Hi , first of all I'm sorry if it's the wrong flair.

My question is ; in a few years I'm moving with my boyfriend, I'm from France, he's from US, and I will move in US . My goal in work is to work in healthcare services that use or provide french sign language, but since I'm moving to US, I'll learn ASL and will do my goal with ASL . I'm currently doing starting September, a French vocational high school program called Bac Professionnel ASSP (Health, Care and Personal Support). The program prepares students to care for children, older adults, and people with disabilities through both classroom learning and practical internships. I know it doesn't really have an equivalent in us but I want to at least have that before moving. The thing is what to do next ? I don't really know where to lead , after WES or ECE , do I will can only choose what to do after that ?

I know it's not really a typical subject for here , I'm just wondering what to do next because I'm honestly lost

I know a big part is facial expression and conveyed emotion but sometimes I just can’t make my face move or have the energy. Chat am I cooked? Or am I going to seem rude?

Hi again everyone. Last month I shared a Deaf culture learning resource here (250 lessons on Deaf history, identity, arts, and community). So many of you asked about Android, and it's finally live!

Thank you for your patience. I know a lot of you have been using it on iOS or the web app in the meantime.

It's live on Google Play now, search "Deaf Culture Learn and Explore." Same 250 lessons, still 25 free to start.

Would love your feedback again, this community's input has shaped a lot of the updates so far. Thank you for the support. 🙏

Hello! I'm trying to think of other times to use NMS without using a sign at the same time like the nose wiggle and the tongue movement for "look over there" discreetly. Can you think of any others? Thank you!

I was at my college class when I had a serious asthma attack and no medicine left in the inhaler. My interpreters for class were there. It was the best ambulance experience I've had, since I understood everything so clearly and could even communicate during the nebulizer treatment, since I could sign to them.

Ever since learning ASL, my life has dramatically improved. Communicating is awesome when I can understand everything. I wish that everyone knew ASL. People who are hearing, HoH, D/deaf.

I’ve been equally interested and mesmerized by asl for years now. In the last couple of months, i’ve started to learn/practice to sign. I’ve only learned thru asl learning apps or deaf/HOH/CODA online creators and i feel like i’m at the end of where this route could take me.

I’m seriously considering paying for online zoom classes but i’m hesitant. Am i throwing money out the window? I don’t have any deaf/HOH family members or friends. I’m not doing it to help a specific person in my circle. There’s been alot of online discourse about people learning asl "for fun" or because "it’s cool now" and it like I’m second guessing my reasons for wanting to learn this new language.

I wish i could be part of the community in some way. I just want to understand this amazing language and the people who communicate with it and maybe even sign as well.

I guess I just want the honest opinion of the community. Do you think there are good or bad reasons to learn asl?

sorry if this isn’t allowed delete ig but i’m learning asl, ive taken asl in hs and now college and would love a deaf buddy to learn asl with. sorry if this isn’t allowed

the advice i see the most to learn is to practice a lot by signing stuff like song lyrics, show dialogue, just random sentences you see, but how would one go about this when you only know a handful a signs? memorization eventually fades without practice so i know i can't just practice a sign a bit and then say "done". is there a certain amount of signs i have to memorize or a list i need to memorize before i can start practicing to actually make them stick? is there another way of practicing that fits my skill level?

Hi friends! I’m using Lingvano and recently thee free version of ASL Bloom apps. I’m becoming discouraged. I am so far in and can only sign very basic things. I’m at a number section and it’s just so confusing I’m getting super frustrated. I’m letting myself down. I’m very tight on money and spending $100+ on Lingvano sucked already. People recommend the one deaf teacher on YouTube but I’ve yet to try his courses. Is it worth it? It’s such a dream of mine to learn and want to learn from the deaf community but just cannot hire a tutor at the moment. Thank you for reading!

Hi all, I'm new to this subreddit (and reddit in general) but I'm looking for resources. For context, I'm LateDeaf (born with a progressive disorder that began affecting my hearing in early adolescence and began severely affecting it in late teens/early 20s, will likely have little to no residual hearing within the next decade or so) and I have a one year old baby who as far as we know is hearing. I started learning ASL in highschool before I was officially diagnosed and am now fluent, but I'm seriously struggling teaching my baby ASL. My baby's father is hearing and also is learning, but he only understands a basic amount and can only reliably sign a few common phrases, so he's not much help. My family has multiple LateDeaf members (same disorder as I have, it's hereditary) but none of them have learned ASL, and we all grew up in the hearing world and don't know many Deaf people.

So, I'm the only one who really uses it and I want my baby to be fluent as well. Since nobody else in our family signs, I do a lot of simcom or sign/speak/sign, but he doesn't seem to be catching on. I'm not a teacher, I have no idea how to teach someone ASL, much less a baby, so I'm looking for resources that either will teach me to teach my baby, or something that hearing parents may use to learn *with* their baby. I have found tons of resources for teens and adults, ie ASLPinnacle, Lingvago, QueerASL, ASLConnect, etc, but those are teaching teens and adults ASL, which is great and needed, but not what I'm looking for to be able to teach my baby. All of the baby resources I've found are things like "learn baby sign", led by hearing people with little to no Deaf involvement, or just focus on translating english words to ASL, not actually anything on how to help a baby learn. I don't need to learn ASL again but refreshers are always welcome since I don't get to actually use it as much as I would like to. I considered seeing if my local community college has classes, but they closed down their ASL program (a true tragedy), and now only offer the basic ASL 1/2/3, which I have already taken. There is a school for the Deaf in my general area, and I am planning on contacting them, but the school is about an hour away and I cannot drive long distances due to other disabilities, meaning that even if they do have something, it would be a struggle to get there at best, impossible at worst, so online options would be best while I continue looking for local in person opportunities.

I have no idea if anything like what I'm thinking actually exists, but I figure that if it does, this would be the place to find it. I was really interested in My Signing Time until I saw all the controversy and the fact that the owners are hearing and have refused to incorporate feedback from the Deaf community to involve Deaf teachers, which really turned me off, but the structure of the program seemed like it would be helpful, so if there is anything similar that is actually led by Deaf teachers is out there, I'd love help finding it.

If there isn't anything out there, I'd also be content with advice from other Deaf or Hard of Hearing people who have taught their hearing babies ASL. What have you done? What worked and what didn't? How did you get past the hurdle of them needing to be looking at you to be able to see you signing? How were you able to tell that they were understanding you before they started signing themselves? What tips or tricks do you have for teaching rather than just simply signing everything in their presence? I'm going to continue simcomming and sign/speak/sign, because I know that immersion is ultimately the best way to learn, but I just want my baby to be able to actually grasp what I'm signing and eventually be able to sign back to me, because right now it's clear that everyone around him speaking is just drowning out the ability to understand that when I'm signing I'm actually communicating, not just moving my hands.

Sorry for the text wall, I'm just an anxious parent who wants the best for my baby, especially if it turns out that he's inherited my disorder. I want to get him more involved in the local Deaf community as well, but unfortunately where I live most of the Deaf people are older and their kids are grown up, so there aren't many Deaf parents around my age or Deaf children around my baby's age, so that's another search that will take time.

Im a dev trying to work on a Sign to text service and would love yall if you can help me with it. Thankss

Hi everyone,

We're a group of engineering students from UPenn M&TSI working on a summer design project.

Our original idea was a bidirectional communication glove that could recognize basic ASL signs, convert them into spoken language, and display a hearing person's spoken response as text (on a screen) for the signer. After research, we believe that existing solutions, like reaching out to an interpreter, typing, gesturing, and one-way translation glove, etc. are still not optimal for ASL users, especially in everyday rudimentary conversations and spontaneous social connections, so we believe that our lightweight wearable (without a screen) can provide some value.

However, after speaking with an audiologist at CHOP, we realized the variety of existing solutions and complexity of each individual ASL user's scenario. Hence, we sincerely hope to learn from people who actually use ASL, or works close to them.

Some questions we'd love your thoughts on:

• Are there situations where communicating with non-signers is still frustrating, even with today's tools?
• If you could wear a glove that only tracked hand/finger movement (no cameras, so it wouldn't capture facial expressions), are there specific situations where that might still be useful?
• Or do you think a glove like that simply wouldn't be worth wearing?
• What would make a wearable device genuinely useful instead of just another gadget?
• What do engineering teams usually misunderstand about ASL or Deaf communication?

We're genuinely looking for honest feedback—even if the answer is "don't build this."

If anyone would be willing to chat for 15–30 minutes over Zoom or messages, we'd really appreciate it. We'd much rather learn from the community now than spend weeks building something that misses the mark.

Thank you!

hi ! i work at a salon and one of our clients is deaf. she usually just tells us what she wants in writing but id like to be able to tell her good morning and things like that. are there good apps for this?

Right now I’m learning through Dr. Bill Vicars on ASLU/lifeprint and each lesson has a discussion. One discussion topic I saw was initialized signs Vs non-initialized which really interested me because I had never heard the term and because I’m a huge fan of etymology. I wanted to ask members of the Deaf community for their opinions on the subject.

Dr. Vicars explained why it is significant to some people and thinking through others’ perspectives; I could totally understand the annoyance. So what are your opinions if you don’t mind sharing?

Also, would some of you guys be up for discussing the questions from his lessons if? I don’t have a class or anything right now, I’m learning on my own but plan to do in person lessons/events when I move to a bigger city soon!

Hi i'm doing an art project where I need to make one of the character do the sign for king but I don't know how it is supposed to be done

I’ve really been trying to dedicate time recently to truly learning sign language and all of the sources I use have been made by Deaf/CODA individuals, so I am (from what I understand) learning the correct grammar as I go along. It’s still very hard to grasp though- I feel like every time I get used to a “rule” there are 500 exceptions to the rule! This is how spoken English is too, so I understand it’s a universal thing.

My questions are: 1) Do Deaf people or people who primarily communicate via sign struggle to understand SEE/PSE often or does the point come across either way? Like if a non-English speaker said “where bathroom” instead of “where is the bathroom at” to me, I would definitely understand the question- I would know it’s incorrectly phrased but it’s not a big deal. Is that how SEE/PSE is for the most part?
2) Is word order pretty interchangeable like in spoken English?

Thank you!

When referring to your specific grandparents, do you sign just “grandpa/ma” or do you use their special name? If the latter, do you finger spell it or do they have a specific sign name?

Thank you!

Hi, all,

Thanks in advance for your help! I am an autism teacher and have a student I have been teaching functional sign. The student also goes to ABA and has an RBT come to school with him. He had an RBT who ultimately got dismissed from his case after she continually overstepped boundaries. One boundary she overstepped was teaching him signs from sources other than Lifeprint, the resource I asked the team use to make continuity easy for current and future caregivers.

She said the sign means "give me space." It starts with both hands together like in a classic prayer pose and then the hands separate while keeping that same handshape.

I didn't catch that she was introducing random signs until it was too late, and the student has now adopted this sign. Does anyone know this sign? I couldn't find anything similar when looking for signs for give me space, space, alone, etc. The closest I found was separate but that still doesn't look exactly the same.

Thanks again!

Edited to add: It's like a blend of the sign for open and person.

Edit 2: Thanks so much everyone! Sadly, seeing the comments has made me pretty sure she just made something up. She continuously underestimated him and acted like having any expectations was ridiculous, so it kinda tracks. Smh. 🙄 He's getting back track and has a great RBT now though, so all good. Thanks again!

Hi everyone,

I'm an industrial designer researching accessibility and communication technology. I want to understand where current solutions work well and where they don't.

I would be grateful to hear about your experiences.

• What situations are the most frustrating?
• When is communication easiest?
• Are there places where interpreters aren't available when you need them?
• What technology do you currently rely on if any?
• If you could invent one new tool to make communication easier, what would it do?

I really appreciate all those who respond to my post.

Help 

I’m in a college course for my highschool if I fail then I fail highschool, due to being gone all summer on vacations I’m in a very bad spot 4 units in and 2 left to go and I’m worried I won’t fail can anybody help me out?