A common question is: “Oh, you know sign language! Then you can speak to the deaf people in Australia and US, too?” Wrong! Sign language is not the same everywhere. It is as different as all the spoken languages. Otherwise, there would not be a great need for our web site spreadthesign.com.

As the Queen of Sweden said at the launch of spreadthesign.com in late March 2009:
“Imagine if all deaf children could be united under one language worldwide, A kind of Esperanto. But of cause due to different cultures it remains just a dream.”
Initially when I did the application for this project I had the idea of a European sign language. But since sign language has to develop from the group of deaf users we cannot invent new signs in spreadthesign.com. We can just gather them and present them accessible on our web page. That is a big job enough. But we have invented one sign on our web page. That is the sign for “spread the sign”.

Spread the sign is an international EU project between 2012-2015 under Leonardo da Vinci and the lifelong learning program. Under Leonardo it goes under the heading of Leonardo Network. In this Network project we enlarge the partnership, record new signs so each language has 15.000 signs documented and we will do a large dissemination tour of each country. EU and Leonardo thru its recourses have given us the opportunity to show our capability to improve vocational education for deaf pupils the partner members in Spread the sign.

Our project is like others under constant surveillance of our national agency. The positive is that they also give us valuable feedback on our different reports we have to send in to them. In the final reports of the earlier projects of ours we had interesting evaluations by Örebro University, Sweden, and their Department of Education Deaf Studies. The evaluation can be downloaded down here.

Evaluations for download
Evaluation 2008  Evaluation 2010

We also give you the links to the commission and our national agency where you can find more interesting information.

http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-programme/doc82_en.htm
http://www.programkontoret.se

This is an evaluation report ordered by the European Commission and made by the consultant company ICF GHK in London 2011. It speaks about the project, focus, approach, innovative aspects, outcomes, impacts, success factors and sustainability.

EU report for download
EU report 2011