Sign languages across the globe are fully-fledged languages that differ between Deaf communities throughout Europe and the world. A recent survey by the European Union of the Deaf gathered that there are about 650,000 sign language users in the EU for whom using a sign language is the only way to communicate and have equal access. It is therefore crucial to legally recognise national sign languages. Being treated equally without prejudice also with regards to language is a basic Human Right as postulated in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Other rights, such as the right to education and a fair trial can only be guaranteed if sign languages are recognised as distinct languages in order to provide sign language interpreters and education in sign language. At EU level, a number of documents and Resolutions have been adopted but so far only three European countries have recognised sign language at constitutional level: Austria, Finland and Portugal. Other countries, such as Hungary and Spain have taken other legal measures to protect their sign languages. Although Europe's sign languages enjoy some recognition, sign language users across Europe are still lacking legal protection at the same level as other minorities.
@inproceedings{wheatley:10040:sign-lang:lrec,
author = {Wheatley, Mark and Pabsch, Annika},
title = {Sign Language in {Europe}},
pages = {251--254},
editor = {Dreuw, Philippe and Efthimiou, Eleni and Hanke, Thomas and Johnston, Trevor and Mart{\'i}nez Ruiz, Gregorio and Schembri, Adam},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2010} 4th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpora and Sign Language Technologies},
maintitle = {7th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2010)},
publisher = {{European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}},
address = {Valletta, Malta},
day = {22--23},
month = may,
year = {2010},
language = {english},
url = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/10040.pdf}
}