Beyond Traditional Ethics when Developing Assistive Technology for and with Deaf People in Developing Regions - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 300

500,000 and 1.5 million Deaf people (SignGenius undated ), while Druchen ( 2007 )
put the number of SASL users at one million in 2007. We can surmise that European
numbers are considerably smaller.
In South Africa, as is worldwide, many literate and illiterate Deaf people prefer
to communicate in their own signed language, in our case, SASL. If one takes into
account general demographics from the South African census data (see www.
statssa.gov.za ), more than half of the population is rural and the majority are poor.
These characteristics translate to the Deaf population quite literally. Deaf South
Africans experience poor text literacy (in any of the 11 offi cial South African
languages) due to limited educational opportunities. However, despite poor text
literacy, many South African Deaf people appear to be entirely literate in
SASL. There is currently a lobby to make SASL the 12th offi cial language of South
Africa (Druchen 2007 ). If successful, it would oblige the government to provide full
service in this language. It is believed that the expense is currently a major stumbling
block to approving this offi cialisation.
We work with a Deaf DPO (Disabled Persons Organisation) called Deaf
Community of Cape Town (DCCT, see www.dcct.org.za ). Most Deaf adults
associated with DCCT are semi-literate, at best (Glaser and Aarons 2002 ; Glaser
and Lorenzo 2006 ). Many are unemployed, but those who are employed are often
underemployed in menial jobs. This adversely affects the socio-economic level of
the community as a whole. The Deaf community is underdeveloped in terms of ICT
access and participation (Glaser 2000 ; Glaser and Tucker 2004 ). Recognising
these gaps, grass-roots DPOs, such as DCCT, have arisen to take action on their
community's behalf. There are not enough of these DPOs, and they themselves are
resource-constrained. DCCT is staffed almost entirely by Deaf people and serves
the needs of a large Deaf community in the province. It was founded by members of
the community in response to a dearth of services and support from mainstream and
offi cial sources.
Factors that characterise the Deaf Community's ICT ecosystem include very
expensive Internet, fi xed and mobile communication costs 3 and no commercial
relay services; and even if a video relay service (VRS) were available, it would be
prohibitively expensive. Civic engagement is diffi cult when police, doctors and
government offi cials, for example, are unable to converse in SASL; and interpreters
are rare, 4 expensive and beyond the reach of most Deaf people (rates start at R350
per/h, currently about £20). We cannot possibly address all of these issues with our
3 Note that according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU, see www.itu.int ) , this
applies across the board to everyone in South Africa - that prices here are more in line with devel-
oped countries in the global North rather than with countries like India, Sri Lanka, Senegal and
Brazil. Therefore, the use of standard communication services is prohibitively expensive for all
poor South Africans.
4 There are only 84 SASL interpreters on the DEAFSA registry in the entire country, of which 43
have no formal training, 31 with 240 study hours of training and 10 with a further 480 study hours;
and only 7 of the total of 84 are actually accredited by DEAFSA; and only 19 of the 84 are resident
in the Western Cape province where DCCT is based.