Our new group on Sign Supported English got under way on Friday 01 December 2023 at Harrow District Masonic Centre in Kenton. It turned out to be both a lot of fun and at the same time, very moving for many.

Sign Supported English (SSE) is a term used to describe signing and speaking English at the same time. Often, SSE borrows British Sign Language signs and uses them in the order they are used in spoken English. SSE generally follows the same grammatical rules as English.

You can’t learn SSE in the way that you learn a foreign language like French, because it is more an aid to communication than a language with its own structure, vocabulary and syntax. However, communicating with SSE can be most helpful in some circumstances when at least one party has a hearing disability.