Deaf and hard of hearing viewers will be able to follow the Eurovision Song Contest with International Signing for the very first time in 2015.

Host Broadcaster ORF has been working with the EBU to offer an additional live transmission of the 60^th Eurovision Song Contest with a sign language feed via the Eurovision network over an IP stream or by satellite.

This will allow more than 750 000 deaf people around Europe the chance to engage more fully in the world’s biggest live entertainment show.  The EBU is making this offer available via the EBU Access Services' Experts group.

9 EBU Members have signed up to use the service so far – ORF (Austria), DR (Denmark), NRK (Norway), SRF (Switzerland), SVT (Sweden), SWR (Germany), LTV (Latvia), RTV (Slovenia) and YLE (Finland)

The Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest for the EBU, Jon Ola Sand, says the initiative will bring more people to the event:

"This is a great idea to broaden the scope for the Eurovision Song Contest so it can reach a wider audience. It was a fantastic opportunity that was given to us. We worked on this project over nearly six months, contacting broadcasters to come on board. This already has quite some interest in the Nordic region where some programmes, including music programmes are shown with sign language."

Six professionals have been working on the project using the International Sign system with the aim to visualise the emotions behind the lyrics rather than interpret the lyrics of each song word for word.

Eurovision Sign Project Manager Eva-Maria Hinterwirth says the signing involves a series of lines:

“There are horizontal and vertical lines. Horizontal ones mean that our performance of the song has to match the original performance, showing what’s going on stage, but it shouldn’t steal the show. Vertical lines mean that the song has to be presented as a story. We have to introduce the emotions that should be conveyed to deaf people. The main target is storytelling.”

Team leader Delil Yimaz said two different types of interpreters have been used to create the signing for each entry, one hearing interpreter and one deaf interpreter:

 "My colleague translates the lyrics in her head in German, and then puts them into Austrian Sign Language. Our deaf interpreter then transforms that into the International Sign. It can be time consuming. One entry took us more than five hours to produce!”

The signing for each of the entries in the 60^th Eurovision Song Contest has been pre-recorded but interpretation will be done live when the presenters speak and during the results.