Legal Pathways to the Recognition of Sign Languages: A Comparison of the Catalan and Spanish Sign Language Acts.

In some European countries, indirect or partial legal recognition of sign languages (SLs) has been granted in the last few decades through specific policies on deaf education, SL interpreting, or public media, but, in general, full legal recognition by dedicated laws has not been achieved. I present and analyze the recent legal initiatives for SLs in Spain (2007) and Catalonia (2006, 2010) (Spanish and Catalan SLs, respectively). They are shown to exemplify two different approaches to the reality of minority languages in the visual-gestural modality: The former act formulates SL recognition as part of the regulation of the accessibility means for deaf people, both signers and nonsigners; the latter regulates Catalan SL instead, leaving accessibility issues for deaf people for regulation by a separate bill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]