On the one hand, if you hold your convictions too tight, you just keep blundering on even when it's obvious things won't work; on the other, if you hold them too lightly you get buffeted from pillar to post by every argument you hear.

"If individuals only held one opinion, one belief and one narrative they would be so brittle and open to failure."

That's a great point. I guess this is an important capacity for coping with ambiguity and uncertainty, and being able to adapt as new information emerges.

Bill Watterson won comic strips, hands down. The fact that there's no Calvin and Hobbes merch makes it all the better, though, er, it probably made Watterson a lot poorer than he could have been!

I'm sorry to hear that, Claire.

I'm glad you were able to go ahead with your project with such great students.

You look after yourself.

I guess the problem with all things related to accessibility is that there is always a big question about who gets to monetize it...

Not just images of a person doing the sign, but an image associated with the sign itself (a happy face for "happy", a stick person at a desk and at a workbench in a building for "college").

Of course, I learned for a specific context related to including a specific child in activities - I don't know how well that would generalise!

I know Makaton includes images for each sign so that it can be read.

To their credit, the instructor was also very clear that Makaton was not a substitute for BSL. We were taught to use it as a supplement to speech rather than a replacement - to emphasise key words rather than provide a literal translation.

My understanding from the Makaton training I received was that Makaton uses the local sign language, so if you learn Makaton in the UK, you can't necessarily use it in other countries. Of course, I'm relying on the instructor's say-so about that, I've never tried verifying it!