Signs of the language they’d know

Sumedha Sharma in Gurugram

The Pythagoras theorem is written boldly on a blackboard with a right-angle triangle drawn next to it. A class of over 50 different yet special students stares intently at their teacher who makes a few gestures. As you wonder about these signs, a student gets up and solves the equation.

“It is a normal arithmetic class, the medium is not Hindi or English, but signs. And this language is capable of saying or explaining everything,” says Pallavi Kulshreshtha, a sign expert at the city’s Centre for Welfare of the Speech and Hearing Impaired.

The centre has students studying the usual board and NCERT books through signs. These children are not just studying for themselves but actually gearing up for India’s first Digitization of all NCERT books in Indian Sign Language (ISL).

“Students who are hearing or speech impaired are perfectly capable of regular mainstream education. But they have to face trouble in the absence of unified sign translation. We have started creating an online library of all curriculum books in signology. Experts from across the world along with our teachers and students would strive to ensure education reaches all,” says principal Sharanjit Kaur.

“I want to be a forensic scientist, but learning chemistry was like a dream. Though I come from a well-to-do family, I could learn only a few basic things such as asking for food or seeking help at the special school where I was sent to. I could never learn science or mathematics because there was no one to teach. I never knew signs could interpret lessons,” says Rajiv Singh through the sign language. 

“It’s not just about books. It’s about our communicative identity. Everybody has a mother tongue, but what is ours? Just because our language has no sound, does it mean it is useless? Across the world, ISL is accepted as means of communication. Once we have our books translated, it too will make its own place like Braille,” says Sibaji Panda, renowned expert on deaf education for literacy development and the brain behind the idea.

The institute with support from the local administration has already got on the job and prepared a blueprint for the herculean task. The textbook lessons would be broken into core concepts across five subjects — English, Hindi, Social Science, Science and Mathematics — from Class 10th Curriculum to junior classes. These concepts/lessons would then be interpreted in ISL and padded with appropriate images/pictures/graphics along with deaf-friendly captions. This material would be reviewed by special experts and digitized for students across the world.

“The students and the institute have taken up the long-neglected cause and we will ensure full support in terms of infrastructure and resources. If all goes well, Gurugram will have a world-class ISL digitization lab,” says deputy commissioner Vinay Pratap Singh.

There are 1,15,527 hearing impaired people in Haryana and 50,72,914 in India as per Census 2011. Most of them face difficulties in schools because education and information is not made accessible in the Indian Sign Language.

Inadequate sign language training in teacher training courses and limited understanding of how deaf people learn have led to special educators not being able to deliver concepts. As a result, less than 2 % of the deaf students pass class 12th and go for higher education.

Saying it with signs

• Indian Sign Language has its own grammar and rules. Sign languages are recognised in many countries
• Madhya Pradesh recognised the language in 2015. As a result, 17 sign language interpreters were appointed to make ITI training accessible for the deaf across seven centres in that state
• Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC), New Delhi, was set up in 2015 to lead the way in academic development, training and propagation of the Indian Sign Language 
• Rights for Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, says such persons can learn sign language through promotion of the linguistic identity of the community

Hear him out

Sachin, a UP resident, was born hearing impaired like his mother and elder sister were. “I was totally isolated in school,” he says. “One day in school I was so frustrated that I faked I could hear. I cried not because teachers were unhelpful, but because no help was enough,” says Sachin. Somehow he cleared B.Com from University of Lucknow. It was a trip to Delhi when he got to know about a sign language course at Delhi University. Soon, he joined BA (Hons) in Applied Sign Language Studies and met teachers with hearing impaired, for the first time. Then he got a job at the Centre for Indian Sign Language and Deaf Studies, Lucknow, as an instructor to teach hearing impaired students. In 2016, he was appointed as instructor at Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre, New Delhi. — Sumedha Sharma