I'm Deaf, but only once have I ever flown on a flight where another deaf person, not traveling with me, was on the plane. That's as far as I know, because I didn't go up and down the aisles checking to see if there were any. Did you do that?

NZSL (New Zealand Sign Language) user here. One of the reasons why you might not see many signing on planes is that people often travel alone. Whenever I travel alone I tend to not sign much (for hopefully obvious reasons!). I do sign "thank you", "water please", etc when I need to with FAs just to raise awareness that they have Deaf passengers.

When travelling on QF I have found their FA to be pretty good at responding back to me with a "thank you" sign. I've been told they send their FA to Deaf Awareness courses and this shows. Sadly I don't see the same on NZ/JQ which I travel on more often -- perhaps they don't send their FAs to Deaf Awareness courses?

Obviously when travelling in a group of other SL users I will sign a lot! Doesn't happen very often though.

Interesting to read the debate between ASL and SSE here. I grew up with TC (the Australian version of SSE) and while I agree it is good for English literacy it does not always translate to better comprehension of what is being said. Basically TC/SSE allows a better understanding of English but not really anything else.

While I was growing up in school in the '90's I witnessed the transition in education to teaching NZSL (which like BSL/ASL in terms of the fact it is its own language) and many of my classmates finally started to understand maths, science, social studies, etc because they stopped focusing on English and just focusing on acquiring knowledge from the subject they were learning.

I was fortunate firstly to have acquired TC, but I feel much more fortunate to have NZSL later on as it is a proper sign language. TC/SSE is just a code for English and IMHO should only be used for teaching/learning English. ASL/BSL/NZSL/etc is more appropriate for almost everything else.

- James

The best way to see other deaf people is to fly to/from DC or Rochester, NY when Gallaudet and RIT starts their breaks/classes start up. I just had a flight with 4 other deaf people when returning home from school! Two were deliberately flying together as they lived near to each other but the rest of us didn't know. I don't walk up the aisle to check for deaf people, I typically see them at the gate area or even at the baggage claim sometimes!

Now about International Sign Language- it's rather rude to see hearing people push that idea so hard as sign languages are not something new, they have rich and storied histories in their countries. I wouldn't give up ASL to learn some sort of ISL to fulfill the fantasies of ignorant hearing people. Why do hearing people think I should be able to communicate with deaf people in any country I go to when the same is not true for spoken languages? Just look at Esperanto. It failed. ISL will not take off too because the deaf people do NOT want or need one. Please stop pushing this idea on us.

I recently had a flight where the FA insisted on trying to mime/randomly sign out the safety speech. She didn't even know a sign, she just made it up all. It was absurd and kind of offensive. I vastly prefer watching the safety video with captions or being handed a transcript of the speech (it's only happened once to me which is a shame because it's pretty much the best way if there's no CC). I found Continental to be the best airline to fly on in regards of accommodation for the deaf which is why I was sad when they merged with UA as UA doesn't really try to make any accommodations.

Actually, International Sign Language is a Deaf invention, not hearing. What was described earlier is a little bit different from that. I agree with you that I would not give up ASL for either the Deaf invented version, nor for the hearing one being discussed earlier in this thread. The Deaf version was invented to help communication, not to replace any countries original language.

International sign language is roughly gestural and greatly simplified so that everybody can understand. I regularly attend deaf events in Europe and I also know DGS (German Sign Language).

My apologies for being gone so long but I'm now back in the good old U.S.A.

Welcome back!

Welcome back Wiggums!

I know BSL, Auslan, and NZSL in addition to International Sign Language (WFD) and of course our native American Sign Language.

There's a Japanese Sign Language, and I've seen it portrayed in dramas and also used in a sign-interpreted news program on NHK's Educational Channel. On one of my visits to Japan, I saw a TV variety show in which the singer signed the lyrics of a song while singing them.