<story><title>BBC Subtitle Guidelines</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/forproducts/guides/subtitles/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TechBro8615</author><text>Something I&amp;#x27;ve wondered... when politicians give speeches they often have some hand gesturing from a sign language interpreter standing next to them. But I&amp;#x27;ve never understood why this is better than subtitles. If you&amp;#x27;re deaf then wouldn&amp;#x27;t you rather read text than follow sign language?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>retrac</author><text>Sign languages are not coded speech.  They are languages with their own grammar and vocabulary.  For example, American SL is descended from Old French Sign Language and is partially understandable by French SL speakers today, while British SL is completely different, not in the same language family.  It is even possible to write sign language.  it is done like with spoken language.  The most basic components, akin to phonemes in spoken language, are a closed set, assigning a symbol to each allows lossless transcription.  Mostly used by linguists; but there are some books in ASL.&lt;p&gt;Deaf people who speak sign language natively approach English as a second language.  And it is hard to learn a spoken language when deaf.  English literacy rates among ASL native speakers are rather low.</text></comment>
<story><title>BBC Subtitle Guidelines</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/forproducts/guides/subtitles/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TechBro8615</author><text>Something I&amp;#x27;ve wondered... when politicians give speeches they often have some hand gesturing from a sign language interpreter standing next to them. But I&amp;#x27;ve never understood why this is better than subtitles. If you&amp;#x27;re deaf then wouldn&amp;#x27;t you rather read text than follow sign language?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jameshart</author><text>Think about how you learn to read - you &amp;#x27;sound out&amp;#x27; words, turning letters into sounds to match them to a pronunciation to figure out what word is represented.&lt;p&gt;Now imagine trying to learn how to do that when you have &lt;i&gt;never heard any words spoken out loud&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;People who are deaf from birth often have a lot of difficulty with spelling and reading, because both skills are closely connected to saying and hearing words. Connecting written words to lip movements (which is kind of the closest thing to &amp;#x27;phonics&amp;#x27; for a deaf person) is lossy - the letter-to-lip connections are fuzzier than letter-to-sound, and lip-to-letter is very ambiguous.&lt;p&gt;Subtitles are great for  people who are confident and comfortable readers - say, people who have become deaf due to age - but for some deaf people following subtitles can be like asking someone who&amp;#x27;s dyslexic to quickly read a sentence out loud.</text></comment>