To Örebro University

Introduction: People with congenital deafblindness (CDB) face challenges orienting themselves in time and activities. The aim of the current study is to identify and analyze how an adult with CDB and his support persons co-construct comprehensibility and predictability in his daily life.

Method: The study consists of video recordings of everyday dyadic interaction from a residential home. Conversation Analysis was used to explore interactional practices that afford orientation in time and activities.

Results: Results highlight several important practices: 1) repetitions of signs or other recognizable linguistic elements in a second turn to identify and confirm a reciprocally understood subject; 2) repetition of a sign placed first in the second part of a question-answer adjacency pair; 3) and the use of a visually based schedule to achieve mutual understanding.

Conclusion: The practices identified and analyzed accomplish security, predictability, and comprehensibility for the person with CDB and his support persons.

PURPOSE: Health literacy (HL) is a set of knowledge and skills that enables individuals to interpret and act upon health information, which is essential for health equity. There is a growing body of evidence in the field of HL in cancer care but there is, to our knowledge, no systematic review that explores the association between sociodemographic factors and HL among patients with cancer. The aim of this study was therefore to conduct a systematic review of the existing literature that assesses HL levels and the relationship between HL and sociodemographic factors in an adult cancer population.

METHODS: This is a systematic review and its protocol was registered in PROSPERO (ID: CRD42021164071). The study was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA statement. The literature search, from December 2009 to September 2023, was made in six databases, AMED, CINAHL, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Web of Science Core Collection.

RESULTS: Fifteen studies were included in the review. The included studies used nine different measurement tools for assessing HL. In the included studies between 11.9 % and 86 % had limited HL. We identified a relationship between limited HL and annual income, education level, ethnicity, living in rural areas and multiple comorbidities.

CONCLUSION: The results indicate that limited HL is prevalent in the cancer population and should be acknowledge in everyday practice to meet health equity. Our awareness about sociodemographic factors and its association with HL, may enhance adherence to cancer treatment and quality of life, and lower physical and emotional distress.

PURPOSE: To describe how parents with deafblindness experience parenting and family life.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: This a qualitative interview study. Fourteen parents with deafblindness were interviewed. Most were mothers (n = 10), with ages ranging between 33 and 57 years (mean 46 years). Interviews were transcribed, and the analysis was done using inductive qualitative content analysis.

RESULTS: The analysis resulted in the overarching theme, 'Living family life as a parent with deafblindness is not a walk in the park, but it is rewarding', and three subthemes, 'Being a competent parent despite having deafblindness', 'Needing support to fulfil my parental obligations' and 'Parenting is a struggle due to my deafblindness'. The results encompass many experiences and feelings and illustrate the complex reality of these parents in their parental role and family life.

CONCLUSION: The parents expressed their joy in being parents, but these feelings were intertwined with negative aspects of being unable to take on the desired responsibility or not receiving the necessary support. When requested, tailored support should be offered from social services, health care and rehabilitation services in order for parents with deafblindness to take on the parental responsibility they want and to be able to actively participate in family life.

BACKGROUND: The sign language interpreting service has undergone a tremendous change due to COVID-19 and remote interpreting has become a more frequent alternative to the face-to-face format. The aim of the study is to investigate how the interpreters perceive the organisation of remote interpreting in Sweden and how it has evolved since the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHOD: Interviews with 26 experienced remote interpreters, representing 19 of Sweden's 21 counties, were analysed with qualitative content analysis.

RESULTS: Three themes were revealed in the analysis. The first theme was regulation. It was stated that directives and regulatory decisions concerning provision of remote interpreting services were varied and unclear. Several different platforms were used when interpreting remotely. Some of the services had conducted risk analyses, whereas others had not. The second theme was modification, including adjusting interactions to suit the preferences and capabilities of the users (both signing and speaking parties), as well as adjustments to work environments and workplaces. The third theme, evolution of remote interpreting, showed that support and training were rare and varied. Although the processes and organisation of remote interpreting are not yet fully established in Sweden, remote interpreting is here to stay.

CONCLUSIONS: In Sweden, remote interpreting is a service that varies according to regulations and the type of assignments. The service would benefit from being more uniform and streamlined across Sweden, although consideration must be given to those involved with the service.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Sustainable Development Goals stipulate that persons with disabilities have equal rights to access and safely use transport systems. The aim of the current study is to explore stakeholders' perspectives of the relationship and prioritization between safety and accessibility in the Swedish discussion of disability and transport. The data consist of interviews with 15 informants from the National Council for Disability and Transport and other key stakeholders. Reflexive thematic analysis led to identification of four themes: basis for priorities is a matter of governing; challenges to measuring and evaluating different values; importance of knowledge and building forums; and a universal system of accessibility and safety is a challenge. The results indicate the road ahead for a possible holistic and sustainable governance in the transport systems. However, how this will be put into practise is not yet defined.

Points of interest

• According to several regulations, persons with disabilities have equal rights to safety and accessibility in the transport system. However, there are challenges to combining different concepts and perspectives.
• Lack of mandates for institutions to address both safety and accessibility leads to goal conflicts and a risk that focuses become entrenched with clearly defined boundaries.
• There are challenges in evaluating different values and perspectives in relation to accessibility.
• A facilitating aspect for sustainability regarding safety and accessibility is to create opportunities and systems to allow for the exchange of knowledge.
• Integration of safety and accessibility may be encouraged by the use of existing sets of holistic approaches (i.e. Vision Zero and Universal Design).

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the work of sign language interpreters from mostly face-to-face assignments to remote interpreting. The overall aim of this study was to investigate the experiences of interpreters working between spoken Swedish and Swedish Sign Language (STS) during the adjustment to remote interpreting (RI) due to COVID-19. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 26 sign language interpreters and analysed with qualitative content analysis. The interpreters represented 19 of the 21 regions in Sweden. The results of the analysis revealed five themes: (a) a comparison of interpreting settings; (b) adaptability; (c) social relations and interaction; (d) technical equipment; and (e) sustainability. Within the themes’ multifaceted experiences of both positive and negative aspects from a micro to a macro level were reported. This rather new setting for interpreters is still in transformation; thus, follow-ups are necessary.

This study demonstrates how interpreters in a Swedish video relay service (VRS) between deaf and hearing users can simultaneously accomplish two different actions, each directed to a particular user of the service. The study takes a multimodal, ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) perspective and is empirically based on a corpus of 25 recordings from authentic video calls. Our analysis shows how interpreters, through what we call dual action design, are able to: (1) offer the floor to one party while informing the other party, (2) refer to one of the participants using different forms of deictic reference for the two users of the service, and (3) request confirmation of a source statement from one party while rendering a statement to benefit the other party. The study contributes to current discussions relating to sequentiality, simultaneity, and positioning in interpreting studies and multimodal interaction research.

Background: Structured water-dance intervention (SWAN) is an aquatic method customized for adults with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). The aims are to describe and discuss how the SWAN program intervention leader, instructors, and support persons (i.e., the staff) co-operate and facilitate interaction with participants with intellectual and multiple disabilities (IMD), and to identify expressions of emotion by the participants during a SWAN.

Method: Video recordings of the interactions were analyzed based on dialogical theory and conversation analysis (CA).

Results: The analysis showed that SWAN can be described as an institutional activity, on the one hand governed by an overall, pre-planned structure, and on the other hand affected by the moment-by-moment co-operation and interaction between participants and the staff as the intervention is taking place; also, how several emotional expressions by the participants are responded to by the staff.

Conclusions: In interaction during the SWAN, the participants are considered as competent interaction partners, and their multimodal expressions are taken into account by the support persons, instructors, and intervention leader through adaptation to the activity.

BACKGROUND: Communication between people who are deaf and sign and people who use a spoken language is possible by means of an interpreter. Interpreting in real time can be performed at a distance, which differs from interpreting face-to-face. Due to COVID-19, interpretation at a distance has increased.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to map the existing literature to identify key characteristics by addressing the following question: What is known about interpreted mediated interactions between people using a signed respective spoken language across distances in real time?

DESIGN: Eight online databases, complemented by a search in one nonindexed journal of relevance to the review, were used to identify original studies published in 2010-2020, and 17 publications met the inclusion criteria. Charting of the data revealed insight from 17 original studies that were extracted, summarized, and reported.

RESULTS: Four key characteristics were identified: (1) advantages and challenges in remote interpreting; (2) the need for training in remote interpreting and video relay service (VRS); (3) regulations and organizational structures of VRS; and (4) the interpreter as an active party in VRS.

CONCLUSION: Remote interpreting has several challenges but also advantages. Knowledge of these kinds of interactions is limited, and further research must be initiated and realized, not least due to technological developments and the increased number of interpreting events.