Deaf News: Australian schoolboy wins humanity award for learning sign language for deaf friend

An Australian schoolboy who learned sign language after becoming frustrated writing notes to a deaf classmate has been rewarded with a humanity award.

The Independent reports:

A schoolboy in Australia has been praised for learning sign language in order to help his friend fit in at school.

Ross Kelly, a year six student from Canberra, learned the language from scratch to communicate with his friend Isam Gurung, who had just transfered from a specialist school for the hearing impaired.

Ross and Isam initially started passing notes to each other before Ross went on to the learn Auslan (Australian sign language) so that he could translate lessons and assemblies for his friend.

“He came and he was very, very shy. He didn’t want to come to class the first few days,” Ross told ABC.

“We started out writing notes to each other and I decided this wasn’t very efficient because there was always a delay,” he said.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/schoolboy-learns-sign-language-wins-humanity-award-canberra-a7221701.html