Disney Animation's "Songs in Sign Language" debuts on Disney+ April 27, 2026, coinciding with National Deaf History Month. Three animated musical sequences have been reimagined in American Sign Language: "Beyond" from Moana 2, "The Next Right Thing" from Frozen 2, and "We Don't Talk About Bruno" from Encanto. For Deaf children whose first language is ASL, these represent the first time Disney has animated songs in their native language rather than simply adding captions.

How Disney Approached the Translation

The production team didn't translate English lyrics word-for-word. According to director Hyrum Osmond, a veteran Disney animator, the team "reimagined and choreographed lyrics into American Sign Language by emphasizing concepts and emotion rather than word-for-word translation." ASL has its own grammar and syntax. Facial expressions carry grammatical weight, not just emotion. A raised eyebrow can turn a statement into a question. The tilt of a head can mark a conditional clause. When you translate a song into ASL, you're working with a different linguistic structure entirely, not English mapped onto hands.

Osmond explained the technical challenge: "In the majority of cases, we created entirely new animation. There were a lot of adjustments that we had to do within the animation to be true to the original intention."

The Collaboration Behind the Animation

Disney partnered with Deaf West Theatre, a Tony Award-winning Los Angeles-based theater company, to bring authenticity to the project. Eight members from Deaf West performed the songs in ASL. DJ Kurs served as sign language artistic director, and Catalene Sacchetti choreographed the sign language reference footage. More than 20 animators then used that performance footage to re-create the sequences in animated form.

The process reflects a choice about how to treat ASL. The team could have used motion capture or AI-generated signing. Instead, they filmed Deaf performers and used their work as artistic reference for hand-drawn animation. That's the difference between treating ASL as data to replicate and treating it as a performance to honor.

Why This Matters Beyond Subtitles

For Deaf children who think in ASL, reading English subtitles while watching a character mouth words they can't hear creates a cognitive load that hearing families don't always recognize. It's not that they can't read. It's that they're translating constantly, and that translation takes energy.

Simcom, signing and speaking simultaneously, doesn't solve the problem. It follows English grammar, which means the signing becomes a visual echo of spoken words rather than a complete language. A child whose first language is ASL needs content that speaks to them in their own grammar, not a transliteration of someone else's.

Disney's approach here gives Deaf children something different: animated characters expressing the emotional arc of a song in ASL's own structure, without compromise.

What's Included and When to Watch

The three songs debut April 27, 2026 on Disney+:

• "Beyond" from Moana 2
• "The Next Right Thing" from Frozen 2
• "We Don't Talk About Bruno" from Encanto

A behind-the-scenes featurette will accompany the songs, documenting the collaborative process between Disney animators and Deaf West Theatre.

The Broader Context

Disney isn't the first to integrate ASL into children's programming. PBS has featured ASL since Linda Bove appeared on Sesame Street in 1971. Marvel's Echo series centered a Deaf superhero whose first language is ASL. But scale matters. Disney's animated musicals reach millions of children globally. When one of the largest animation studios in the world decides to animate songs in ASL rather than just subtitle them, it signals a shift in how mainstream media treats sign language: not as accommodation, but as a first language worth animating fluently.

Osmond's framing of the project reflects that perspective. "Sign language is one of the most beautiful ways of communication on Earth," he said, emphasizing the goal of connecting with the Deaf community and breaking communication barriers.

How Deaf Families Are Responding

The clips began circulating online before the official April 27 debut, and the reaction from Deaf and hard-of-hearing families has been immediate. On Reddit, where the preview clips were shared, one commenter who identifies as legally Deaf wrote: "You'd be amazed at how the world has adapted to help us thrive. Watching this movie with my daughter was a magical moment I'll never forget."

Another parent wrote about their hard-of-hearing child who loves Moana: "I've been shocked how much ASL content and representation there is in kids media... It's so cool seeing them go nuts when one of the characters has hearing aids."

An ASL interpreter in the thread explained why the characters no longer mouth English words during the songs: "ASL has a specific set of grammar rules for how one moves their mouth and tongue while doing certain signs, and those movements do not necessarily line up with lip-syncing the spoken English... ASL is not doing a perfect word-for-word translation of the English version which would allow for the signer to speak the words simultaneously. The grammar and syntax are quite different."

That last point answers one of the most common questions about the project. Characters in the ASL versions stop singing not because something was removed, but because ASL and English follow different grammars, and honoring one means departing from the other.

What This Means for Your Family

If your child is Deaf or hard of hearing and uses ASL, April 27 gives you new content to watch together that speaks their language without asking them to translate. If you've been explaining to extended family why subtitles aren't the same as access, this project is a concrete example: ASL isn't signed English. It's a language with its own grammar, animated here as such.

Mark the calendar. Disney+ debuts Songs in Sign Language on April 27, 2026.