Shirley Pinto

Pinto was born to Deaf parents, and raised in the Krayot. Her mother is Deaf and blind and she has a younger brother who hears. Her mother is an actress in the theater "Nalaga'at".[2] Pinto studied at the Carmel Zvulun Regional High School in the kibbutz Yagur,[3] in the graphic design and social science trends, and received a full matriculation diploma with excellence.

Pinto made most of her childhood with her mother's parents, as well as with her her signing parents. This way she acquired a full knowledge of two languages, Israeli sign language alongside the Hebrew language, which gave her emotional strength and self esteem between the two worlds. Since her childhood, she has seen the difficulty and lack of linguistic accessibility in her parents, who coped daily with the authorities and the general public. Pinto's life was also a daily struggle because of a lack of awareness in the public. When she grew up, she decided to devote her life to change this reality of Deaf and hard of hearing people.

In the Israel Defense Forces Pinto served in the Israeli Air Force Technical Corps as a project manager of logistics in the Equipment Group, performed and conducted orders which were acquired in a large scale out of Israel, and coordinated front air bases on procurement and supply. She continued on a permanent service, and in 2009 she received an outstanding medal from the Air Force commander and the President's outstanding medal from Shimon Peres.[4][5] In 2011, after completing her military service, she went to Bachelor of Laws studies at the Netanya Academic College and participated the excellence program of the college. During her studies, as a part of a course in labor law, she participated in a delegation to the International Labour Organization and the United Nations in Geneva. In 2013 she was a legal assistant of the Judge Benjamin Arnon in the Central District Court for a year, as a framework of the actual practice of law and judicial by the college. In 2014 she specialized by Member of Knesset Karin Elharar, and handled legislation, public appeals and assistance of adapting to people with disabilities.

Since 2016 Pinto has been a lecturer in the course of "Translation at Courts and Police Investigations", at the studies of Sign Language Interpreting, Bar-Ilan University.

In 2017 Pinto was an intern at the law office of Furth, Wilensky, Mizrachi and Knaani.[6]

Pinto lives in Ramat Gan, and is married to Michael Kadosh, a Deaf man who immigrated from the United States, is a player in the Israeli Futsal national team and is employed as an engineer in telecommunications in Israel. In February 2018 a son was born to them.[2]

Shirley Pinto (standing seventh) is hosted at the Israeli President's House at a special "Leadership and Disability" meeting, in which a research and a survey of the public attitudes towards leadership of people with disabilities were presented, January 2018

In 2014 Pinto joined as a student the "Shema for education and rehabilitation of Deaf and hard of hearing children and youth",[7] and was employed as an instructor and an informal educational activity coordinator. Later she was appointed as a manager of the Gush Dan club, and led a fundraising evening for the enrichment of the children's clubs activity, which ended successfully. In May 2015, she represented Israel in India by a delegation on her own initiative with a Deaf partner, for an assistance and a legal-educational counseling to children and Deaf youth in Indore. Before the end of her role as the club director in 2016, she established the Israeli Center for the Deaf Studies with other Deaf founders, in order to promote the status of Deaf and hard of hearing people who used sign language, to recognize the equality of sign language and spoken languages, and to create an awareness to the need of the Deaf to be accessible and accepted by the general public.

Afterwards, Pinto founded the campaign "I sign I am Equal"[8] for changing the consciousness of the importance of sign language in public, and for promoting legislation of the Israeli Sign Language as a recognized language in Israel. Under this campaign, she led a awareness week of the Deaf people in September 2016,[9][10] whose title was "I sign, I am whole". The campaign swept hundreds of thousands of surfers, and the Education Minister Naftali Bennett joined it.[11] Following the campaign, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev was the first university in Israel which recognized the Israeli Sign Language as an official language for the Deaf people in Israel. In March 2017, there was a ceremony at the Ben-Gurion University, in which Pinto gave a certificate of appreciation from the Center for the Deaf Studies to Rivka Carmi, the president of the university, for the university recognition in the Israeli sign language.[12]

In the early 2017, Pinto initiated a bill to make public service announcements on the television in sign language, which was led by MK Issawi Frej and MK Eitan Cabel.[13]

Pinto, in cooperation with the Ruderman Family Foundation, arranged a meeting of the actress Marlee Matlin with the community of the Deaf and hard of hearing people in Israel. The meeting was named "Sign of Success" and was held at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. Over 300 people from Israel’s Deaf community came to the meeting, and Pinto guided the event. The event focused on breaking the glass ceiling of the Deaf people, and realizing the potential in the face of barriers and obstacles.[14][15]

Pinto raised a series of fundamental failures which Deaf and hard of hearing people encountered in Israel, in the print and broadcast media as well as in the Knesset committees. These failures were expressed by the lack of accessibility and absence of public recognition of sign language in the education system, employment, health and law.[16][17][18]

• Deaf Culture

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