Major Approaches
There have been many different approaches to manually coding oral languages. Some consist of fingerspelling everything, a technique sometimes known in English as the "Rochester method" after Rochester School for the Deaf in New York where it was used from 1878 until the 1940s. While most MCLs are slower than spoken or sign languages, this method is especially so, and in modern times is generally considered not to be accessible to children. However, some deafblind people still communicate primarily using the Rochester Method. Most manually coded languages can accommodate Simultaneous Communication — that is, signing and speaking at the same time — although the natural pace of speech may need to be slowed down at times.
A unique system that was widespread in British deaf education from the 1960s to the 1980s is the Paget Gorman Sign System. Developed in Britain 1930s, it uses 37 basic signs and 21 standard hand postures to represent a large vocabulary of English words, word endings and verb tenses.
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