Here are the example of sign language from Somali Deaf person who I am supporting over four years.
This picture of sign recorded in Egypt and it is a one hand manual alphabets. Around the world it is a universal sign language and it is the same for spoken language. But some countries have the similar signs that related to the earliest days for example USA sign language traced back to France and it produced the first old French-American sign language in 1817. But it has been proposed that ASL (American Sign Language) is a creole with LSF (French Sign Language) as the superstrate language and with the native village sign languages as substrate languages. Our NZSL is not the same way as in the literacy way for example deaf people write in sentence by signing like – School, I go. Me go home., me, have two children home., 3pm movie Hamilton. These sentences when deaf people wrote down on the paper or email, are linked to their NZSL conversation. It does not show that they are bad in writing in English because it is their communicate methods. They do not realise that there is a rule when writing in full English grammar because no one explained to them during the school. In NZSL, yes there are full morphology, syntax and structures.
There are so much to say to you all in this blog. I just want to give you some ideas on how D/deaf people develop sign language around the world. I will do some more stories on this one in the future…
Accessibility – We have the right to access anywhere such as public buildings, government buildings, car parks, home, transports, laws and technology. For example, we have televisions, Internet, YouTube, video in our homes and in public buildings such as in the library, movie theatre for many years.
Captioning in television/video. No one thought about captioning/subtitles for the D/deaf and Hearing Impaired people because they presume that we could hear or lip read a bit or well. The answer is wrong and we can not lip read well, let alone we can not hear the sound or voice over the phone, mobile, by watching the television/video or to see singers in music video etc. We do not feel the same right as the other people who can and we feel left out for many years. We were privilege to have some wonderful people established the idea to produced captioned television programme series, music video over 40 years ago. That is a start, but we need more because technology keep changing and updating for everyone.
Phones/faxes. Many mobile phones are wonderful for us to use by sending/receiving texts and video conferencing through signing each others than using voice mails/messages which was impossible for us. Many landline phones are no good for us which it is the same for mobile phones except texting/video. In the old days, fax machines were excellent tools for us and we write out on paper to send out or to received in. Sadly there are not many fax machines available for elderly Deaf people because they do not like computer or never want to try out internet/email. It cost them too much money on their superannuation because they do not receive a lot of money even they will say it is wasting money on buying expensvie computers/tablets.
Interpreters – What a wonderful example to use an interpreter available for us during the public meetings, job interview, News/Parliament broadcasting in Europe, Canada and USA but not in New Zealand and Australia. The only time we have is to watch Emergency new breaking on Television and there will be an interpreter available. For example, during the Christchurch Earthquake, in the earliest television breaking news, there was no interpreter to tell many Deaf people around New Zealand and no one had no idea what happened. It was a major crisis and it made impact on the Deaf community because there was no access to information. Our Government staffs including MPs and the Broadcasting Media accepted that we need the information via interpreters because it was our right to access information through media such as Internet and television than listening on the radio.
What about fire alarms in public/government buildings and in our homes? We have been told to installed a fire alarm, yeh BUT what about the flashing light? The service people and the technicians people have forgotten about us again because they never thought about our deafness. We can not hear the sound from the fire alarm and we do not want to depended on other people in the house or in the buildings even workplace. We want to be independent because we CAN DO ourselves just like everyone. The main problem is the cost of making flashing fire alarm for us and the price tag range from $500 to $900 for one equipment. In the shops, the products – smoke/fire alarm are from $20 to $50 and these products does not have flashing light systems.
Life in Eureka 