For governments and legislators

Make the mandate mean something.

Your accessibility law exists. Your budget exists. What is missing is the service citizens can feel — in sign language, in the places they go.

Talk to us Civic resources

This page in sign language

For officials who sign, and for the citizens they serve. International Sign for the global site; your national sign language on your country page. Signed by a Deaf creator, credited by name.

International Sign Captions + transcript ship with the video. Read this instead

Compliance to comprehension

A law can pass every audit and still fail its citizens.

In plain words

Most accessibility laws ask for captions. Most Deaf citizens cannot follow captions. So a government can be fully compliant and still leave most Deaf people out. The fix is sign language, delivered as a service.

Compliance checks the artifact. Comprehension checks the citizen. Sign language is the modality that reaches the most profoundly Deaf people — and no binding standard requires it yet. Cities can be ahead of that standard.

Cities are not unwilling. They just do not have the solution.

Captions run at 140–230 words per minute; median Deaf comprehension is around 100–140 — and comprehension falls as caption rate rises.

Receipt: Jensema 1998; Burnham 2008; Tyler 2009

The European Accessibility Act has been in force since June 2025.

Receipt: EU Directive 2019/882

A replicable template

One city's ordinance, every city's model.

One city's ordinances — healthcare accessibility and cinema accessibility, both past first reading with a11y as technical partner — are written to be copied. The language, the budget logic and the service behind them travel together. The specifics live on that country's page.

What one city signs, every other city can copy.

Money enters as compliance and leaves as a creator's income and a citizen finally served.

A handout is not access. It gives a man a fish, not a path toward fishing for himself.

Pattern

A city writes access into law

Problem
The law already mandates accessibility. No service delivers it, so citizens never feel it.
What happened
A city advanced two ordinances — healthcare accessibility and cinema accessibility — with a11y as technical partner.
Benefit
A replicable template: the ordinance language, the budget logic and the service behind it travel together. Any city can copy it.

Two city ordinances — one on healthcare accessibility, one on cinema accessibility — have passed first reading, with a11y as technical partner.

Receipt: Parañaque City Council records

Where this is happening

The European Accessibility Act has been in force since June 2025.

Receipt: EU Directive 2019/882

Procurement-ready

Three ways a city can start.

  1. A pilot

    One service line, one district, measured. Receipts published.

  2. Relay and help-desk planning

    How Deaf citizens reach your offices, hotlines and clinics in sign language.

  3. Accessible livestreams and public information

    Council sessions, advisories and announcements that Deaf and blind citizens can follow.

This is not charity. It is a venture, because the law already mandated accessibility — and already funded it.

Civic resources

Writing an accessibility law? We'll share what worked.

Downloadable, plain-language resources for councils, disability offices and legislators, in any country. Released as they are ready; tell us where to send them.

  • Model Ordinance Kit Ordinance language you can adapt — coming
  • Budget explainer Where the money already is, and how it becomes a service — coming
  • City accessibility checklist Offices, clinics, hotlines, livestreams — coming
  • Screening-report template For a city's first accessible screening — coming

Get the resources as they release

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