revised 2/2/09

ASL FINGERSPELLING

The Manual Alphabet

Fingerspelling is used to supplement American Sign Language (ASL) when a specific sign does not exist for an English word or concept.

It's easy to create your own animations.

First, you need to copy the set of .gif images below.

Download the zip file. To do this, right-click HERE, select "Save Link As..." (Netscape) or "Save Target As..." (Explorer), then unzip the file using WinZip or a similar utility.

Second, you assemble individual letters into words and phrases using a program such as Alchemy Mindworks' excellent GIF Construction Set, which includes their simple-to-operate Animation Wizard.

The original .gif files were found at A Basic Dictionary of ASL Terms. I modified the original images so that they can be more easily assembled into animations.

The images displayed below are the letters A through Z, followed by the numbers 1 through 10, then a Blank (for separating words and phrases). Below each image is a second image with the identical character displaced to the right (except for the Blank) . These second images are to be used in words where a letter is paired (e.g.: "Hello", which for ten years was on this page as an animation, until hotlinking let to its removal).

If you decide to use them on your Web page, I'd appreciate an email so that I can see the result--I'd like to know that you found them useful or interesting. (I am not claiming copyright on these images and, so far as I know, the original images from which they were adapted are also not copyrighted.) Any comments or suggestions you may care to make are also appreciated.


NOTE: DUE TO PERSISTENT HOT-LINKING, YOU MUST DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE SET OF CHARACTERS THROUGH THE LINK ABOVE AND COPY ANY CHARACTERS YOU INTEND TO USE TO YOUR OWN SERVER. THE INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERS ARE NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD.

[Hotlinking means that, instead of copying the images and hosting them on their own servers, people pasted links to the characters on this page.]

ASL alphabet

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