The South African Post Office has issued a set of stamps on the 29^th January 2010 “hand signs” for a unique South African sign language. Taxi hand signs have been dubbed South Africa’s 12^th official language. This is because of the millions of commuters that use this unwritten language to indicate taxi drivers where they wish to go.  Each taxi hand sign relates to a specific route and there are up to 28 major hand signs for the Gauteng area alone. A separate set of hand signs were also designed for the blind in collaboration with blind people at Blind South Africa.

 The set consists of ten brightly coloured stamps and was printed using a printing process called “thermography”. The stamps also depict symbols developed for the blind and partially sighted people. These stamps are available at all the major Post Offices in South Africa.

published March 12th, 2010