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A New Way to Read? SignWriting Introduced in Six Major Categories

Yes, and it's no April Fool's Joke. A revolutionary way for the Deaf (the profoundly hearing impaired) to read, employing something called "SignWriting," is to be unveiled this year in six major categories: school texts, reference books, children's literature, religious works, classical world literature, and multilingual dictionaries.

La Jolla, California (PRWEB) April 1, 2008 -- A revolutionary way for the Deaf (the profoundly hearing impaired) to read, employing something called "SignWriting," is to be unveiled this year in six major categories: school texts, reference books, children's literature, religious works, classical world literature, and multilingual dictionaries. Ms. Valerie Sutton, founder of the SignWriting Literature Project, recently announced the lofty goals at the Center for Sutton Movement Writing, a 501c (3), educational, non-profit organization based in La Jolla, California.

SignWriting, developed in 1974 by Sutton (formerly a dancer who had previously created DanceWriting), is a system of writing symbols to represent concepts, which are visually orientated with abstract pictures of hands, faces, and bodies.

Illiteracy is one of the more difficult problems facing any democratic nation.

While SignWriting does not follow a sequential order, like the letters that make up written words, it does emulate the American Sign Language (ASL) with symbols representing concepts rather than alphabetic letters, all in an attempt to relieve some Deaf illiteracy with "manual signs" put to paper, rather than using words.

Deaf people, long handicapped, not only by their inabilities to hear or speak, have literacy problems due to never having heard languages spoken.

SignWriting is the first writing system for sign languages to adequately represent segments of speech, phrases, and speech longer than compound words.

New publications planned by the SignWriting Literature Project are the children's classics, Cat in the Hat, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, a Collection of Mother Goose Rhymes, and various encyclopedia articles on a broad range of topics.

SignWriting has been used for captioning YouTube videos, and in the publishing of college newsletters in American Sign Language.

And, according to Sutton, SignWriting has been used, or investigated, in over 40 countries, on every inhabited continent.

The National Association of Police and Lay Charities (NAPLC) - sponsors of the preeminent Teddy Bear Cops™ Car Donation Programs has partnered with the SignWriting Literature Project, noting that, "Illiteracy is one of the more difficult problems facing any democratic nation."

NAPLC has long given teddy bears to traumatized children, through police and firefighting associations, and also funds other 501c(3) charities who align with NAPLC's goals of helping children in need.