On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Pharos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
