Sign language interpretation symbol
Two hands signing: sign language interpretation is provided for a lecture, tour, film, performance, conference or other event.
Easily confused with
How to read it
The sign language interpretation symbol shows two hands signing. It is one of the Graphic Artists Guild’s disability access symbols, where it means that sign language interpretation is provided for a lecture, tour, film, performance, conference or other program. The Guild asks that words beside its symbols name the service rather than who uses it. The Canadian Association of the Deaf supports it, with the TTY and volume control telephone symbols, as symbols that show a specific access service, and has proposed a pair of hands making the sign for “Sign” as a universal symbol for Deaf people.
Also searched as: ASL interpreter symbol, interpreter symbol, signing hands symbol, sign language symbol.
Why not the ear symbol
The ear with a bar across it is often put up where interpretation is meant. The Canadian Association of the Deaf says this misleads Deaf people looking for sign language interpretation, because the ear symbol is used to show that assistive listening devices are provided. It rejected the ear symbol in 1990.
Look-alikes
The CC symbol marks captions, another way of giving speech to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, as text on a screen rather than in sign.
Read next
- Next in Accessibility symbolsTTY symbolA telephone handset above a keyboard is the International Symbol of TTY. It marks a text telephone, a TTY, which lets people who are deaf, hard of hearing or speech impaired type a phone conversation.
- The same shape in African flagsFlag of the ComorosThe Comoros flag is four horizontal stripes, yellow, white, red and blue from the top, with a green triangle along the pole holding a white crescent and four white stars in a line between its tips. Norway’s Store norske leksikon explains the crescent as the symbol of Islam and the four stars as the four islands of the Comoros; Lex says the four stripes are said to stand for the islands too.
More accessibility symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with curves and waves or lines.
Sources
- Downloadable Disability Access Symbols, Rebecca Blake, Graphic Artists Guild, Graphic Artists Guild, Introduction; Sign Language Interpretation; Closed Captioning (CC)
- Universal Symbols of Access, Canadian Association of the Deaf, position paper; read via Internet Archive copy of 21 March 2023 (cad.ca no longer resolves), Canadian Association of the Deaf – Association des Sourds du Canada, Universal Symbols of Access
- Universal Accessibility Symbols, City of Los Angeles Department on Disability (read October 2026), City of Los Angeles Department on Disability, Sign Language Interpretation
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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