Sign languages have been recognized as indigenous to Europe by the key
European institutions. The European Parliament has passed resolutions on sign
languages on three occasions (1988, 1998, 2016a). The Council of Europe’s (CoE)
Parliamentary Assembly supported a resolution on sign languages in 2003 (Council of
Europe, 2005), and the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML; an
organization established under the auspices of the CoE) has supported work on sign
language teaching, learning and assessment (Leeson, Van den Bogaerde, Rathmann, &
Haug, 2016
