Here's why Indian Sign Language needs a wider acceptability in the country

For large-scale acceptance and equality at a nationwide level, we need more than a dictionary

The white walls are rich with graffiti. In the reception area, an animated conversation is on. Everybody is chatting in sign language. My arrival disrupts their conversation. Sensing my handicap — my inability to understand their language — one of them resorts to words. And then I am taken around the place.

I am at the Noida Deaf Society (NDS), a not-for-profit that works with the speech and hearing impaired. Besides vocational courses, the society that operates out of a multi-storey bungalow has a school in the basement for classes from nursery to IV. In this cheerfully lit area, the