Just a quick entry.
I am appalled by what is happening in Italy. The government is refusing to acknowledge that LIS (Italian Sign Language) is a real language. Instead the government is wanting to classify it as a subgenre of mime.
This is extremely insulting to the deaf community. It completely undermines a very complex language and undermines the community at large. It insults the history of sign language, and ignores the hardships that deaf people have had to go through. In most countries, at one point or another, signing was illegal. Deaf people have had to fight to be given fundamental rights and be taken seriously. If LIS isn't recognised as a language, it will have serious social, educational and political implications that will be damaging to the deaf community.
As Alison Bryan (a UK blogger) said; "Deaf people still need to fight to be listened to, without interference from those people who think they know what is best for them".
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