Being profoundly Deaf, I need to use American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate in my daily life.  ASL is a three-dimensional, mobile, visual language, which cannot be written or spoken.  During my travels in America, it is seldom that I meet other people who know ASL, so communication with people who can hear is often inaccessible or difficult, unless I write back and forth with them in English on paper.  What I have come to appreciate are symbols or written English language on signs In the American landscape.  Handwritten, manufactured, or printed text are little windows of access where I understand the language of a particular environment, no matter how coherent, incoherent, congruous or incongruous it may be.