On August 20, I was invited to attend the meeting of the stakeholders in regard to a “Unified Sign Language” for Ghana. At the table, there were two representatives (the current and former Presidents) of the Ghana National Association of the Deaf (GNAD), several heads of the Schools for the Deaf, a government representative from what might be something like the department of human services, the President of an organization for people with disabilities who was himself blind, and several faculty from the Division of Special Education, including the current head (soon to be Dean) and the incoming head (an audiologist). The GNAD brought two interpreters from Accra. There were several observers not sitting at the table. Among the observers were 4 interpreters from Winneba, the evaluation expert from the department, the Deaf office assistant from the department, and the main office assistant.

The meeting was scheduled to begin at 9:00 a.m. on the North Campus. I arrived at the department office on the South Campus at 8:00 to get a ride. My ride arrived shortly after 9:00 and we headed over to the North Campus. The out-of-town stakeholders were, for the most part, already seated at the table. The person who was to facilitate the meeting did not arrive until a bit later. We waited for a few others to arrive, but, ultimately, started sometime after 10:00.

The meeting was called, because the Deaf adults who are attending the UEW are struggling. The issues seem to be two-fold; first, there is a lack of qualified interpreters and, second, the foundation in written English by the Deaf students seems to be problematic. Some secondary issues that arose were that the there are only three years of GSL offered at the UEW, the lack of interpreter education, the lack of signed language training for hearing teachers at the deaf schools, and a need for a registry for signed language interpreters to make requests for interpreters more centralized, as well as to address issues of pay and qualifications (interestingly, the blind man from the disabilities organization would like to travel to the U.S. or some other country where this type of registry is in place to learn about establishing such a registry in Ghana).

The discussion centered around the need for some kind of standardization of the signed language(s) that is (are) used in Ghana. The GNAD president wants a dictionary of the GSL that is used by members of the Ghanaian Deaf community. The deaf school heads want curriculum they can use across the grade levels to teach GSL as a content area. They have apparently received some curriculum for teaching ASL as a content area to grade school deaf children. The school heads, along with the Special Education faculty and administrators, seem to be interested in instituting some form of sign in English order, believing that this will be the way to teach deaf children to read.

The Special Education faculty would also promote research and data collection. In the end, everyone at the table agreed to develop a dictionary. The school heads will collect vocabulary items, while Dr. Oppong, the GNAD President, and I will collect video recordings of Deaf adults communicating in GSL. We will look for grammatical patterns. Ultimately, the goal will be to develop the curricular materials for teaching GSL in the schools for the deaf throughout Ghana. I would begin video recording on Saturday at the Central Region GNAD meeting.