Forum: Making Singapore Sign Language an official language will benefit deaf community

Forum: Making Singapore Sign Language an official language will benefit deaf community

We thank the Goh Chok Tong Enable Fund for recognising and celebrating the accomplishments of persons with disabilities, and encouraging their willingness to serve the community (Father with cerebral palsy among 13 recipients of Goh Chok Tong Enable Award, Dec 3).

Along with others in the disability community and fellow Singaporeans, we applaud the 13 awardees this year. In particular, we celebrate Mr Andrew Tay, who has helped the deaf community here to have a stronger identity through a common language ^_ Singapore Sign Language (SgSL).

A common language not only enables people to communicate with others, but also brings people together and makes them feel included. 

The Singapore Association for the Deaf (SADeaf) has been working with the authorities to recognise SgSL as an official language, since it is the native language for most of the thousands of deaf people and also many of the hard-of-hearing, who together number about 500,000 in Singapore.

If SgSL were to become an official language, it would mean that the things hearing people often take for granted would become more accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing. 

Things like emergency announcements, or even everyday announcements such as on public transport, in hospitals and at workplaces. Things like being able to watch the news on TV with sign language interpretation, something that many neighbouring countries already do. 

Standards would improve and with that, opportunities for employment and fuller participation in, and contribution to, society.

We are encouraged that a growing number of hearing people are signing up for sign language classes and various short discovery workshops.

And we hope that the honouring of the 13 persons with disabilities who have contributed to society despite their own challenges will inspire all of us and help us to see that inclusion lifts all of us, and as a country and society, we are all better for it.

Josh Lye
Executive Director
The Singapore Association for the Deaf

Article taken from The Straits Times, Dec 5 2024