Make sign language official: Minister

23.09.2018
New Delhi:
Minister of state for social justice and empowerment Krishan Pal Singh Gurjar on Sunday said he would write to home minister Rajnath Singh and request that Indian sign language be made an official language.

As per the 2011 census, there are over 50 lakh deaf people and close to 20 lakh people with speech disability in India. National Association of Deaf president A S Narayanan on Sunday urged the social justice ministry to give sign language the status of official language.

Responding to the demand, Gurjar said, “We will write to the home minister to convey your sentiments.” He added that sign language was a “language of education, livelihood and integration for the hearing and speech impaired in society”. He was speaking at the first International Day of Sign Languages.

Emphasising on the theme of the day — “with sign language, everyone is included” — secretary of the department of empowerment of persons with disabilities (DEPwD) Shakuntala D Gamlin said, “I have written to all central ministries and departments asking them to appoint a sign language interpreter for all official programmes so that no one is excluded because of lack of access to communication.”

She added that the department was consulting an expert committee to help map possibilities in terms of education and livelihood that could help people with hearing and speech impairment to grow into professionally prominent positions.

Responding to concerns over access to trained sign language interpreters, joint secretary (DEPwD) Dolly Chakrabarty said, “The Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre was started in 2015 with the idea of creating a pool of people trained in sign languages. We hope to send our students to volunteer and see our trained students become the solution for those looking for interpreters.”

She said ISLR&TC was working on adding to the 3,000-word Indian sign language dictionary released in March. By March 2019, it is proposed to add around 3,000 new words capturing diverse local traditions in communication. The dictionary consists of various categories of words ranging from everyday terms, legal, academic, medical and technical terms. The videos in the dictionary are subtitled.