JUSTISIGNS project comes to a close.

It is difficult to believe that some thirty months ago our expert project team met to consider just how JUSTISIGNS would shape up and whether and what we do as a consortium could make a difference to the society in which we live and the communities that we serve.

We have achieved so much in a relatively short period and there is much to be proud of.  JUSTISIGNS has laid a solid foundation for the development of professional skills of sign language interpreters working in legal settings and achieved commendable results, which we recently presented alongside distinguished partners and panelists at the European Parliament on 27th April 2016. Engagement with our stakeholders has been wide, and profound. Contributions from the Deaf community, the interpreting professionals, the police forces and legal professionals from each partner countries has been significant. JUSTISIGNS has grown its own legs and we are confident that the resources that we have collectively produced will bring many benefits well beyond the life-cycle of the project and for many years to come.  JUSTISIGNS represents a further step forward. Our academic partners created cutting-edge and innovative content. efsli and EULITA have engaged in extensive dissemination of information through their networks and social media channels. We also pay tribute to all the professionals who have been involved in developing the various project outputs. Expertise, professional knowledge and invaluable human resources have been the key to the success of JUSTISIGNS. We are grateful for every contribution – whether it was tweeting our results, participating at training events or providing us guidance and support.

I would also like to acknowledge our partners and the teams from:

• Interesource Group (Ireland) Limited
• KU Leuven (Faculty of Arts, Campus Antwerp)
• EULITA, the European Legal Interpreters and Translators Association
• The Centre for Deaf Studies (CDS), Trinity College Dublin
• The University of Applied Sciences for Special Needs Education (HfH, Switzerland)
• Centre for Translation & Interpreting Studies in Scotland (CTISS), Heriot-Watt University

The commitment and capability of the project’s partners have contributed to JUSTISIGNS’ remarkable results. JUSTISIGNS has evolved through a series of events, seminars, workshops and evidence-based research which has guided the development of the training resources. In addition, we are continuing to work with our stakeholders to provide advice and training, we are planning to roll out the JUSTISIGNS course to new territories and we are achieving success in securing presentations at conferences throughout 2016 and 2017.

Some of the other results we now look forward to launching are a series of handbooks for the police forces in all partner countries, a comprehensive online course for legal professionals, interpreters and the deaf community and a research documentary which features experiences of legal professionals, policy makers, educators and the Deaf community. efsli has been working on developing a template of a portfolio of competencies which SLIs can use to record their continuous professional development (CPD) activities, and we look forward to sharing this with you in the very near future.

We hope you will enjoy this short video and find it inspiring with new food for thought for future achievements and ongoing collaboration with us.

Don’t forget to follow us on twitter @JUSTISIGNS and do visit the website http://www.justisigns.com