Before Vicky du Preez could tackle the Mount Kilimanjaro endeavour, she had to complete tasks and charitable contributions as part of her Miss, Mr, Mrs Deaf SA campaign.
“This entailed creating awareness for the deaf at schools, like Paarl Gimnasium, where my son goes to school. There, a lot of kids asked him questions about living with a deaf person.”
Except for their door bell triggering lights to flicker in their house to indicate a guest’s arrival, their home is just like any other hearing family’s, says Vicky.
She believes, however, South Africa is years behind the international community’s public accommodation of deaf people.
“Most deaf people can still lip read to varying degrees, but most hearing individuals lack the means of sign language to understand those with hearing disabilities.”
For those who wish to learn sign language, Vicky recommends learning the international standard version.
“Like every language or culture have their own accents, you also get different versions of sign language among varying cultures. In Tanzania, it took us South Africans 15 minutes to learn the differences in the ways the Tanzanians sign versus us.”
She says this short learning curve is all it takes to understand most varying sign languages among deaf communities.
Facts you did not know about sign language:. According to the World Federation of the Deaf, there are 70 million people in the world who use sign language to communicate. It is the only medium through which deaf people communicate their feelings and emotions.. Sign language does not only use signs to communicate. It uses facial expression, hand movement and position, gestures and body language.. Sign language includes facial expressions and systems of grammar that involves different sentence structures to spoken English.
A well constructed question must be accompanied by the correct eyebrow position, for instance.. Deaf people often use name signs to refer to people. These name signs are attributed to each person and does not require fingerspelling the entire name.. Two movements of the same hand shape can have separate meanings.. Merely the direction of the palm can change the entire meaning of the sign.. Learning sign language is considered fairly easy with the right coach and method.. Sign language is South Africa’s 12th official language.
