Vibrant designs teach sign language in India’s iconic cabs

The population of deaf and mute people in India stands at 15 million. This is the largest collection of deaf and mute people in the world. In order to bridge the gap between this population and people who don’t understand sign language, designer Harshit Vishwakarma teamed up with Taxi Fabric to introduce the public to sign language in a colourful, engaging way while traveling in India’s iconic taxicabs.

Taxi Fabric is a largely self-funded project that connects young Indian designers with taxi cab drivers, giving them a platform to show off their storytelling skills. Its initial purpose was to change the perception amongst older generations in India, who believe that design is not a worthwhile occupation. Now, the project hopes to change the way the public looks at disability by enabling conversation.

“After having experienced the prevailing gap between the deaf and the hearing communities in my college years, I wanted to intervene. There are more sign language users in Bombay than in all of Europe,” Vishwakarma was quoted as saying.

“Taxi fabric was an opportunity to create a fun, engaging way for deaf as well as hearing individuals to learn how to finger spell in Indian Sign Language, especially all the alphabets. So the next time they meet a deaf person they don't feel tongue-tied.”

The College of Art graduate says using a taxi was a way to bring sign language to the people, inviting them into the conversation.

Vishwakarma’s design incorporates colourful, vibrant, illustrated hands displaying the alphabet in sign language, with English alphabets for viewers to identify how the signs relate to the letters of the alphabet.

While excited by the prospects of his partnership with Taxi Fabric and its potential to make change, Vishwakarma believes design as a vocation is still viewed as a luxury in India:

“The possibilities around design and how it can solve problems are not well understood. So it gets tough to make people understand what I do for a living. Sometimes I make up pretentious terms to confuse them even more. Which is a lot of fun! Like calling myself a Diagramatist.”