Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!129!26!Stu.Turk
From: Stu.Turk@f26.n129.z1.fidonet.org (Stu Turk)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Sign Language as a Foreign Language
Message-ID: <14876@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 10 Oct 90 03:01:17 GMT
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Index Number: 11023

[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]

Linda Iverson of 1:130/10 wrote to William Hubbs: 

 LI>  philosophical problems with it.  First, what if a totally blind 
 LI>  person wanted to take this as a foreign language requirement?  
 LI>  Would the school make provisions?  Yes, you could take a reader 
 LI>  or friend to class, but what about exercises where the teacher 
 LI>  might say something and you had to respond.  I assume this course 
   =
   Blind people learn sign language by feeling the movment of the hands.  A 
blind person would simply have a interpreter in class (something quite common 
for deaf people so they shouldn't see anything odd about an interpreter).  The 
interpreter would sit in front of the blind person, facing him/her, and 
duplicate the signs the instructor is signing.  Once the blind person learns 
the sign language they often serve as interpreters for the deaf.  
   I belong to a group of deaf/blind people and most of the group uses signs 
(I'm one of the few that doesn't).
 

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