Days Until International Day of Sign Languages

About International Day of Sign Languages

September 23 marks the anniversary of the founding of the World Federation of the Deaf in 1951; General Assembly delegates added the day to the UN calendar in 2017, as part of the broader International Week of the Deaf.

The observance recognizes sign languages as full, complex languages in their own right — not a simplified or gestural version of spoken language — and promotes the linguistic rights of deaf people.

There is no single universal sign language; national and regional sign languages (such as American Sign Language and British Sign Language) developed largely independently and are frequently not mutually intelligible with each other, despite both being English-adjacent spoken-language countries.

There are hundreds of distinct sign languages used around the world today, according to linguistic surveys, reflecting sign language's development as a natural human language independent of any single spoken-language influence.