Here's Your Sign

Can you tell which child is deaf?  Differently-able children aren't defined by their ability to hear or walk or speak.  They're defined by their hearts, their love of life, their smiles.  (And for the record- both children pictured are unable to hear without assistance from a device.)

Sign language has always been something I was interested in but I could never find a good program to learn from myself.  I know enough to get a basic thought across, but that's about it.  I introduced my first son to sign language when he was three months old.  We found a free video of baby signs that we showed him  - it was the only screen time he was allowed to have for a long time.  I'd heard it would help with language development so we gave it a shot.  It worked! He communicated early with signs and then verbally.  We did the same thing with our second son.  He did not communicate early, but that's mostly because there was no air left in the room with big brother talking all the time.  He DID, however, learn more signs more quickly than our first son had.  I knew we needed greater resources.  I found Rachel and the Treeschoolers (of Signing Time) on YouTube and we are all now obsessed.  The videos teach content material (ie: astronomy, weather, etc) as well as the signs to go with those topics.  The songs that teach the information are catchy and easy to remember.  We watch them a few times a week and my sons are constantly learning new signs.  Hopefully, my sons will one day be able to help non-hearing students / friends to communicate and learn new information. 

With ASL being a passion for my whole family, the video of the whole community that learned sign language really hit home with me.  The deaf community is not serviced nearly enough, especially in a public school setting.  When I started thinking about what tools I'd encourage schools to use, I first thought of the website Tumblebooks.  It shows animations with a book as well as highlighting the worlds being read.  It could allow hearing impaired students to feel like they have access to reading material that is a little different from a typical book.  As much as I like Tumblebooks, though, I didn't feel it was enough for what I was looking for.


Then, I found VRI devices. In Demand's Video Remote Interpreting devices currently offer over twenty-five VRI languages and more than two hundred voice languages.  With ASL being the third most used language in the US, schools cannot afford to continue to be without tools that include students with hearing difficulties.  The VRI devices offer one-touch connectivity to interpreters.  The specifications for the devices show that they are second to none. The devices can be mobile or attached to rolling carts.  Currently, these are being marketed in the healthcare system, but there's no reason these couldn't become essential school materials.  With sign interpreters at the ready, mainstream classrooms and libraries could become fully accessible to non-hearing or hearing impaired students.  The mobile units could allow students to take their interpreters "with" them wherever they needed to go during the day.   

VRI could be the key to "normalizing" students with hearing impairments, to encouraging more people will learn to sign, to making classrooms more accessible to everyone regardless of their different abilities.