ASLI had its first conference in 2008. With advocacy developments in the Deaf community and still a desperate shortage of trained interpreters, it was time to hold another national conference.

We chose to hold the conference at the esteemed Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi on 13th & 14th February 2010. The guests of honour and presenters were Dr Madan Vasishta, a Professor Emeritus at Gallaudet University; Dr Vaishna Narang, a Professor of linguistics at JNU; Desmond Masterson, a consumer of sign language interpreting and researcher for Deafblind people from the UK and Jennifer Smith, a Sign Language Interpreter from the UK. We had a presentation on DVD from Dr Deskmukh who spoke of his experiences in learning about Deaf education, history and rights whilst running a school for the Deaf in Ichalkaranji, Maharashtra.

Mr. Arun C Rao, as ASLI President, was present to impart and discuss his vision for expanding the number of interpreters in India using new training methods tailored to reaching communities around India. Deaf people need a dramatic increase in the number of interpreters available to them in all areas of society to give them the equality that has been promised in the UNCRPD, which was ratified by the Indian government in 2007.

We had a separate session with Deaf people to discuss problems linked to the lack of interpreters and some of the issues they had with untrained interpreters, such as using family members to interpret. We are logging this feedback in order to strengthen our campaign work and we plan to use these advocacy efforts in the future.

The interpreters present gained some invaluable information linked to interpreting for Deaf people. The opportunity was invaluable to share problems between us and discuss how these problems could be resolved. Interpreters in India are in need of support and recognition for their efforts. The ASLI 2nd National Conference brought interpreters from around India from as far as Chandigarh to Hyderabad to Kolkata to Coimbatore together. A sense of community and belonging to an emerging profession is important at this time in India and the conference was a roaring success in offering this support and information.