A few years ago, I got an invitation that changed everything.
My kid's school asked me to come in and run a lunchtime sign club. Each week, a bunch of enthusiastic kids and some of the staff would show up ready to practise together. It was chaotic, joyful, and genuinely one of my favourite things I have ever done.
We would spend about half of each session dancing to a song and signing along — a mini Auslan Stage Left audition. The rest of the time we would work through a set of signs together, handouts spread across the table, everyone getting a bit tangled up and laughing about it.
What I noticed quickly was that most people already knew more signs than they realised. A wave hello. A finger to the lips for quiet. A hand rocking a baby. These are Key Word Signs. People were signing and they didn't even know it yet.
Building Unlock Sign is taking that lunchtime club and giving it to everyone.
The gap nobody talks about
I have also worked for two childcare organisations, and I know from the inside how much enthusiasm staff have for signing. The interest is real. The willingness is there. What isn't there is time — there is no way to step off the floor for a training session, no margin in a busy day for anything that looks like formal learning.
That gap between wanting to sign and having the tools to start is exactly what this app is trying to close. Two minutes a day. One sign at a time. Something you can do while you are already living your life.
The moments that keep me going
Some of my happiest moments in the whole signing journey are when other people start to initiate sign interactions — with me, or with my kid. Not because they were told to. Not because it was on a plan. Because they wanted to connect.
We are usually all getting the sign a bit wrong. But we almost always know what the other one means.
And as more people start the journey toward using more sign, I hope our friends from the Auslan Community will be kind enough to correct our handshapes and point us in the right direction. This community has been generous in sharing their language, and we don't take that lightly.
A word on what this is — and isn't
Learning Key Word Sign is not the same as learning Auslan. I want to be clear about that.
The Australian Deaf Community has a rich culture and a full language that goes far beyond handshapes. Auslan is a complete, complex, living language with its own grammar, its own literature, and its own community. Key Word Sign borrows Auslan signs and uses them alongside speech to support people who benefit from multi-modal communication. The two are related, but they are not the same thing.
The intent of Unlock Sign is specific: to give kids with language delays and emergent communication another tool to help unlock their worlds. Children who are still developing language typically benefit from multi-modal input — verbal, signed, and visual together. The more people around them using sign, the richer that environment becomes. That is the village this app is trying to build.
For the sleep-deprived ones
Key Word Sign is also a beautiful way to communicate with very young babies, who can begin signing months before their first spoken word arrives.
So to any sleep-deprived mums and dads who have found this app at 3am: I see you. I am building a Treasure Chest of signs just for you — the ones you can use with each other when you are too tired for words.
Sleep. No. Sorry. Water. Milk.
These are signs almost everyone already makes with their hands. You just didn't know they had a name.
And if there are any new dads reading this: please take the new mum a glass of water whenever she sits down with the baby. You can sign WATER while you do it. She will appreciate both.
Unlock Sign is a free app for anyone building a signing community around someone they love. One sign, one day at a time.