Signs for Disabilities
A sign Language has been sophisticatedly developed by Deaf people as their natural visual-spatial mode of communication. It has become beneficial for everyone for different reasons. Baby Sign helps parents and babies communicate in signs before vocal communication begins. Professional workers may find signs useful for some communication in their professions (eg. police, firefighting, scubadiving, etc.).
Signs have been extremely helpful for other hearing people with developmental disabilities, such as autism, Down syndrome, and others who have delayed or little verbal communication skills. Contrary to old belief, using a sign language does not interfere with learning to vocally talk; instead, it can also aid to develop verbal communication.
Adapted Sign Systems
Simplified Signs
Since ASL is not a simplified or abbreviated language, it has its own complex grammatical rules, syntax, structures and all, like any vocal languages. A recently formed method so-called Simplified Sign System was researched for people with disabilities who struggle to learn some complex signs. The purpose of this simplified sign system is to ease use of handshapes, manual dexterity and associations of signs with meanings.
One-Handed Signers
For a person with no arm or paralyzed on one side along with no ability to speak, signing with one hand is possible. They can learn signs with the dominant arm/hand only the same way two-handed people learn, whether they are dominantly left-handed or right-handed persons. In often situations, native Signers use one hand along with facial expression when they hold a box, piles of books, a baby or such in their arm. It is not without efficiency for them. It can work for anyone with disabilities. For learners and beginners, it takes patience, time and practice to accomplish fluency; although, it still works for all levels from the start.
In ASL, some signs are one-handed, which would be suitable for one-handed signers. On the other hand, some signs are two-handed; although, 1) some are one-handable, 2) dominant-hand-based, and 3) two-handed. "Horse", "cow", etc. are one-handable signs, that Signers sign with both hands in formal contexts. However, they commonly sign them with one hand in an everyday, informal contexts. In hand-dominant two-handed signs, Signers use the dominant hand on the passive hand. For example, they sign "help" with the right dominant C-handshape on the left passive palm-down. In this case, the one-handed signer can sign "help" with the dominant hand without the passive hand that listeners can fill in the gaps. If you c-n read th-se words and f-ll in th-m, th-n you can und-rst-nd s-igns. It works the same for two-handed signs, where hands are symmetrical (eg. book, boat, fight, etc.)
Besides these, the native Signers sometimes communicate a few things without using hands, simply using facial expression, lip movement and/or shoulders. Eg. nodding, shrinking nose, shrugging, and some more facial expressions.