According to the World Health Organization, as of March 2019 around 466 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss. However, barely 10% is proficient in sign language and only 2% of this population officially received education in sign language. While accessibility is a major factor, legality is another issue that is relatively common, especially in developing countries.
Sign language in Indonesia
Until March 2016, sign language was banned in Indonesia. Deaf kids were forced to speak and read lips, as the government prioritized “fitting a certain norm” through assimilation, while unfortunately ignoring their specific needs.
Rizky Ario, my friend from Indonesia, grew up hearing the first-hand account of the horrifying ordeal from his Deaf aunt. The thoughts about such injustice remained and even seeped into his studies. During his studies, Rizky, together with a few classmates from the programming club at his university, started a project called Isara: a Deaf community-center platform that includes a sign language learning application and an online sign interpreter service. He started involving me in the project, and over the following year Isara recorded over 10,000 sign language videos in 9 cities in Indonesia, compiling the first complete Indonesian Sign Language video dictionary.
After numerous pitches and competitions, the team continuously raised awareness from the public and actively participated in discussions with the country’s policymakers, including Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, then President of Indonesia, and Mohammad Nuh, then the Minister of Education and Culture of Indonesia. The arduous work led to the recognition of sign language, which is now part of the Indonesian Constitution.
Internationalization
I was in my last year of university in Lausanne, Switzerland when Isara was accepted to the Switzerland chapter of MassChallenge, a global, zero-equity startup accelerator founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
Despite not having met anyone from the Deaf community before being involved in Isara, I simply wanted to learn more about it. I do have a close relationship with an uncle with hard-of-hearing, but at the time I hadn’t grown up with someone who’s Deaf in my circle. It did not matter to Rizky that I had never met anyone from the Deaf community. My first encounter with a Deaf person – exactly a week after I joined the project – interestingly wasn’t even part of the project.
The encounter happened while I was paying my host family in Zurich a visit. I was at the city’s art festival with my host sister, when a volunteer suddenly approached us to help us navigate through the event. Within a few seconds, I noticed that the volunteer’s speech was different; he was Deaf. His enthusiasm made me realize that if he could exhort all his might into helping me, I could and should do the same for the Deaf community. That’s when I felt I wanted to commit to making Isara the best it can be, to really make positive impact for the Deaf community.
After moving Isara’s operations and development team to Switzerland, we began participating in increasingly large scale competitions such as the University Startup World Cup in Denmark and the GoodFestival in Switzerland. This progress greatly broadened our reach, which was previously limited to only Indonesia.
Since the project moved to Europe, we managed to present Isara to numerous political key figures, including Mary, the Crown Princess of Denmark and Susan LeVine, then US Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, to name a few. After the end of the MassChallenge program in Switzerland in early 2017, Isara relocated to France, where the team is developing the project under direct supervision of the French government through The French Tech Ticket, a program aimed to attract and to support the development of international startups in France.
A Step Towards the Future
In this article I also want to share a few common myths and misconceptions about Deaf people and sign language:
Sign language is universal
Sign language isn't a universal language. Primarily for the same reason as to why there isn’t a universal spoken language: language and culture are intertwined. Language can be viewed as a communicative expression of culture; when you interact with a language, you are interacting with the culture that uses that language.
There are over 135 sign languages around the world. Even though the USA, Britain and Australia all share the same spoken language (i.e. English), they each have their own sign language, American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (BSL) and Australian Sign Language (Auslan). Yes, sign language has accents and dialects, just as spoken language does.
2. Sign language translates spoken language word-by-word
To add on the above comment: because sign languages develop within Deaf communities, they can be independent of the surrounding spoken language. Sign language has its own grammar that is often independent of the spoken language used in the same area. ASL, for example, has its own grammar system, separate from that of English. What this means is ASL grammar has its own rules for phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics.
3. All Deaf people can read lips
Lip-reading is difficult, and not always accurate. Depending on how long someone has had hearing aids, or how well they can hear, some people lip read better than others. There are so many different lip-shapes and patterns, but most of it is just guesswork. This is why Deaf people appreciate gestures, clues or signs to indicate the subject.
4. Hearing aids instantly make you hear
Unlike glasses that can instantly correct your sight, people with hearing loss can’t just pop in a hearing aid and instantly hear. Depending on the level of someone’s hearing loss, hearing aids vary on power, and often need some fine tuning by the audiologist. While hearing aids can make a big difference in one’s hearing ability, it is often not the same as someone born without hearing disabilities.
5. Deaf people can't speak
‘Mute’ means silent and without voice. This label is technically inaccurate, since Deaf and hard of hearing people generally have functioning vocal chords. Some Deaf people may choose not to talk because it is difficult for them to regulate the volume, pitch, or sound of their voices in a way that most people can understand. For this reason, some Deaf people may prefer to keep silent, despite the fact that many Deaf people have the ability to speak and are not physically mute.
All in all, while there are so many misconceptions regarding Deaf community and sign language, being aware of them is already a large step towards an inclusive future. This may seem far-fetched for now, but through signing I believe we are breaking the invisible barrier of communication, bringing closer once-segregated communities. I believe we will eventually live in a world where sign language is treated the same just as any other spoken language – as part of the human culture – and not merely a communication tool for the disabled.
- Irvan Sutiono
Notes:
The above example of misconceptions are taken from various sources.
Happy to share an article that wonderfully elaborates the above topic!