Just a fun fact, Black ASL and other sign languages here are often dominated and marginalized by the predominance of ASL and ignorance towards minority communities.
Similar to the effects of forceful dominance of King’s English, other sign languages are facing erasure due to this.
Every Deaf child should have a signed language that fits their culture and community, and lesser known/recognized signed languages should be preserved before they are pushed out over time!!
This is outlined on the International Advocacy page of the National Association of the Deaf:
Please remember ASL isn’t the only signed language in the United States, and other signed languages deserve this much advocacy!
To any Tumblrites who are deaf, hard of hearing, know people who are, or just enjoy cool tech, a start-up called MotionSavvy is working on technology that uses Leap Motion to recognize sign language and and outputs written or spoken English. The project was started by a group of deaf students at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf (yay RIT!) who moved to San Francisco to develop the product with Leap.
The team has over 800 deaf beta testers, but they are looking for more. They hope to have a product available to consumers by September of 2015.
Holding the Bowl 