International Movement Writing Alphabet

The IMWA has more than 27,000 elements that are represented by unique identification numbers. Each identification number specifies six attributes—category, group, symbol, variation, fill, and rotation—as dash-separated values. The symbol is specified with a three-digit value whereas all other attributes use a two-digit value (e.g., 01-01-001-01-01-01).

There are eight categories: hand, movement, face, head, upper body, full body, space, and punctuation.

There are 40 groups. The keyboard design and symbol palette are based on the 40 groups.

The IMWA was originally designed for describing sign language and consequently was named Sutton's Sign Symbol Sequence (SSS) by its inventor, Valerie Sutton. The original symbol set, SSS-95, was limited in size due to memory constraints in personal computers at the time. The SSS-99 symbol set expanded the number of symbols, and the SSS-2002 set was the first to use the current identification numbering system. The final version, SSS-2004, was renamed International Movement Writing Alphabet (SSS-IMWA) to reflect its usefulness in applications beyond sign language.

1. ^ El Ghoul, Oussama; Jemni, Mohamed (2009). "Multimedia Courses Generator for Deaf Children". International Arab Journal of Information Technology. 6 (5): 458–463 – via EBSCOhost.

• MovementWriting
• IMWA Design Documents
• IMWA Keyboard Design