Eye Contact Respect

When two people who use sign language talk to each other, their eyes do a job that hearing people's ears normally do: they carry the conversation. If you look away while someone is signing to you, it can feel just like plugging your ears while someone is talking out loud to you. That is why eye contact is one of the most important rules of respect in Deaf culture.

- Why eye contact matters so much in sign language conversations - How to politely get someone's attention without touching them - What it means to "hold the floor" in a signed conversation - One respectful way to end a signed conversation

In a spoken conversation, you can listen to someone while looking somewhere else, like glancing at your phone. In a signed conversation, that does not work at all -- if your eyes leave the signer's hands and face, you miss the message completely, the same as if you covered your ears mid-sentence. Because of this, keeping steady eye contact while someone signs to you is one of the clearest ways to show, "I am listening to you and I respect what you're saying."

In hearing culture, people often say a person's name to get their attention. In Deaf culture, since the person may not hear their name called, there are different polite ways to get attention: a light tap on the shoulder or arm (never a hard poke), a small wave in someone's line of sight, or gently flicking the light switch in a room to get everyone's attention at once. Waving your hand wildly close to someone's face or banging on a table to make it vibrate are considered too aggressive for a calm conversation.

In a spoken conversation, people sometimes talk over each other. In a signed conversation, only one person can be understood at a time because you can only watch one set of hands clearly. If you want a turn to sign, you gently and briefly raise a hand into the signer's view rather than waving repeatedly, which would be rude. When the person signing is finished, they usually pause and look at you directly, which is the polite signal that it is now your turn.