Swiss Review 1/2020

Swiss Review / January 2020 / No.1 14 Society A line of a song by the Bernese dialect troubadour Mani Matter (1936–1972) “S’sy zwee Fründen im ne Sportflugzüg en Alpeflug ga mache” (“two friends in a sports plane go on a flight in the Alps”), translated by the interpreter Tanja Joseph. Photos: Danielle Liniger This example illustrates the major problem faced by hearing-impaired people: impeded access to communi- cation. This problem is evident not only in the workplace but also every- where deaf or hearing-impaired peo- ple encounter hearing people during everyday life. For example, in the healthcare and school sectors, in public offices and also in the cultural area. “Nowadays, we live in a society that is strongly impacted by the me- dia and communication. Although the internet has revolutionised a great many things, there aremany ar- eas with no videos in sign language or videos with subtitles in the three national languages,” says the IGGH managing director. Sign language should become an official national language Wemaywell see improvements in the method of communication, and trans- lation aids will become more preva- lent in Switzerland over the next few years. The Federal Council has re- ceived three parliamentary proce- dural requests urging it to legally rec- ognise the prevalent sign languages (see additional texts) in Switzerland. This political awakening has “been a source of great happiness” to the deaf community, says Schökle. Legal recognition of sign lan- guage could result in measures to prevent discrimination against the hearing-impaired. The legal basis against discrimination towards hear- ing-impaired people is already “rock- solid and precise”, maintains the Swiss Federation for the Deaf (SGB). However, it is not applied often enough. According to the SGB, deaf adults are three times more likely to be unemployed than hearing adults, for example. Around 10,000 people in Switzer- land have been deaf or severely hear- ing-impaired since birth. This corre- sponds to around 0.2 per cent of the population. And a further onemillion Swiss people live with a hearing im- pairment. Hands behind your back! Sign language used to be forbidden Brigitte Schökle has been deaf since the age of six – after contracting men- ingitis. “There have been a lot of pos- itive changes since then,” she says; from one day to the next, she had to switch to attending the former School for the Deaf and Mute in St. Gallen: “For me, the change in school was a complete culture shock,” she says. At that time, sign language was forbidden at school. Pupils had to keep their clasped hands behind their back so that they were unable to communi- cate with each other in signs. Deaf ed- ucation experts were convinced that the deaf had to learn spoken language to do well in life. This meant they should express themselves verbally like hearing people, and not with their hands. This assumption was influenced by a conference of deaf education ex- perts from all over the world, the Mi- lan Congress, in 1880. The reso­ lutions of this congress had wide-ranging consequences for the social life of the deaf – including in Switzerland and up to the present day. “We suffered immensely during the era of ‘spoken language educa- tion theory’,” says the managing di- rector of the IGGH. Despite the ban on using sign lan- guage at the former School for theDeaf and Mute, the pupils communicated in sign language during lunchtime and out in the playgroundduring their breaks. “They were the only places where educators did not interfere. In Dialectal diversity Switzerland is one of the last countries in Europe still to legally recognise sign lan- guage. However, Geneva and Zurich mention sign language in their cantonal constitu- tions. Efforts towards cantonal recognition are also being made in Vaud, Berne and Ticino. Sign language and the deaf culture are also mentioned in the Basel Gender Equality Act. The Swiss German, French and Italian sign languages are used in Switzerland. There are also five regional sign language dialects in German-speaking Switzerland (ZH, BE, BS, LU, SG). Two … … friends … … in a sports plane …