Our Mission
Commanding Hands aims to help teach people British Sign Language (BSL) for free. We want everyone to learn and use British Sign Language.
We believe that the ability to learn BSL is a basic right for everyone in the UK and there should be no barriers, especially financial ones, to accessing it.
Our promise is to release all of our educational content for free in some format. For example, we’re currently using YouTube and social media to provide tutorial videos while promoting the use of BSL, but if we were to ever launch a physical book in future then we would ensure a free PDF copy is available for everyone.
Our History
Commanding Hands was established on 11th December 2011 by Daniel Ryan and Melanie Morris. Daniel Ryan is hard of hearing with two hearing aids and a CODA (Child of Deaf Adult). Melanie Morris was a Deaf BSL user and prominent figure of the Leicester Deaf community. The aim of Commanding Hands is to promote the use of British Sign Language and provide free-to-access learning resources.
The vast majority of our work is available to watch on online platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok.
In April 2019, Melanie Morris sadly passed away. Her contributions to the Deaf community and BSL advocacy will never be forgotten.
In February 2020, we relaunched our online presence uploading more frequently to YouTube and other platforms. Many of our videos have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. Our most popular video, 100 Basic Signs in British Sign Language, has reached over 2 million views. YouTube featured Commanding Hands as a “Creator on the Rise”.
From 2021 to 2024, our online presence was unfortunately limited. However in March 2024, Commanding Hands is once again releasing regular content.
In June 2024, our YouTube channel achieved the milestone of 100,000 subscribers.
Future Aims
Looking ahead, we plan to have full time staff to ensure we remain active consistently and include the Deaf community in as much of our content as possible.