In 1755 Abbe Charles Michel de L’Epee of Paris founded the first free school for deaf people. He taught that deaf people could develop communication with themselves and the hearing world through a system of conventional gestures, hand signs, and finger spelling. He created and demonstrated a language of signs whereby each would be a symbol that suggested the concept desired. Abbe developed his sign language system was by first recognizing, then learning the signs that were already being used by a group of deaf people in Paris, To this knowledge he added his own creativeness which resulted in a signed version of spoken French. He paved the way for deaf people to have a more standardized language of their own.

Reference:

Butterworth, R.,Flodin, M.(1995) The Perigee Visual Dictionary of Signing. The Berkley Publishing Group

Posted by Judaline Marquez-Zozaya