The Challenge
The Deaflympics, the Olympic Games for deaf athletes, marked its 100th anniversary in 2025, with Tokyo serving as the host city. Despite having a longer history than the Paralympics, domestic awareness of the Deaflympics in Japan remains extremely low—just 14.8% as of 2023. With little public interest, it had largely been an event closed off to a limited deaf community. As a city striving for deaf inclusion and to ensure the Games’ success, Tokyo faced a mission to attract public interest and fill the venues inclusively. To achieve this mission, we focused on sports cheering. Applause, cheers, and chants—cheering in sports has long been solely for those who can hear. Despite the Deaflympics being a century old, cheering in deaf sports has continued to rely on sound. The reason was simple: there’s never been a sign language created for cheering. Support couldn’t reach deaf athletes, while hearing spectators didn’t know how to cheer for them, leaving a deep divide between them.
The Solution
Cheer Signs — the world’s first sign language created for cheering. Cheer Signs transforms sound-based cheering into visual expression. Built around the universal sign language for "applause" and incorporating deaf-specific bodily expression, rhythm, timing, and dynamic movement, Cheer Signs consists of seven distinct messages. Performed through shared movement, Cheer Signs allows deaf and hearing alike to share the emotion of sport while delivering powerful visual cheers to deaf athletes. Co-created with Deaf athletes and the Deaf community, Cheer Signs was developed over two years through grassroots testing and adoption. The movement gained support from major companies like Toyota and ASICS, alongside the Japanese government. Celebrities, a princess, the emperor, and politicians joined in, expanding it into a cultural movement. During the Deaflympics, the entire venue spontaneously united through Cheer Signs. Initially introduced in eight sports, it spread organically to 21 sports—embedding a new, inclusive form of cheering at scale. Deaflympics awareness rose from 14.8% (2023) to 73.1% (2025), and it is now being considered as an official cheering system for the 2027 Winter Deaflympics in Austria. Highly accessible to everyone—deaf and hearing alike—Cheer Signs is more than just sports cheering. It’s a symbol that bridges deaf and hearing communities and moves the world toward inclusion.