Everyone with hearing loss should learn fingerspelling

British Sign Language (BSL) alphabet - YouTube video player

If you are already convinced you can go straight to my 7 minute fingerspelling video, otherwise read on.

You might think. I’ve been hearing all my life. Why should I start signing now?

Ask yourself these questions

• Do you always understand what’s going on?
• Does your family only talk to you about ‘important’ things?
• Do you miss out at busy social and family occasions?
• Do you get 100% communication now?

If you don’t get full communication and you miss out during social events – what can you do about it? And not just you, what can your friends and family do about it?

Think of it this way, if you had a mate who used a wheelchair would you expect them to get up the steps to the meeting room? Even if they could pull themselves out of their wheelchair and struggle up the steps, panting and shaking with the effort. Would you ask them to do it? What for? We can always find an easier meeting room.

A question like “Can you lipread?” is the hearing loss equivalent to a flight of steps. Yes, you can lipread but it’s a mental struggle. Lip patterns were never designed to be a form of communication. This is why many sounds have the same lip pattern or are invisible. The mental concentration and guesswork required to lipread is huge. I remember discussing it with Julie Ryder of Hearfirst. We laughed over our shared experiences of concentrating so hard to understand someone, we didn’t remember what they were talking about.

Lip reading and your remaining hearing support communication. In many situations hearing and lipreading might be enough. In some noisy and complicated environments, it’s not enough. Hence your family and friends learning to fingerspell.

In most cases they don’t have to fingerspell every word. The ‘k’ sound is invisible on the lips. They may not need to spell the whole word K-i-n-g. Often it is enough to spell the first letter and pronounce the rest, K-ing. The fingerspelling gives the clue of what letter the word starts with and lipreading and residual hearing do the rest.

I learnt to fingerspell on a train to London. Practice for a couple of hours and you’ll soon have the alphabet by heart. If you don’t get it off by heart, anytime you need it you’ll be struggling.

Watch my fingerspelling video . Follow what I’m doing and use the illustrated alphabet in this blog to remind you. Then practice.

You could spell out this sentence which has every letter of the alphabet.

Queen Elizabeth’s proxy waved off Mick Jagger
Or
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

Going through a page of a magazine or book and fingerspelling every word is a good way to learn as well.

If you are outside of the UK then your country will usually have a different sign language fingerspelling alphabet. Australian Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language share the same fingerspelling alphabet as BSL.
Here are some of the other finger spelling alphabets from around the world, courtesy of AI-MEDIA.

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