The VRChat Dialect of Sign Language 

The fact that people can sign language in a virtual world really goes to show how tight the VR community really is... 💙 Also, I'm sending my biggest virtual hug and wishes to Niccitric! I'm super proud of them and they seem like such a sweet person to interact with! Love the mask! ⚡

Legit the person sharing their story at the end made me cry. It's so beautiful and amazing to see this community grow and thrive in VR, and I wish them all the best.

we're literally experiencing a huge part of deaf history with this. this is fucking amazing

The ways in which social interaction adapts around VR tech never ceases to amaze me. I knew users try to get around the limitations of hand tracking, but its amazing to see how creatively it actually is done!

I saw my friend learning ASL back when I was in school, and I've wanted to learn ever since, but the knowledge just never stuck. I know a few words and expressions, but not much else. I think people who are able to learn hundreds of words is impressive, and now seeing that VRC has it's own variant, it's *even* more impressive, since it's different from normal if you dont have that finger tracking.

The coolest thing about this is it can be used to bridge language barriers. Things that are useful for disabled people help everyone.

It's so heartwarming to see people come together and help each other surpassing their challenges. It is a great coincidence, but I am half way through the development of my vr gloves and it is going to be a dream come true if I can ever help these guys with them.

I'm happy that you enjoyed the experience with us in Helping Hands and enlightening yourself by understanding our culture and how we communicate in VR. I'm glad that you enjoyed the experience with us in Helping Hands and enlightening yourself by understanding our culture and how we communicate in VR. This goes to show how powerful the internet can be when it comes to showing videos of cool stuff like that! It is the reason how people found out about the community, all because of media power. Truly amazing and empowering to help people boost their confidence to sign in VR regard of being deaf/ hard of hearing or hearing person. Even if the finger tracking is limited in VR we always find a way to convent some fingerspelling and signs in VR since we learnt to adapt in difficult ways. We want to include people as much as we can to make them feel welcome in the community. What I love to witness more people developing themselves by boost the confidence and signing with deaf people confidently :D Same way for my friend Niccitric. Like her, everyone has their own story and how they found our community. It's beautiful to watch them flourish into confident people who can do anything! If you are a beginner and are trying to learn how to use sign language (It can be ASL, BSL, KSL, JSL, DGS, LSF or more) I'm rooting for you ^^ It will take some time to get there. The video is educational and fun, perfect for someone who is curious about our community and the deaf culture :) I had lot of fun by being involved with your project and happy to showed you around the HH worlds :D For deaf people who're watching this video. I hope you enjoy the video as much as we did to make this video and hopefully it'll give you a chance to make new friends! Or perhaps to learn new sign languages? That's what I did when I joined HH and learnt ASL even though I grew up with BSL first. Have a wonderful day/evening to everyone! -sheezy93

Thank you for making this wonderful video. It’s very clear and educational. Good for people who are very curious and want to know about the culture, sign languages, history in the deaf world. We will never forget the moments you have spent your time with us. You have learned a lot about deaf people and sign languages. This experience is really amazing. I’m surprised that Niccitric thought one of my VRChat videos helped her to find the community and deaf people in VRChat. If I didn’t make VRC content, Niccitric won’t be here with us. The bad outcome could’ve happened to her. It is not easy to overcome depression. I’m grateful to see deaf people becoming happy and they met wonderful people around the world. I hope everyone enjoyed learning something new from this video. Thank you for giving the spotlight to the deaf people who can share their experiences. This is a wonderful opportunity. I hope we will see you around in VRChat. Have fun, stay safe, and don’t get lost in the metaverse. 🤟

That's actually really cool for 3 reasons, that the technology has come this far, that there's an inclusive community and also that its being taught in that sphere of things. Its incredibly wholesome and awesome

what niccitric was saying really hit me... i never even thought of or considered how difficult the pandemic and the isolation must have been for the deaf community. I'm very glad that the helping hand community is there for the deaf and hearing alike. I have tried learning sign in the past for my two deaf cousins, and I have a few friends that stay mute whenever they are on vrchat, so I think it's about time I learn. Thanks for the video Phia.

Right! I've always wanted to return to learning vrASL. A huge admiration for the Deaf/Mute community and the challenges they have faced in vrc. Nevermind the daily challenges of irl! Looking forward to jumping back in.

Thank you for covering this community. I love this type of content. I'd love you to cover other communities too

Long ago when vr chat was first released I played a ton with friends. One of which was mute so I had to find a way to communicate. Me and another buddy who took asl with me in school found out that they knew asl. It was not perfect at the time with very little hand tracking on original HTC vives but we made it work. I'm so happy to see the community has gone even further into supporting deaf and hard of hearing people and when I can back I will for sure be going to these classes to get me back into it! ❤

as a heard of hearing person who just got into vr and felt really nervous because I would constantly ask for people to repeat things several times I cried actual tears of joy seeing this

Thank you for making this video. I had a lot of fun participating in your project. You did a great job 👏 -Starbun*

Seeing how much difficulties disabled people overcome to achieve something we have from birth makes me cry everytime. And in this case I wonder - if only all people who don't have speech disabilities valued gift of communication more, world would be a better place for everyone.

i cant even find people to talk to in vr chat. its either screeching children, drunk singers who are really bad at singing and the occasional two or three people having a more or less private conversation and they completely ignore you.

Fellow VR Sign Language user here. really cool to see you covering this. I love how VR Sign Language did seem like it brought the deaf world and the mainstream world together (SPECIALLY during covid) and sorta bridged that gap and lost perception between both sides of the pond with the history and culture (we need more of this IRL) and hearing stories of people trying to learn sign IRL is amazing for that reason alone.

That these classes exist and are community created/driven is a really beautiful thing.

Great video! I had heard there was sign language in VRCHAT but didn’t know if it worked without finger tracking, this video answered a lot of questions

Thank you for making this wonderful content! You did a great job! And thank you more for captioning this video as well! Someone else made the video about us, but they didn't caption the video, so I find it annoying and a little funny. So, I really appreciate it! - Zade

I'm stoked you made a video covering this. The sign community in VR is super dope and awesome.

I've always had an interest for language. Since I was young, I spoke English and that was it. Despite how cultural my family is, I never bothered to learn anything outside of it. My dad speaks Spanish, and my mom speaks Portuguese, along with being a former translator for ASL. Even so, I haven't learned much outside of English because I never needed anything outside of that. Now, I've come to realize just how important it is to know different languages, both in a social and mental way. I took two years of Spanish class in high school and I'm currently learning Japanese. While learning these languages, it's difficult, but it also gives me different perspectives. Languages aren't just communication, it's an entire culture of itself. I've tried before to learn ASL, but I haven't gotten enough motivation to continue. I barely know the alphabet and a couple simple words. Even so, I'm starting to feel rejuvenated almost. I'm gaining different perspectives about people and learning different things. Its for these reasons I'm starting to look at the simple, less spoken languages and thinking that I should try learning them. For example, I can memorize Japanese Kanji, so I should be able to then learn a bit of Toki Pona. These are my current thoughts, and I'm excited to try learning another new language. I've just started looking at VRChat, and it's helping me realize how many people are really out there. I'm glad that technology has found its way to connect people from different sides of the world, and I want to be involved. Thanks to anyone whose taken the time to read this far.

such a wonderful video.

YES. I heard about an ASL equivalent in VR and have been super excited to hear about this more ever since.

This is actually amazing!! I give them so much credit!! I've known about this group to to see them actually doing it is awesome, especially when they had to create there own language pretty much due too the limitations!

You are such an amazing person! I have seen the uprise of certain types of people and the lobbies for them because of how amazing you are with showing how awesome these people are and the lobbies made for them. Thank you for being so amazing!

i've been missing some classes in the past few months as life got ahead of me, but this really motivated me to get back into the habit of attending! love helping hands so much, great community

Idk anyone in this video but I wanna say that the person at the end with the awwsome mask it's so awesome that there is. Community to help people with hearing impairments and the like. Major props to you and everyone else talking about this tbh I didn't even know there was this type of community makes me feel happy that even though vrchat is a plague ridden cesspool it's also a place for people to be understood and appreciated. Love this video and I'm glad I saw it even if it was a while after it was posted.

Sending all my love to this wonderful community ! Met so much people, had so much laughs here ! See you around !

It is really amazing to see the video about deaf and hard of hearing people. I saw many familiar faces in this video. This is very wonderful, emotional, and supportive. It is really amazing and interesting how they adapted the real life sign languages to virtual reality sign languages just because of the controllers. The controllers are very limited but they still find the ways to use sign languages in VR. I know Crow_Se7en since I have watched his content. It was nice to see his content making an impact on people’s lives including Niccitric’s life. It was also awesome to see Ray, MrDummy, and more people in this video. I’m happy to see this community is doing great!

Your videos on small VR subcultures are some of my favorite on the platform. Thank you for the video

It’s a great community that deserves a lot!

i absolutely love this for the community and i love it even more for those that are new to the community i feel its important for newcomers to see how welcoming it can really be if you find the right group

Thank you for this wonderful video ! Highlight the Helping hands community and spending time with all the people that i like ! A lot of work has been done since years in VRChat by the Deaf community, and everyone can join and learn and have fun togethers ! See ya in VR !

I'm getting a Quest 3 in a few weeks, I just wanted to say thank you for explaining so many things and introduci8ng us to new aspects of VR. It really is appreciated and helpful for people who are just getting started 😊

its great to see these people are able to enjoy vrchat and make friends aswell! this honestly makes me kinda wanna learn some of this or at the very least know when someones asking if i can sign and to respond to that. this is definently a great usecase for some good n affordable vrgloves

So glad to see Ray, I wanna say my teacher but want they taught me I already forgot, and the community they're a part of shown to those who watch.

I know VR-ASL, Transitioned that to IRL ASL, am in Helping Hands, and abzolutely love the Deaf/H.o.H/Mute/Nonverbal/Sign Enthusiast community in this game. Introduced me to many long time friends

This is what I love about the VR community, and about VR itself as a technology. The fact that we can do something like this is just incredible and super heartwarming.

Their classes look so amazing! I’m so glad this exists

As someone hard of hearing I never even considered VR chat could be used this way. This is incredible and I wish the community nothing but the best!

this is amazing! such amazing communities getting created thanks to VR!

I made big start in 2019 with creating sign worlds to help people better with videos, because even we have schedule, there are still too many people and VRChat is also worldwide, teachers cannot just teach 24/7... they're also humans who need rest and sleep. Lessons are usually 1 hour max. Videos and later ShaderMotion to make 3D signing possible made things better for self-study. It's good to see even hearing people can self-study some signs. I have a lot friends who talk, but also mute. Yes, also mute people who are not deaf, can use signing to talk with others, because it's still faster than chatbox. I keep working for deaf people and have for example just made cinema world with subtitles in different languages, even Japanese. The old sign&fun world is big memory place because it started many things there, even we have earlier some sign worlds. The museum can observed in Sign&Fun v4 world if you want learn about sign language history. Thanks for the nice informative video even my part is very small there.

Thank you for bringing this to light and for all the information. Great content!

It's amazing to be a part of the growth of the VR-ASL, having not had any previous experiences with sign and deaf culture. Early on, I came across a few individuals, who in little time, would create the Helping Hands group. This was in 2017-2018, so this was an amazing thing for anyone to experience and be a part of especially in vr's infancy. Many people I've become friends were from HH. I'm not as active anymore due to work, but I still talk to my friends!

Such a lovley video! I've always been curious about how VR signing works, I'd love to learn it one day. So nice to see how it's benifited people first hand

I only know super basic sign language but I've always wanted to take some classes. Just got a quest 3 and I will be looking into helping hands. Thank you so much for the great information!.

I was spending time thinking about what kind of positive effect does vrchat have and now i learned a new one!! I love ur contents and i'm always learning something new from ur video. Thank you!!

interesting to see from a linguistic perspective how this will evolve along with even spoken language with the lack of body language present.

Incredible video. These are very nice and you're the best!

Wow I just never thought about this but now I really want to join a helping hands class's. So thanks you so much for opening my mind to this.

What an awesome video! Thanks for showcasing this beautiful of vrc

I recently joined vrchat after a long time, and noticed that on the Quest2 I could use hand and finger tracking in the game. Super cool to try out without gloves or extra controllers!

I was literally looking for a VR app that would help me learn sign language. Great video!

I joined the ASL community in VRC a couple years back and theyre crazy nice

amazing video that provides a lot of insight. It's amazing all of the things that go on inside of vr that we don't know about.

Whooo!!!! Good job! I hope they'll try learn sign on one day and make new experience and social with people for communicate and take slow writing or basic of ASL. I'm proud of you and make me happy right now. ❤ I'm sure when future they feel interesting in Deaf culture and study for deaf history and everything! Nya nya!

oh HH are such fun community

The Helping Hands initiative is super interesting! Definitely willing to give the classes a go sometime.

Excellent video, definitely glad that there is an ASL community in VRC.

This is insanely awesome! It's an obvious game-changer for hearing impaired folks. Immediately goes to the top of the 'best thing about VR so far' list, IMO... and I'm not hearing impaired, just really, really impressed with this.

If there's anything humans are good at, it's adapting, and this is proof of that! Huge respect to those who are teaching/translating sign language and to you for showing us.

thats really cool! vr connecting ppl

I ended up taking ASL classes IRL after learning in VR Chat and made the class in irl way more enjoyable and understanding.

With the advance of fast programing we can develop a hands sign translation, either voice to caption, or hands to voice/captions

It's very wholesome, the whole community that uses ASL. Personally, I'm losing my hearing gradually, and it's already really bad - so I would really like to learn this properly.

watching this video as a CODA (child of deaf adults) was really interesting! I’ve been looking into VR + VRC for a bit and I never knew ASL was adapted for VR til now; and that other dialects are getting worked on too! As someone who grew up learning asl, I found it really interesting how a majority of the handshapes/alphabet that I knew was kept the same, especially with the limitations. How I see it, it’s like making adaptations for a handshape or abc story, and keeping them for VRC!

i know asl and it was so interesting seeing all the signs i recognized next to the ones i didn't :O and the whole thing with not being able to talk during class totally makes sense, i learned in class irl a few years ago with a deaf teacher and i dont think i would've been able to get the facial expressions down if there wasn't that barrier between us

I wonder why it has less views because I think it's such a well rounded and polished video as whole.

The fact I knew over half the people in that video is crazy 😭

i have a vr friend that uses ASL so yea i think i need to learn it

I have loved to do Asl in vrchat and everyone askes me why i use asl instead of talking. i usually just say that i am to lazy when normally talking i truly love it

Oh yes! I used to be deaf by lack of word recognition, but now wear bilateral cochlear implants. I have been in VR long before I lost my hearing. Now, it’s such a lonely experience for me as I still struggle to communicate with others in VR, even with implants. I would love to attend this classroom and learn how to effectively communicate with others that struggle with hearing in VR. IRL, I do ok, but I want to find MY community in VR. I was learning sign language before being implanted, I’ll need to brush up and get back to studying. I’m so excited to start learning sign again if it helps me to connect with others like me in VR. VR should be for everyone, not just the seeing/hearing.

Great video!

sign language works really well with the quests hand tracking :)

Man if only there was some way to have live subtitles in vrchat...

VR Sign Language, is neat, however, I must also say Sign Language IRL is also pretty neat. And as someone who can sign, albeit not much, my sister who needs it in her job however is really great at it, I have 2 deaf colleagues and it really helps to have at least some basics down, one doesn't really need to be fluent to communicate a vast amount of stuff. It really helps being able to say simple phrases such as have a nice weekend or how are you, and such, because showing appreciation for others, shows that you care about them, and while I'm not exactly the most kind person and most definitely a potty mouth extraordinaire, being able to relay simple information to others even if in the most basic terms is a lot better than not being able to communicate at all. And as such, I have immense respect for translators IRL and for the VRC Sign language community, as in all honesty it's probably the only good part of the whole VRC community in general. Seeing as there's way too many less than respectable facets on VRC in the first place. But the VRC deaf community and the sign language stuff warms my heart. That it's a degenerate shitehole otherwise bothers me little compared to how much my heart warms when I see how much it helps people who are deaf or mute to communicate. And as someone who knows one of the oldest sign languages in the world, SSL Swedish Sign Language, I mean it has 4 daughter languages, Portuguese Sign, Finnish Sign, Eritrean Sign and Finnish-Swedish Sign Language. It's after all been around since 1800. And the best part about living in Sweden, for those who are deaf and speaks SSL is that all of the major Native TV Channels have their own channels with sign support instead of text support. Also you can transcribe all Signs in SSL into text, and teach people to sign words without them even having to see the signs in action. And on the most readily available site on the internet, for SSL they already have 20000 signs. And you can even search for them in English. Which is better for me, as while I'm a native Swedish speaker, I seldom speak Swedish or think in Swedish. So while I'm fluent in both English and Swedish, I can't really translate between them on the fly. However, when I think in English I still sign in SSL automatically.

This is just too cool.

This is amazing✨

Love to see the helping hands Community being represented! - VinylMinty

I know in games like Resonite have stuff like "mute helpers" you can install on your avatar that can allow you to get a text box to type in and it will pop up a chat bubble, or even to TTS so we can hear mute people. They have the Sign Language system also. I know if you go into any of the Creator Jam worlds right at spawn they have image guides for the VR Sign Language or installer mute helpers for you to grab.

That's really cool!

Thank you phia

This video was absolutely heart warming to me! I love that there are avenues and support for those wanting to learn sign language to open a new world of possibility within communication and social interaction

Amazing video 👍🏻

I was an old ''students'' of ASL and even FSL , I met a big part of the deaf community and mute one aswell , even tho I didn't know how to sign ( and I still dont know due to some problem lul ) , it was such an amazing experience and I'm waiting to buy the valve index controllers to finally learn how to VR sign. Unfortunally it's expensive but I can't wait to go back to this awesome Helping Hand community ( makes 2y I'm in the server I've only learnt 2 words due to my lazyness :( )

Helping hands is the best community on VRchat, and nothing will change my mind. I haven’t been signing because life got busy, but to my helping hands friends, if you see this, 🤟🏻

I was not prepared to cry lol this is so fucking cool

Great video

I recently got a Quest 2 and idk when they implemented it, but it can now do full hand tracking just using the cameras and it is compatible with VRChat

LOVE IT SO MUCH!

i luv your vids so much

Speech To Text works well in VR too, because you can mute all background noises and (mostly) feed the STT software raw voices from who you're talking to. Anyway Virtual Desktop just updated a MUCH wider range of sign language in VR for all quest users (even Quest 1), (full Steam VR skeletal hands in Chillout just feels next gen) This video could use a smol update after the big VD hand tracking update.

Quest hand tracking allows finger splay

Very wholesome ❤❤❤

Weird how almost 2 years after watching this im JUST now getting an oculus

I'd actually like to learn VR controller sign language (I don't have finger tracking) whenever I get my headset in. Even if I can't do full sign language it would help to get things across to hearing impaired people and I could learn to see what they are saying too.

once i joined ASL world i was going to the learning alphabet 2 people come to me instantly to help me learn the alphabet it was very welcoming fealing soo i started to learn sign laungage hehe :D