[Foundation-l] Signal languages Wikimedia projects

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greg, this has nothing to do with cochlear implants.
>
> The deaf activist community is not a monolith, and the SignWriting
> folks are not advocates of isolationism at all.

Gah, I would not presume to insult them so. For clarity: I'm not
claiming that most SignWriting advocates advocate isolationism or that
SignWriting doesn't have many non-isolationist uses.

Only that due care is required if we don't want to end up being a tool
for isolationism and this is true for all cases where we create
distinct Wikipedia communities and is not at all limited to speakers
of sign language.

As far as I can tell many people who advocate isolation don't even
bother mentioning SignWriting as it's pretty much invisible in much of
the deaf world today.

SignWriting is simply not useful to most deaf people today because
they do not know it. It is potentially controversial because many
people believe that fluency in non-deaf oriented written languages is
believed to be important by everyone who isn't isn't trying to create
isolation. The line between inclusion and mutual exclusion can be
thin.

> They simply believe in bilingualism, and that attaining literacy in
> one's everyday language is valuable in itself,

No "community is (…) a monolith".

I'm honestly sorry that I spoke unclearly: I expect that many people
on these lists would find the concept of pro-isolationsm in the deaf
community rather mind blowing, I know I certainly did in my own first
encounter with it. My effort was only to increase awareness in it as a
word of caution, and not to discredit the honourable work done by many
on SignWriting who are not trying to promote isolation.

> and should also be a
> great aid in improving literacy in English and other spoken languages.
>  Several SignWriting studies have focused on its use as an educational
> tool that increases student's real literacy in spoken languages.

I have no doubt, but at the same time there have been studies showing
that fluency in morse code has similar kinds of benefits.  Shall we
add morse code support to Wikipedia?  :) (perhaps)  As I've said in
every post on this subject: I do not oppose SignWriting in Wikimedia
projects (well, ignoring the bizarre licensing situation), but I think
it's important that we understand that it is not an accessibility tool
and will not be in the near term, and that there exist some people who
would promote it for isolation, a reason we should resolutely reject.