I saw a girl assisting an older man with sign language. I can only assume he was blind and deaf to a degree because she was using some form of modified sign language by touch.
He held his palm open to her and she quickly drew on it and swiped in and out of his hand and fingers, tapped it, all sorts of things. He would then speak in her ear and she would answer him again with the sign language.
What is this version called? I was really intrigued to learn more about it. Thanks!
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Hi,
What you saw was probably the deafblind manual alphabet (also known as finger-spelling) which as you say is a modified version of sign language for people that can’t see or can’t see very well. It’s actually very similar to normal sign language but instead of making the signs using both your own hands you use the persons hand.
There’s a little chart of it here:
http://www.sense.org.uk/what_is_deafblindness/communicating_with_deafblind_people/main_methods_of_communication/deafblind_manual.htm
There are a number of other ways that deafblind people communicate and some are quite incredible (for example check out Tadoma). We have a list of them on our website:
http://www.sense.org.uk/what_is_deafblindness/communicating_with_deafblind_people/main_methods_of_communication/
Hope that’s useful!
Thanks
Alex