Sign Language

The phrase ‘hearing impaired’ is a more polite term to talk about deaf people or people who are hard of hearing. In the past, most cultures treated people with disabilities badly. Everything was designed for abled people, and very little attention was paid to the needs of disable people. However, there were smart and compassionate people who cared about these needs and invented ways help people with disabilities.

Language is used by humans to communicate. Most of our communication is done through hearing and speaking the language around us. So, people with severe hearing problems are not able to understand and use it. This causes their inability to talk to both normal people and deaf people.

American Sign Language was developed in the American School for the Deaf in the 19th century so that deaf people could communicate with each other and the people around them. It is a mix of hand gestures, movement of the fingers, arms or body, and facial expressions. Today it is used as the first language for deaf people in the US and Canada, and different dialects of it are used in many other countries. There are approximately 500,000 deaf people in the United States, and most of them can use this sign language.