Documentation of Sign Languages of North East India

Abstract

Today, technological advancements offer much more solutions in ensuring accessibility for the D/deaf community in school education. Computer tools and programs have made the task of documenting Sign languages easier and more efficient. This paper describes the documentation of sign language varieties in the North East Region (NER) of the Indian Sign Language for wider and web-based dissemination of resources for the teachers and the students in classroom transaction.

The nature of sign languages requires a visual database to be stored systematically and designed in a user-friendly manner for ease of access. Documentation of sign language is a still a major necessity in India and particularly in the NER. This paper is not debating on what Sign language is or how it differs from spoken language; rather, it focuses on how such documentation has resulted in a web-based app known as ‘NESL Sign Bank’.