not have a technical solution.
- AI avatars aren't going to help because they are nowhere near good enough and also unsustainable.
- AI live captions are better than nothing but still unreliable.
- Even human-made captions are still not good enough, because written verbal language will always be more difficult to understand for “native signers”.
- All of this still only “helps” with talks.
This can’t be done with volunteering
Sign language interpretation is an incredibly hard job and it is a lot more involved than translating between spoken English and spoken German. Not only because very few people can fluently sign to begin with. We don't know if there are even enough people with sufficient time and skill to pick this up as a hobby for congress. But even if there are:
We are not willing to accept volunteer sign interpretations on stages
We can be a volunteer-made conference because we are a community of often well-paid IT workers that can afford it. Sign language interpreters had to fight hard to even get paid on professional conferences. Much of that fight took place in Hamburg.
Accepting volunteer sign language interpreters could set a devastating precedent that we do not want to stand behind.
Many organizers of this conference have tried over years to either bring professionals to congress or create some volunteer contributions. These talented people have failed over and over again in finding sustainable solutions.
We are huge
Small communities and small conferences have found ways around some of the issues mentioned above. We like to see these developments and many members of our teams will happily support small trials on small events.
But anything at congress will create a huge splash if it fails and is more likely to fail because it has to scale as much.
Solutions
This works right now
- You can of course bring your own interpreter for free into the venue.
- You can bring more than one, but please give a heads up to the ticket team
- You can bring your personal interpreter to a talk. Contacting the Accessibility team in advance will make that easier on us.
- There will be “sign with me” stickers
What you can do to help
- Help grow a community if you can
- Join the sign language discussion on matrix
- Contribute self-organized sessions
- Teach sign language, learn sign language, use sign language!
- Help us bring back live subtitles (they are better than nothing!)
Lastly: low-hanging fruits
If you see a low-hanging fruit, there is probably a reason we have not gone for it.
Sometimes we are not nimble enough. But you are! Go for it. It will make a great talk if you succeed, maybe even if you fail.
Many fruits also seem appealing but only from afar. Go for them. Take a good look, you will learn a lot about snake oil and anti-patterns.
Just try to avoid the toxic fruits. Maybe ask us for advice before you try them. And please do come to the accessibility team if something has gone wrong.