If Everybody Spoke Sign Language...

I'm reading this book called "Talking Hands" by Margalit Fox, which is about the linguistics of sign language.  Before you decide that sounds really boring, check this out.

Among other things, the book talks about how, from the late 1700's to the mid 1900's, there was a very high percentage of deaf people living on Martha's Vineyard.  Most of the deafness was hereditary and it was so common that everyone there spoke sign language.  They spoke their own language, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, a language which has mostly been lost now.  Apparently it resembled British Sign Language more than American Sign Language, but it was a unique language.

Did you know there are many different sign languages?  Many hearing people think there is one universal sign language, understood by deaf people around the world, but that is not true.  American Sign Language and British Sign Language are actually quite different.  American Sign Language is more like French Sign Language, because the first American teachers of the deaf went to France to study sign language and methods of teaching the deaf, then brought what they'd learned back to the States.

Anyway.  On Martha's Vineyard, everybody spoke sign language.  When deaf and hearing people gathered together, they spoke sign sign language, but groups of hearing people sometimes signed even when no deaf people were present.  Everyone on the Vineyard was bilingual.  It wasn't considered unusual or abnormal in any way.

Being deaf wasn't considered unusual or abnormal, either.  Deaf people on the Vineyard worked at all the same jobs their hearing neighbors worked at.  They got married, often to hearing people, and raised families.  In 1978, an anthropologist named Nora Ellen Groce was interviewing elderly people on the Vineyard about the deaf residents and what it was like for them (she later wrote a book about it called "Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language").  She asked a woman in her 80's what it was like for the children that grew up handicapped by deafness on the Vineyard, and he woman said, "Oh, those people weren't handicapped.  They were just deaf."

Do you get how cool that is?  The deaf people on the Vineyard didn't have to worry about interpreters, because everyone there signed.  The kids didn't have to go to special schools.  The adults could do all the same jobs hearing adults did.  The deaf and the hearing went to the same churches.  There was no discrimination, no prejudice. 

What if it was like that now, everywhere?  And what if everywhere you went, menus were printed in both print and Braille?  And what if all restaurants and stores and doctors' offices were wheelchair accessible?  (Do you have any idea how many doctors' offices are not wheelchair accessible?)