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Plenty of apps and websites can help you learn a language, and we've been reviewing them for over a decade. Few, however, cover American Sign Language (ASL). That's unfortunate since there are many reasons you might want or need to learn it. Here, we detail our five favorite apps we tested for learning ASL. Note that a hearing person wrote and edited this article; it's not meant to speak for the experience of the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities. Beyond our picks, we discuss how learning ASL differs from picking up most other languages, along with some practical advice that might help you along your journey.
Our Top Tested Picks
Lingvano
Rocket Languages
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- Best Apps for Learning a Language
- Best Online Learning Sites for Kids
- Best Text-to-Speech Apps
Best Overall for Adults
Sign It ASL
- Excellent content and compelling format
- Wonderful cast of instructors and actors
- Buy once, access forever
- Appropriate for deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing people
- Free for parents of deaf children under 36 months
- No mobile apps
- Small improvements to interactive quiz design would help
Of all the ASL apps and learning sites PCMag has tested, Sign It ASL is by far the most engaging and the best for adults (teens, too). Each lesson contains a short storyline built around a theme, like an episode of television you watch unfold in sign language. 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 does an impressive job of explaining the nuances of the language. For example, you learn about ASL gloss, indexing, nonmanual markers, and other essential concepts. The program has a diverse cast of characters, so you see a variety of people signing, and you can pick up on how they do it differently, the same way you might hear different accents or word choices in orally spoken languages.
Lessons take between 45 and 60 minutes to complete, and if you're new to signing, you should repeat each two or three times. Buying all 20 lessons, which is a lot of content, costs $159.99 for lifetime access. You also get an ASL dictionary with your account. Options are available for group access at a higher cost. If you're unsure about committing, you can buy five lessons at a time for $49.99. Families with a deaf or HoH child younger than 36 months can apply for free access to Sign It ASL.
Platforms: Web
Best Free Site
Lifeprint.com (ASLU)
Don't be put off by this site's old-school look. Lifeprint.com, also called ASL University or ASLU, is a wonderful free resource for ASL learners with fantastic lessons for beginners. Look for the ASL Lessons section in the upper-right corner of the homepage. Dr. William G. Vicars, Ed.D., who goes by Dr. Bill, runs the site. He was a full-time Associate Professor of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies at California State University–Sacramento.
The material in the video-based lessons is excellent. You watch as Dr. Bill teaches a student (the on-screen students rotate) while you follow along. Each lesson is between about 25 and 45 minutes. You learn a few words at a time that can build on one another to make sentences. The lessons are silent, and Dr. Bill uses a video screen to help guide you and the student along and occasionally to type out anything you might not understand through signs or fingerspelling. The one downside is that the site isn't a modern learning platform, so there aren't interactive quizzes. You're also on your own in terms of tracking your progress. The material is excellent, though, and well worth your time.
Platforms: Web
Best for Children
Signing Time
Signing Time handles ASL education for kids. It comes from the same team that makes Sign It, including co-creator and host Rachel Coleman. Signing Time has lessons for babies, children three years and older, and parents who want to teach young children baby sign language. In one behind-the-scenes interview on Sign It, Coleman explains that she started Signing Time to teach her extended family how to communicate with her deaf child. 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 get a 14-day trial when you sign up.
Platforms: Android, Apple TV, Fire TV, iOS, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Web
Best for Additional Practice
Lingvano
Lingvano is an online, interactive site for learning ASL. It works best as an app you use to practice ASL by yourself while learning and studying in another way. You work through Lingvano's lessons sequentially. Along the way, you learn useful concepts, such as that many ASL signs are universal and that others get easier to figure out the more you learn the language. Each lesson gives you interactive exercises. You watch video clips of someone signing to learn new words and then answer quiz-style questions.
This ASL app can also use your computer's or phone's camera to create a mirror image on the screen so you can watch yourself practice the signs. You get a fairly comprehensive ASL dictionary, too. You can access some lessons with a free account but need a Premium membership (starting at the rather high rate of $17.99 per month) to unlock all the lessons and features. The annual price ($119.99) is closer to what other language-learning apps charge.
Platforms: Android, iOS, and Web
Best for Religious Words and Phrases
Rocket Languages
- Materials are online, downloadable, and in mobile apps
- Courses in 12 languages
- Blends audio instruction with interactive exercises
- One-time fee for lifetime access
- Clunky practice exercises
- Doesn't provide enough structure for mastering non-Roman scripts
Rocket Languages is one of the few language learning apps that offers online courses in orally spoken languages and ASL. The company sells its ASL course separately from other languages; you pay $99.95 for lifetime access or $20 per month with a six-month commitment. You can try the first few lessons for free.
This online course includes information about deaf culture and the history of American Sign Language. When it comes to learning signs, it presents each in a standalone video, making for a somewhat choppy experience. Other online ASL classes give you a longer video with multiple words at once. Every lesson has a theme, such as Baby Sign Language, Different Dialects, Inflection and Intensity, and Traveling. It also has lessons with religious content; learning ASL is common among religious people who actively convert, and Rocket Languages is a good resource if you are in that group.
Platforms: Android, iOS, and Web
Why Learn American Sign Language?
People learn ASL for a variety of reasons. Some learn after suffering hearing loss, to communicate with family or friends, to teach their deaf or Hard of Hearing (HoH) children a language, to build a new life skill or job skill, or for personal enrichment. Whatever your motivation, you can learn a lot of ASL with the right tools and apps.
How Hard Is It to Learn American Sign Language?
Learning ASL takes different skills and requires different methods of instruction than oral and written language. When you learn ASL, audio instruction might play a small role if you are hearing, or it might not play a role at all. Most people learn best with either live instruction or video. I studied ASL at a university with a deaf instructor (an ideal experience) and online with video-based programs (second best). I have also worked with a hard-of-hearing colleague who signed with me. I am still very much a beginner. I tested all the apps here, along with a few others that didn't make the cut. While it's possible to learn ASL online with still images, as with a book, it's less effective than interacting with someone who can sign with you or taking a video-based course.
When you learn ASL, you need to have your hands free to practice signing, whereas, with other languages, you can get in some study and practice while you walk your dog or multitask in some other way. You can listen to a foreign language podcast or an audio-based learning program, such as Pimsleur, but that's just not the case with ASL.
ASL is based on American English, and some ASL words have hooks to English that might make them easier to remember. For example, some words are fingerspelled abbreviations, like apartment (fingerspelled as apt) and boulevard (fingerspelled as blvd). Other words, like the signs for some colors, incorporate the fingerspelled starting letter of the word and a shaking motion—b for blue, g for green, and p for purple.
How Is Learning ASL Similar to Learning Other Languages?
In other ways, learning ASL is like learning any other language. There is an ASL alphabet used for fingerspelling. ASL also has its own grammar. There are regional differences in the language and slang. ASL is distinct from British Sign Language, for instance.
With any new-to-you language, it helps to hear a variety of speakers. When you start 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 instruction.
