{"id":302476,"date":"2022-08-22T10:29:32","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T08:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/public-comments-awaitedsign-language-users-be-heard-20220808\/"},"modified":"2022-08-22T10:29:32","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T08:29:32","slug":"public-comments-awaitedsign-language-users-be-heard-20220808","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/public-comments-awaitedsign-language-users-be-heard-20220808\/","title":{"rendered":"Sign language users, be heard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) has called on all members of the public to submit their comments on the recently gazetted amendment bill to adopt South African Sign Language (SASL) as an official South African language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The proposed amendment of section 6 of the Constitution and the national official languages was gazetted on 19 July by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development. It entails recognising SASL as the 12th official language of South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Comments must be submitted no<span>t<\/span> later than 30 working days after the date of publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPanSALB seeks to alert all interested parties, particularly the deaf community, to use this opportunity to make submissions to the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development on the bill to include SASL as an official language in the country\u201d said Lance Schultz, PanSALB chief executive officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis is a noteworthy milestone towards creating conditions for the development of SASL and ensuring access to quality information, as well as education, and therefore to prosper the native speakers of the language.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>PanSALB has been working together with the Deaf Federation of South Africa (DeafSA) to ensure recognition for sign language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These organisations have developed a programme aimed at making SASL progressively efficient. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This programme has seen students being enrolled at selected universities to study Sign Language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the South African National Deaf Association (Sanda), presently there are more than four million deaf people, as well as those who are hard of hearing, in the country. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) has called on all members of the public to submit their comments on the recently gazetted amendment bill to adopt South African Sign Language (SASL) as an official South African 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Cyril Ramaphosa signed the amendment bill to include South African Sign Language (SASL) as the country\u2019s official 12th language. And one wonders what has changed since then.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News&quot;","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/29f217cc12fe4a9d91be90d7faa3e167.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/29f217cc12fe4a9d91be90d7faa3e167.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/29f217cc12fe4a9d91be90d7faa3e167.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/29f217cc12fe4a9d91be90d7faa3e167.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"BloemNews Express","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302476"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=302476"},{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novanews.co.za\/bloemnewsexpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=302476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}