Indian Sign Language: With 260 new terms, “Indian Sign Language” enables communication about banks, bonds and trade | India News

NEW DELHI: To provide deaf and hearing-impaired people with the vocabulary to understand and communicate terms related to bonds, stocks, trading life cycles and financial markets and retail banking, the government has included 260 characters for financial terms in the ‘Indian Sign’ language ‘.
The ISL dictionary currently has 10,000 terms and, according to officials, work is underway to expand it further. The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, is targeting a total of 30,000 terms in the coming years.
On Saturday, International Day of Sign Languages, DEPwD officials shared these details, saying that the inclusion of financial terms in ISL for the first time will be useful for deaf and even hearing people working together in the financial and banking sectors. “The project will help improve the employment prospects of deaf job-seeking youth,” they said.
Developed by the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Center (ISLRTC) in collaboration with Société Générale and v-shesh, the financial terms were developed and validated by deaf people and employees of banks and financial companies. According to officials, financial experts were also involved in the process.
According to the 2011 census, there are over 50,000 deaf people in India. While the next census will determine the exact number of people with this disability, the number of Unique Disability ID (UDID) cards issued is currently the only real-time database of people with disabilities where details of PwDs are available. Based on the data of 90.16 lakh UDID card holders in the public sector, there are around 8.83 lakh ID card holders who are classified as hearing impaired.
DEPwD Secretary Rajesh Aggarwal said the department would soon release the block-level data of the UDID database. The district-level data has already been published.
Aggarwal said the department will identify the 100 wards or blocks with the highest number of deaf and hearing-impaired people in possession of UDID cards. The department will then reach out to hospitals in these areas and create a mechanism, machines and support to enable early detection, treatment and support and connect the people with disabilities and their families through sign language.
To bridge the gap between the hearing-impaired and the able-bodied and help them develop basic communication skills in Indian Sign Language, an online self-study course was also launched on Saturday.