Single Hand Communication Ltd (SHC)

Specialties

This is a single-​hand sign language system for people who can hear, but can’t speak. It has been specially developed to help stroke victims and sufferers of brain injury and throat surgery to communicate with loved ones and carers.

History

Established in 2012.

SHC was formed in 2012 by Derek Tune, Jan Tune and Heather Gifford.

Derek Tune, an ex-​lorry driver-​come sign language interpreter, who has dedicated his life to the deaf community after having his life saved by a profoundly deaf man, developed this system after his elderly grandmother suffered a stroke and couldn’t communicate.

Derek’s wife Jan is a qualified Nurse and Midwife and has been working as a Practice Nurse for many years in South Wales. In 2007 her mother was terminally ill with cancer. On one of the final visits to see her she was very weak, exhausted and on Oxygen therapy, desperately trying to tell Jan something. If she could have signed the word «Close» with one hand she would have understood immediately, saving them both distress and giving her mum back some dignity.

Meet the Business Owner

Derek T.

Business Owner

In May 1994 I was involved in a serious road traffic accident. The lorry I was in crashed into a bridge over a river and I was thrown through the windscreen, landing face down in the water below. Miraculously for me a deaf man and an off-​duty Police officer were close to the scene and pulled me from the river and saved my life.

I came round in hospital days later. I had sustained multiple injuries including frontal lobe brain damage. I remembered nothing of the accident, but learnt how and who saved my life much later.

Tragically, two years later my wife died of cancer. I was left alone to bring up our two children alone. The idea came to me then to learn British Sign Language (BSL) in respect to the unknown deaf man who helped save my life. Maybe one day I could thank him in his own language, for without him my children would be orphans … (read my personal story and SHC on the about us page at http: www​.sin​gle​hand​com​mu​ni​ca​tion​.com)