AW: [sw-l] Some more questions...

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
April 28, 2005

Stuart Thiessen wrote:
> Hi, Stefan.  SignFont is a little used notation system devised by a
> deaf person here in the US. It was specifically designed for ASL.

Stuart - whoever told you that was misinformed...SignFont was not
designed by a Deaf person! Believe me...I was there. Who told you that?

It was devised at Emerson and Stern computer firm, with the help of
several hearing linguists who refused to have Deaf people involved with
the development...There were around 30 people in the meeting, where
they announced that they did not want to work with our DAC Deaf
staff...and there were meeting participants, such as Ed Klima and
others who defended SignWriting and was upset by this, but we had to
leave, because they did not respect the work we had done for the past
decade...So the whole grant that funded SignFont, was originally
written with SignWriting in the grant and the funding was supposed to
be used for SignWriting...and instead they tried to re-invent the
wheel, and ignored all our hard work...and that ended up being called
SignFont, and they did not involve the Deaf community until after the
SignFont system was invented...


> It had a few symbols for face expression, but had the same limitations
> as the Stokoe system.  It didn't make any distinctions about palm
> orientation. For example, the ASL signs for dessert and date would be
> written exactly the same using the SignFont system. If there was no
> such thing as SignWriting, SignFont would probably be the system I
> would be using or tweaking.  But I am very thankful for SignWriting
> because it is much better than the SignFont system ... IMHO.

Thank you for that, Stuart....

SignFont would never have existed, if the linguistis had continued to
use SignWriting on that computer project, as it already had been used
for 6 months before...

SignFont was not used with the Deaf Community until after it was
developed. They then gave it to Don Newkirk, another hearing linguist,
to try to promote it in Deaf Community...and then they  brought in some
Deaf people at that time...one was named Brenda I believe, I cannot
remember...but my Deaf staff would never touch it! My Deaf staff was
furious!


>
> Right now, I only know of one school in Arizona that is using the
> SignFont system. From what I understand, they are (or were) just using
> it enough to introduce kids to English and then throwing it away and
> only using English afterwards.  There used to be information on the
> web, but now you can't even find information on the web.  I really
> don't know of anyone who is using it actively.

If you are referring to Sam Supalla's school, it is my understanding
that the school lost their funding, or am I wrong? Is Sam Supalla still
running the school? I thought it had closed...at least that is what Sam
himself said in a presentation here in San Diego in March 2003...it was
very costly program and that must have been hard on him...or perhaps he
has re-established the school now?

And they were not writing Sign Literature with SignFont in that school
anyway...they were using it as a bridge to English, so the Deaf student
would not end up with a way to read and write signs...so it was a
different purpose...

I need to get back to teaching SignWriting now...sorry if I seem
nervous...SignFont was a very hard time for me...it was in 1985...But
that also stimulated our developing SignWriter...We decided to develop
our own computer program, and so we developed SignWriter //e for Apple
and then SignWriter DOS...so indirectly hard times can stimulate
wonderful inventions!

Val ;-)