INDORE: Children with hearing and speech impairments in the city wrote postcards to president Pranab Mukherjee and prime minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to mark international mother language day and urged them to give constitutional recognition to sign language.
"With constitutional recognition like regional languages the sign language will benefit around 78 lakh hearing and speech impaired people of India" said Gyanendra Purohit from Anand Service Society, which works for hearing and speech impaired students.
He added that once the sign language will be included in linguistic minority speech impaired persons will start getting preference under various government schemes.
"Sign language works like a mother tongue of the hearing and speech impaired. In absence of proper planning, less than 10 percent of these students continue their studies to higher secondary level," Purohit said.
He stressed to ensure availability of sign language teachers in all eight centres of the city. He also said that sign language can be included in curriculum of student as mode of communication. It can also be introduced as optional subject to pursue higher education.
"Like Finland and Uganda, sign language should be given the status of one of the official languages here. It will help us to pursue higher education," the postcards read.
Purohit said, "In India, sign language has not been even introduced as optional language in the primary school. There are around 2300 hearing and speech impaired students receiving education in as many as eight special schools of the district. In absence of trained teachers to communicate in sign language, the students find it difficult to understand the subjects. The government should also think in this regard" he added.
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