Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
40 results found in Sign Language.
- Native Signer (Native Sign Language User, L1 Signer)
- A person who acquired a sign language as their first language (L1) during the critical period of language development, typically before age 5. Native signers usually learned sign language from deaf pa…
- Non-Manual Markers (NMMs, Non-Manual Signals, Facial Grammar, Non-Manuals)
- Grammatical elements in sign languages conveyed through facial expressions, head movements, eye gaze, and body posture rather than hand movements. In American Sign Language, non-manual markers are ess…
- Non-Manual Signals (Non-Manual Markers, NMS, NMM, Non-Manual Features)
- Linguistic information conveyed through parts of the body other than the hands in sign languages, including facial expressions, mouth movements, eye gaze, head tilts, head shakes, and body shifts. In …
- Non-Manual Signs (Non-Manual Markers, NMS, NMM)
- Components of sign language that are produced without the hands, including facial expressions, mouth movements, eye gaze direction, head tilts, body posture, and shoulder shifts. Non-manual signs are …
- OpenPose
- An open-source computer vision library developed by Carnegie Mellon University that detects human body, hand, facial, and foot keypoints in real-time from images or video. OpenPose extracts 25 body ke…
- Pidgin Signed English (PSE, Contact Signing, Sign Supported English)
- A hybrid communication system that combines elements of American Sign Language (ASL) and English. In PSE, signers use ASL signs for the main content words of an English sentence, following English wor…
- Regional Sign Variation (Sign Language Dialect, Regional Sign Dialect)
- Regional sign variation refers to systematic differences in the form of signs across geographic regions within a single sign language, analogous to dialects in spoken languages. Variation arises from …
- Sign Language Classifier (Classifier Sign, Depicting Sign, Classifier Predicate)
- A type of sign in sign languages that is not part of a fixed vocabulary but is created dynamically during discourse to represent a class of objects sharing a common shape, size, or physical characteri…
- Sign Language Learning (Sign Language Education, Sign Language Acquisition)
- The process by which people learn a sign language as a first or second language, through instruction, immersion, or self-directed study. For hearing second-language learners, reading back fingerspelli…
- Sign Language Synthesis (Sign Language Generation, Sign Language Avatar, Signing Avatar)
- Sign language synthesis is the automated generation of sign language output, typically through 3D animated avatars or computer graphics, from text or other input. The technology involves translating w…
- Sign Linguistics (Sign Language Linguistics)
- The scientific study of the structure and properties of sign languages. Sign linguistics examines the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic components of visual-gestural languages. Key …
- Sign Name (ASL name sign, Name sign)
- A unique sign in American Sign Language (or another signed language) used to uniquely identify an individual person or, in some proposals, an object or device, in place of fingerspelling their English…
- Sign Spotting (Sign Detection, Continuous Sign Spotting)
- Sign spotting is the task of automatically locating instances of specific signs within a continuous signing video, as opposed to classifying a pre-segmented isolated sign. It is a building block for s…
- Signbank (Auslan Signbank)
- An online dictionary and lexical database for a sign language, typically providing video or image entries for each sign along with metadata such as handshape, region, and usage examples. Auslan Signba…
- Signed Chinese (Manually Coded Chinese, Wenfa Shouyu)
- A manually coded signing system that imposes the grammar and word order of written/spoken Mandarin Chinese onto signs, analogous to Signed Exact English in anglophone contexts. Signed Chinese is commo…
- Signer (Sign Language User, Signing Person)
- A person who communicates using sign language. In accessibility contexts, signers may be deaf, hard of hearing, or hearing individuals (such as interpreters, children of deaf adults, or others who hav…
- Song Signing (Signed Song, Sign-Singing, Song Sign)
- A performative art form in which song lyrics are interpreted in a sign language (most commonly ASL) alongside body movement, facial expression, rhythm, and spatial use, so that the performer simultane…
- Transliteration (Sign Language Transliteration)
- The word-by-word conversion of text from one system into another — for example, rendering a name in one script using the characters of another. In sign-language accessibility the term has a specific m…
- Two-Handed Alphabet (Two-Handed Manual Alphabet, Two-Handed Fingerspelling)
- A manual alphabet in which most letters are formed using both hands, typically with one hand acting as a base and the other as an articulator. Two-handed alphabets are used in Auslan, British Sign Lan…
- Visual Vernacular (VV)
- A deeply visual sign language performance art form rooted in visual storytelling, developed in the 1970s by deaf American actor Bernard Bragg and widely practiced internationally. Visual Vernacular co…