[2] It is spoken in the town of Alipur, Karnataka, a Shia Muslim enclave with a high degree of congenital deafness.
[4] During his study, Panda found out that the proportion of deaf population in Alipur was of approximately 0.75%, against 0.41% on national average (data from the 2011 census).
[5] The sign language is used by many hearing people as well, with level of fluency that greatly varies.
The Shia Muslim population descend from Bijapur after the down fall of Adil Shahi Dynasty and are proud of their culture and history.
The lack of formal education is nevertheless a barrier for them to be able to use script-based applications (like text messaging) and there are not many employment opportunities.