By R.Swathi
Every day, I step into the lift and run my fingers across the panel. Though Braille markings are right there, I must admit—I haven’t mastered them yet. Have you noticed these markings too? In many new lifts, they’re a mandatory signage, but how many of us truly take the time to understand them?
Once, while dining at a hotel in Adyar, I saw a group of young friends conversing in sign language. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Sign language and Braille are such beautiful, powerful modes of communication—yet so few of us try to learn them.
In the mid-1700s, Frenchman Abbé Charles-Michel de l’Épée also noticed two deaf sisters signing. Unlike me, he took the effort to learn their language, refine it, and eventually established the French Sign Language. In 1760, he used his inheritance to open a free school for the deaf in Paris (National Institution for the Deaf and Mute of Paris) and demonstrated that the deaf were fully capable of integrating with the hearing and should have the same opportunities.
In a similar incident, in 1771, another Frenchman, Valentin Haüy, witnessed the public mockery of blind people. Already inspired by the work of l’Épée, he founded the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in 1784. Haüy developed a system of raised letters to teach his first student, Lesueur, to read and compose sentences – a system that was later refined by Louis Braille into the widely used modern tactile language.
This European vision soon crossed the Atlantic when, between 1825 – 27, American Dr. John Dix Fisher visited the Royal Institute for Blind Youth while studying medicine in Paris, and was inspired to set up the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Massachusetts in 1829. It was here that Samuel Gridley Howe, an American physician and social reformer, invented another form of communication – Finger spelling. Howe successfully taught Laura Bridgman, who had lost her hearing and sight to Scarlet fever at the age of two, using finger-spelling and writing, making her the first known deafblind person to be successfully educated in the United States. Howe’s methods were later crucial to Anne Sullivan’s success with Helen Keller.
These three visionaries – l’Épée, Haüy, and Howe – were driven by a simple moral imperative: to grant equal opportunity and dignity to those with sensory disabilities.
Today, as governments and societies debate the implementation of a third spoken language, we should pause to consider: Isn’t it more crucial to learn a language that includes our own people?
Inclusion and equality demand an impetus that must come from us. As the World Sign Language Day (Sept.22), let these histories serve as a powerful call to action: to learn a language—be it Braille, Sign, or Finger-spelling—that expands the circle of communication and truly makes our society inclusive.
