Editing British Sign Language (section)

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Although the Braidwood school focused on speech, it also used an early form of sign language, ''the combined system'', which was the first codification of British Sign Language. The Braidwood school later moved to London and was visited by [[Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard|Abbé Sicard]] and [[Laurent Clerc]] in 1815, at the same time that an American Protestant minister, [[Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet]], travelled to Europe to research teaching of deaf people.<ref name=":4" />

[[André-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat]], one of the French visitors to the Braidwood school, provided a vivid description of Laurent Clerc's meeting with the deaf children in the bilingual English/French book, ''A collection of the Most Remarkable Definitions and Answers of Massieu and Clerc, Deaf and Dumb.'' Laurent Clerc, who was deaf, was overjoyed to find fellow sign language users:<blockquote>As soon as Clerc beheld this sight [of the children at dinner] his face became animated; he was as agitated as a traveller of sensibility would be on meeting all of a sudden in distant regions, a colony of his own countrymen... Clerc approached them. He made signs and they answered him by signs. The unexpected communication cause a most delicious sensation in them and for us was a scene of expression and sensibility that gave us the most heart-felt satisfaction.<ref>{{Cite web|last=UCL|date=2019-08-07|title=Laffon de Ladebat|url=https://www.ucl.ac.uk/british-sign-language-history/early-deaf-education/laffon-de-ladebat|access-date=2021-05-17|website=History of British Sign Language|language=en}}</ref></blockquote>The Braidwood schools refused to teach Gallaudet their methods. Gallaudet then travelled to Paris and learned the educational methods of the French Royal Institution for the Deaf, a combination of [[Old French Sign Language]] and the signs developed by [[Charles-Michel de l'Épée|Abbé de l'Épée]]. As a consequence [[American sign language|American Sign Language]] (ASL) today has a 60% similarity to modern [[French Sign Language]] and is almost unintelligible to users of British Sign Language. Gallaudet went on to establish the [[American School for the Deaf]] in 1817, which focused on manual communication and ASL, in contrast to the oral methods used in the UK.