[Wikipedia-l] sign.wikepedia.org?

Thu Jan 27 18:16:28 UTC 2005

Neil:
> The important question is: what do our potential deaf users _themselves_
> want? Then we can worry about who's going to find the motivation to
> adapt the software appropriately to support their needs.

Not to discourage, but I can well imagine that many deaf users are
quite happy with what is already there. Sign language is probably
their first language, but many will have their literacy in the spoken
language - that's the language they read and write, often on a daily
basis.

It's the same with many other speakers of dialects and smaller
minority languages - the 'big' language is the language of schooling
and written communication. Smaller languages often remain just oral
languages - or in the case of sign language, signed languages.

Of course this is all spoken by someone who does not have any direct
experience with deaf people, so I gladly admit I'm wrong if someone
else with more direct experience tells me differently. :-)

Andre Engels