LAUNCH OF GROUNDBREAKING TAXI HAND SIGN BOOK FOR BLIND COMMUTERS

at Museum Africa, 121, Bree Street, Newtown on September 30, 2009,  From 3.30 to 6. 

South Africa has eleven official languages but in reality, there are twelve. Part of the twelfth language is Sign Language. The inspirational artist, Susan Woolf: MATHABO is launching a Taxi hand sign book for blind taxi commuters. 

During the course of researching Taxi hand signs and compiling a booklet of these signs and destinations, Woolf discovered the need to produce something directed specifically for blind commuters. The conceptual artist came up with the 14 tactile shapes that make up the hand signs needed to communicate a destination to taxi drivers. Many blind people might not even be aware that others are using hand signs to signal their direction to taxi drivers. The signs allows blind commuters to tap into this non-verbal form of communication. The end result is a book in braille  that includes the innovative shapes that combine  to form the Taxi hand signs. This will be followed in 2010 with a small pocket size booklet with coloured gloved taxi hand signs for everyone in South Africa including tourists. The book will be updated each year whilst the research for the investigation is on going.

Billy Makhubela's career started on the roadside selling wire bicycles.  He could never have known that the bikes would become a South African phenomenon...or that his career would take him to an exhibition at the Constitutional Court as a tribute to Nelson Mandela on his 90th birthday. Mandela and Graca visited the show and loved the works, even requesting Billy to meet Mandela’s personally for a private introduction to the artist.

Billy’s designed the beaded works for the ‘Mandela’ exhibition thereafter his wife Jane and daughter Yvonne completed the beading.