Anyone wishing to learn the basics of communicating in sign language may want to check out HandSigns. It turns your phone into a handy reference guide to the manual alphabet. You also can use the guide to teach yourself the letters and numbers of that alphabet. Until 1 October, the 2.4MB app costs nothing to download.

HandSigns’s operation is about as simple as it gets. It shows a QWERTY-style keyboard, you select a character on that keyboard, and the app displays a virtually full-screen, close-up photograph of a hand that’s fingerspelling that character. That’s it.

The purpose of the app, its developer AppCraft states, is to help and encourage people learn the fingerspelling alphabet. Says the single information screen: “Why not find a deaf friend in your area and start by signing ”HELLO MY NAME IS …” They will gladly guide you further.”

The app’s layout and operation are easy to understand and its photos are quite clear. We don’t like to look a gift app in the mouth, so to speak, but we do wish there were a bit more to this software. For instance, why not a set of lessons, making the phone able to drill you on characters and complete words and perhaps administering a series of quizzes? Ultimately, we imagine, such an app might also be extended to teach sign language, perhaps using short video clips.

(Sign languages, in case you weren’t aware, are not based on oral or written languages and signing is not simply a matter of fingerspelling written words at speed. Signs convey thoughts mainly through patterns of hand shapes, facial expressions, and body language. Fingerspelling is used mainly to convey thoughts for which there is no sign, such as technical terms.)

AppCraft  is based in South Africa, and it should be noted that HandSigns comes in a few versions: American, Canadian and South African. (Like their oral counterparts, sign languages and their alphabets vary by nation. There are families of related sign languages, but in general, they have developed independently of neighboring oral languages.)

HandSigns is a simple app, but it does what it promises and it does it well. Try it out, we say.

While playing with this app, we began to wonder if the deaf community is able to use mobile phones – or fixed ones, for that matter – to communicate. Sure enough, Computerworld reported recently about researchers at the University of Washington developing what they call MobileASL, which uses highly compressed video for real-time transmission of signing.