There are plenty of apps and websites for learning languages.
Very few of them, however, offer American Sign Language (ASL) alongside the other languages that English speakers typically study. We've taken a look at the top contenders to help you find the best site for learning ASL.
How Hard Is It To Learn ASL?
Learning ASL takes different skills and requires different methods of instruction than learning orally spoken languages does.
For example, ASL can't be taught through audio, obviously.
It requires either live instruction or video, or at the very least, still images, though those aren't typically as effective.
Learners also need to have their hands free to practice signing, whereas, with other language learning, you need to dedicate a time and place to listen intently and speak out loud.
How Is Learning ASL Like Learning Other Languages?
In other ways, however, learning ASL is similar to learning any other language.
ASL has its own alphabet in fingerspelling and its own grammar.
There are regional differences in the language and slang.
With any new-to-you language, it helps to hear a variety of speakers, and with ASL, you'll learn more if you watch a variety of people signing: old, young, right-handed and left-handed people, signers from different regions, and so forth.
The signing community has a rich culture with rules of etiquette, such as appropriate ways to get a deaf person's attention, that the best ASL programs include as part of their teaching.
Why Study ASL?
People learn ASL for a variety of reasons.
Some learn after suffering hearing loss, some to communicate with family or friends, some do it to build a new life skill or job skill, and some learn for personal enrichment.
Whatever your motivation, you can learn a lot of ASL with the right tools and apps.
The five listed here are the best ones we've seen.
Note that this roundup is written by a hearing person and is not intended to speak for the experience of the deaf or hard of hearing communities.
Web only
Of all the ASL apps and learning sites we tried, Sign It ASL is by far the most engaging.
Each lesson contains a short storyline built around a theme, like an episode of television, that you watch unfold in sign language.
In between scenes, there are more focused teaching sections and quizzes.
At the end of each lesson, Sign It gives you bonus content, such as interviews with the team behind the site and special guests.
Sign It ASL also does an impressive job of explaining some of the nuances of the language.
For example, you learn about ASL gloss, indexing, nonmanual markers, and other important concepts.
This learning site also has a diverse cast of characters, so you see a variety of people signing and pick up on how they do it differently, the same way you might hear different accents or word choices in other languages.
Lessons take between 45 and 60 minutes to complete, and the site recommends repeating them two or three times.
To buy all 15 lessons (there are five more lessons in the works) costs $119.99, and you get access to them and the ASL dictionary on the site for life.
There's also a group access option for all the lessons for $299.99.
If you're not sure you want to commit, you can also buy just five lessons at a time for $49.99.
Families with a deaf or hard of hearing child younger than 36 months can apply to get Sign It ASL for free.
Web, Android, Apple mobile app, Roku, Android TV, Fire TV
Signing Time is ASL education for kids, made by the same team that offers Sign It, including co-creator and host Rachel Coleman.
Signing Time has lessons designed for babies, children age three and up, as well as parents who want to teach young children baby sign language.
As Coleman explains in one behind-the-scenes interview on Sign It, she started Signing Time as a way to teach her extended family how to communicate with her deaf daughter.
You can subscribe to Signing Time or buy specific video packs for lifetime access.
The site sells other materials, too.
You can find some of the videos on YouTube for free, but more importantly, you can get a 14-day trial when you sign up.
Web only
Lingvano is an online, interactive site where you can learn and practice ASL.
The site contains a series of lessons that you work through sequentially.
It teaches useful concepts, such as understanding that many ASL signs are universally understood and others are easy to figure out once you learn a little more about the language.
Each lesson gives you interactive exercises.
You watch video clips of someone signing to learn new words and get quiz-style questions mixed in.
The site also lets you enable the camera on your computer to create a mirror image on screen, which enables you to watch yourself practice the signs as you learn them.
Lingvano is only available as a web app for now, but apps for Apple and Android mobile devices are in development.
On this site, you also get a reasonably sized ASL dictionary.
You can try a lesson for free, but you need a Premium membership (starting at the rather high rate of $17.99 per month) to get all the lessons and features.
The annual price ($119.88) is closer to what other language learning apps charge.
Web, Apple mobile apps, Android app
Rocket Languages is one of the very few language learning apps that offer courses in orally spoken languages and ASL.
The ASL course is sold separately from the other languages ($99.95 for lifetime access), but it uses the same platform as other languages and therefore has support for quizzes, tracking your progress, and everything else you'd expect in a language learning app.
You can try the first few lessons for free with Rocket Languages' mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, or Android, or via the web app.
The ASL course includes information about deaf culture and the history of American Sign Language.
When it comes to learning signs, each sign is a standalone video, so working your way through the material is a choppy experience, compared with other ASL learning sites that give you a longer video with multiple words taught at once.
Every lesson has a theme, such as Inflection and Intensity, Baby Sign Language, Traveling, Different Dialects, and three lessons with religious content (learning ASL is common among religious people who actively convert).
Read my in-depth review of Rocket Languages to learn more about what it has to offer and how it stacks up against other language apps.
