Rebecca A Withey: Deaf Animation World – animated nursery rhymes in BSL

Deaf Animation World creates animations of nursery rhymes in British Signed Language, which viewers are to view and enjoy for free via their website and also on YouTube. The company has recently been recognised as an innovative company by Innovative UK Edge, working as the first of its kind in the UK.

Safoura Mashayekhi, Director of Deaf Animation World explains,

“To educate through entertainment, we use nursery rhymes, songs, and stories, aimed at deaf children and those with partial hearing loss as well as hearing individuals, applying sign language in an engaging and fun way.

We want to be part of a positive change to create an inclusive society by promoting learning Sign Language, particularly at an early age. We believe that there is a need for better understanding by individuals, policymakers, institutions, and schools of the importance of popularising and normalising the learning of sign language and animation can be a great tool for making this change.

Our vision is to inspire all people but especially school children to embrace the opportunity of learning their national sign language as they would with any other spoken language. We strongly believe that everyone should learn to sign.

Currently, we are focusing on BSL (British Sign Language) and soon will start to create videos in ASL and other sign languages. Creating animated movies with adult content is also on our future agenda.”

Although my children are a little too old for nursery rhymes now, I was keen to view the animated videos to see how the BSL comes across and whether my toddler niece, Lili, would enjoy it.

Glancing through the video content, I was delighted to see popular songs such as “Bingo,” “The Muffin Man,” and “Baby Shark,” as well as songs aimed at teaching numbers, colours and months of the year. There are also videos aimed at teaching greetings in BSL and fun ways of learning the BSL alphabet.

The style of animation reminds me very much of the popular Cocomelon series (which my niece is obsessed with!) and the BSL used comes across very clearly and grammatically correct. I genuinely hope the popularity of these videos soar as it is incredible to see music, BSL and English captions portrayed in such an entertaining way for young families.

As for my niece who is approaching 2 years old, she was delighted by the “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes” and “Old McDonald” videos. Being so young, my niece Lili hasn’t seemed to realise that her Mum, Auntie and Cousin are all deaf. As she sees both speech and BSL being used at home, I’m sure videos like the songs on Deaf Animation World will just confirm to her that sign language is a fun and valid way of communicating.

More and more parents are turning to YouTube for content to educate and entertain their young children, with music videos by Cocomelon and similar series’ proving extremely popular. If the videos at Deaf Animation World were to attract similar viewing numbers as their mainstream competitors, surely interest in BSL and number of people using sign language would definitely increase.

I applaud Deaf Animation World on the ingenuity of their video series and I sincerely hope to see many more popular songs added to their list of music videos. If you have a young child or toddler at home, why not check out their BSL animated videos and let us know what you think?

To view the animated BSL nursery rhymes by Deaf Animation World go to:

https://deafaw.com/videos

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQCaTrQRZ2pI9N5Uz_iKRiA