Robin Williams’ quote from the Dead Poet’s Society. It is an excellent message to everyone and to spread the positive message rather the negative message.
Many people with disabilities have been let down than a small number of people with disabilities around the world. Look at Robin – did you know that he had got disabilities or not? The answer was YES. He suffered from depression/anxiety, Parkinson Disease, Mental Illness, alcohol/drug addictions, ADD (Attention deflect disorder) and to DYSLEXIA. Wow!
The Deaf people in the community – they struggle to communicate with other people in the community, not in their own Deaf community. Why? Average people who does not have experience or a limit of understanding in sign language out there while other people thinks we sign like ‘monkey gestures’. Often the people are really clueless on what is Deaf and sign language mean to you.
We – the Deaf people, were lucky to have the ability to communicate in a loud noisy room, through the window, across the room or the road, having a sore throat or a person come from Sweden. Anyone who have hearing, they will struggle to understand what a person was talking about in a loud noisy room, unable to speak if they have a sore throat etc.
Did you know that sign language was the first language before speaking or writing?
The earliest written records of a sign language can be found in the fifth century BC in Plato’s Cratylus. Moving on to the sixty century A.D., there was another sign language recorded in the Bible – The first chapter of the Gospel of Luke: Luke:1:62. Fast forward to the 1980’s in New Zealand, our sign language family is BANZSL and BANZSL stand for British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language. This sign language may be considered dialects of a single language by using the same grammar, manual alphabet and the high degree of lexical overlap. I won’t go further to explain this lingiustic area.
What I am saying that sign language is a visual language or method of communcation. How hard or easy for anyone to learn to communicate in sign language? Do not be put off if you do not know how to communicate with any Deaf person. No other person will tell any Deaf person to speak than sign. What is Robin saying in the message – start learning the new words by sign language and you will be surprise that you sign naturally by asking for a pen or to drive. That is the sign language we use daily.
fund raising for my project on Deaf History
Life in Eureka 
