Many years ago, a peculiar form of sign language emerged in the meetings of Quakers in Europe and North America. These simple hand signals were used to ensure that people could share their thoughts and feelings without interrupting speakers. They quickly spread through the British environmentalist movement as a way of improving meeting efficiency.
More recently, they were adopted by the American Occupy Movement and became a common occurrence in most parts of the West. The modern standard, which is now recognised by many social campaigns, uses a number of hand signals based on simplified American sign language to facilitate communication in public gatherings.
If you find that your meetings and public events sometimes struggle with multiple people talking at once, or if you find that they can be difficult to access for some groups, then you might want to consider implementing hand signals into your next event.
For more information on these hand signals and how to use them, please visit this Wikipedia page.
