GE0013@SIUCVMB.BITNET (Roy Miller) (01/23/91)
Index Number: 13090 Fran, after thinking about this for a while, I think that I too support Jack's position on the question of the desirability of adding signs for emergency medical situations to Sign Friends. I don't think it's necessary, and probably of quite limited utility. In the first place, you are unlikely to find old ASL signs for many of the modern medical terms that might be involved. Secondly, the regional variations that seem present with all technical vocabulary are so vast that I question the utility of including such signs in any basic signing lexicon (such as Sign Friends). Certainly not all signers can speechread with any great degree of effectiveness, and presuming that they could do so with total strangers, sometimes under quite adverse lighting situations, when they were lying on a stretcher half in shock is probably an unreal assumption. In such instances, fingerspelling is probably a more effective communication strategy (and you can reasonably presume that anyone who signs also fingerspells).