Beyond Procurement: Why Sign Language Artificial Intelligence Has Become a Public Policy Agenda

Beyond Procurement argues that sign language artificial intelligence has outgrown the frame through which institutions have been handling it. Purchasing decisions taken one agency, district, or hospital at a time are producing a cumulative reallocation of communication access that no single decision-maker intended and for which none is accountable. When enough institutions substitute automated signing for human interpreting, the result is not a set of local procurement outcomes but a de facto policy governing how the state communicates with Deaf citizens, adopted without deliberation, legislative authorization, or public record. This issue traces how that transition occurred, examines why procurement processes are structurally incapable of registering aggregate effects, and identifies the points at which sign language AI now intersects public policy directly, including statutory access obligations, interpreter workforce supply, emergency communications, education funding, and the standards environment. It argues for treating the technology as an object of governance rather than acquisition, and sets out what that shift would require of legislatures, agencies, and oversight bodies. Published in The Fifth Parameter, Novara Press. Licensed CC BY 4.0.