Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Thaawarchand Gehlot on Friday launched the first ‘Indian Sign Language’ (ISL) dictionary containing 3000 words at a function here in the national capital.
Developed by Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC), the dictionary aims to give deaf people the constitutional right to speech and opportunity of freedom of expression while bringing them into the main stream of the society.
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“The basic aim of developing the ISL dictionary is to remove communications barriers between the deaf and hearing communities as it is focused on providing more information in Indian sign language,” Gehlot said.
“Soon new words will be added to the dictionary which has focused on providing more information in Indian Sign Language,” added Gehlot hoping that more and more people will use the dictionary and benefit from it.
According to officials, ISLRTC was working on the project for the last one and a half years. The dictionary consists of various categories of words for example legal terms, medical terms, academic terms, technical terms and daily use words.
As per the census 2011, there are 50, 71,007 Deaf people and 19, 98,535 with speech disability in India. ISLRTC, New Delhi realized the gravity of the situation and issues being faced by the large number of Deaf people in common communication.
