Millions of people across Europe use sign languages every day. Yet in most countries these languages have no legal recognition and are often undervalued or even repressed.
A few years ago regional and national minority spoken languages were given status under their own charter within the European Convention on Human Rights.
As the parent of a deaf daughter I can see no reason why British Sign Language is denied the status afforded to Welsh, Gaelic and even Cornish.
I secured the backing of the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee of the Council of Europe for a report now adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recommending sign languages be given legal recognition. It is now up to the Governments of the 45 member states to respond.
The British Government have made a positive start. Work and Pensions Secretary Andrew Smith recently announced that the Government would give official recognition to British Sign Language and provide a one off fund of £1 million to promote it.
Disability Minister, Maria Eagle, explained that the Government recognised the significance of my report.
What would recognition mean? As part of my research I visited Stockholm and Helsinki where deaf groups in the UK and Europe told me I would find the best practice towards the deaf community and sign language.
There I found widespread recognition of sign language. Parents of deaf children were given free tuition in sign language. Special schools taught deaf children using sign language and were developing a formal curriculum for using sign language to teach Swedish. More deaf people were thriving at University.
Community interpreters enabled deaf people to get interpreters for a wide variety of situations such as medical consultation, dealings with financial advisors, lawyers and other professionals and also for social situations such as weddings or family parties.
Sign language was also taught as an alternative foreign language in schools and colleges. In Sweden 10,000 hearing people are studying sign language at any one time making it more popular than Spanish or Italian.
Finland has given recognition in the constitution to Finnish and Swedish Sign Languages as national minority languages alongside, Swedish, Suomi and Roma.
The end result has been a transformation in the quality of life for deaf people in Scandinavia. Finland has a population of 5.5 million just half a million more than my own Scotland. Yet Finland has 600 working sign language interpreters. Scotland has just 27. The whole of the UK has less than 400.
Thank to rubella vaccination and other medical advances fewer deaf children are being born. Many, but not all, of those that are receive cochlear implants.
As a result specialist schools for the deaf have been closed and in many cases sign language is not explained or offered to parents or for cost reason not provided. Sometimes, sadly, it is even stigmatised.
There are nearly as many sign languages as there are spoken languages. They are as rich and diverse as spoken and written languages and for many deaf people including youngsters they are their first language and the key to learning and communication with the hearing world.
British Sign Language is one of the oldest, although, because we refused William Gallaudet's request to teach it to the Americans in the 19th Century, American Sign Language is based on French after a Paris seminary provided training and tutors
New technologies boost communication for deaf people. Yet sign languages and the provision of interpreters hold the key to greater inclusion and mutual understanding between deaf and hearing people. It is time human rights law gave full recognition to that.
