Sign Language Watch
.. work in progress!
This website is a spin-off of the SignTeach project, www.signteach.eu. SignTeach was a European project funded under the Erasmus+ programme, for and by sign language teachers. One of the objectives of the project was to find out more about the status of sign languages in Europe. The legal status, as well as the daily use and recognition, in short: the visibility of sign languages in daily life. Why? Because sign language teachers will no longer have a job, if sign languages become extinct or the number of sign language users becomes too small.
In the process, we collected a lot of information that was outside the scope of the SignTeach project. But very very relevant, not just for sign language teachers but for sign language users and sign language researchers, as well as for everyone interested in minority languages in general.
This site, signlanguagewatch.eu was launched to be a place where you can find information about the status of sign languages. Not only for sign language users, but everyone. Including people with little or no previous knowledge of sign languages.
The objective: to make sign languages in Europe more visible, more accessible. We are all aware of the problems that Deaf people have in accessing information. Hearing people, specifically: non-signing people, may have as many problems accessing information about the Deaf community, about sign language users.
For now, the website only wants to be a platform, a billboard. Or rather: a bridge, where you can find people and information.
Our first activities:
- To share the information on the status of sign language that we collected for the SignTeach project;
- To share the recommendations and articles that we collected on the recognition of sign languages;
- To build a database of people who are willing to give presentations at conferences, workshops etc., on subjects related to the use and recognition of sign languages.
This website has no commercial objectives, access is free, we do not receive any funding for our activities. Later, depending on resources and needs, we may decide to expand our activities.
Liesbeth Pyfers
Pragma, the Netherlands
1 September 2017
www.signteach.eu
www.pragmaprojecten.nl
The website's logo was created by Laura Breier and downloaded from the Nounproject.