Sir, – I wish to express my deep disappointment at the apparent lack of respect for my beloved Irish sign language (ISL) among the political parties during this general election campaign. Deaf voters and voters with disabilities feel obliged to remind the political parties of their responsibilities to our communities at this time, which is to ensure elector accessibility.
The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government instructed disabled electors to inform them if their polling station is not accessible in order to allow them to transfer their vote to an alternative venue. On February 8th, myself and other members of the deaf community will have to cast our vote having had little or no access to party manifestos or individual candidate plans and policies. Despite the enactment of the Irish Sign Language Act in 2017 and ratification of the UN Convention of Rights for Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2018, no party has translated their campaign material into ISL, and other accessible formats are being ignored or sidelined also.
Intentional or not, these actions are contrary to Articles 9 and 29 of the CRPD, which call on the State to ensure that political participation and political-related information are fully accessible for both deaf/hard of hearing electors, and the population of disabled electors.
The situation for deaf and disabled voters can only be described as demoralising: carry out your own accessibility assessment of the polling station in advance or risk not being able to exercise your democratic right (and duty); pester parties and candidates for information you can understand or risk having to pick who you want to represent you at the highest level of political life based on a few slogans, or worse again, a logo, or even a photo.
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It is also disheartening because the situation here is in stark contrast to the recent general election in Britain, where almost all of the parties ensured that their campaign material was accessible.
We have to live in hope that these deficiencies will be addressed sooner rather than later. Failure to do so would be testament to the fact that deaf and disabled people are severely disenfranchised. – Yours, etc,
Dr JOHN BOSCO,
Dublin 24.