Sign Language on the Web
About this time time last year, I heard about a sign in Florida airport that struck me as somewhat silly. Obviously I just didn't get it (as the two comments on that post clarified), and I was happy to find out more about the issue - and that is that while it may seem superfluous to include sign language when you have the written word, the fact is that for many deaf people the written language is their second language. With that in mind, I'd like to refer to an article I read today regarding live signing on web sites.
"... there are about 70,000 people in the UK who use British Sign Language [BSL] as a primary means of communication. It's not a straight translation of English ? it has its own word order, grammar and morphology ? so English is often a very poor second language to them."
On a related topic, I caught part of a program made especially for the deaf community here in the UK at the weekend (called Switch). It was just on in the background, following from something else I'd been watching. A great idea in theory, but is it just me who thinks some of the acting is dreadful? Or are my expectations too high as a non-deaf consumer (in other words, for a deaf person watching the show, a 'flat' delivery by one of the speaking characters - and I refer to non-mute or non-deaf characters in the show, I'm not critiquing a deaf person's vocal delivery! - is somewhat irrelevent, so does it matter?).
3 Comments:
That's interesting - I didn't realise BSL emplyed it's own grammar. I know I'm guilty of this particular assumption in the page. Sometimes I wonder just how close theoretical accessibility is to practical accessibility :(
Slightly off-topic, but I found one result in the Google Adsense listings on the live signing article particularly interesting (amusing?).
More on-topic, what was the reasoning behind making BSL so fundamentally different from the language it's based upon (British English) that the base-language can actually be considered a "second" language? I suppose I could understand making BSL a sort of short-hand (no pun intended) to make the physical movement required to communicate a little less demanding. However, it would seem to me that in a world where knowledge and presence of sign-language is far from the norm, but where the written word is ubiquitous, literacy of the written word would be a top priority for deaf educators, especially since (as far as I can tell), there should be no physical barrier preventing the deaf from learning to read.
In other words, learning to read the written word when you can't hear is a far cry from learning to speak when you can't hear, or learning to read when you can't see. So what's the reasoning behind not learning to read the written word?
I agree it seems a little pointless but is still a greay way for the deaf to be apart of the communnity/show!
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