The programme was produced as a weekly magazine show, with each episode featuring a Sign Language lesson, news about and for the deaf, a drama on the topic of the week followed by a discussion with studio guests, and an insert called "Window of Hope" – positive profiles of deaf people who are achieving success in their lives. The series featured topics such as love and marriage, careers for the deaf, HIV/AIDS, communication with others in the community, relaxation, and entertainment.

Organisations and community groups that did not have access to the programmes during their broadcast times can access the programmes on DVD from CHIPAWO Media.

Since the first series, CHIPAWO Media has launched two sequels to Handspeak. The first, Deaf Dialogues, was a 4-episode mini-series that presented performances filmed on stage for television. This mini-series included "Give Us a Chance", a documentary based on a Handicap Advocacy Arts Festival featuring performance and discussion on issues relating to the handicapped, and involving handicapped and other children. It also included the small dramas that had been featured in Handspeak, which were gathered into two episodes of drama in Sign Language entitled "Dialogues of the Deaf". The fourth episode in the mini-series was "Cry Thinking", a play produced by youth from the Emerald Hill School around the theme "what is it like to grow up deaf?"

The second sequel, Action Power, launched in April 2008, is a magazine programme similar to Handspeak which contains the following three sections:

• Action Art - profiles deaf artists and craftspeople.
• Action Speak - is a continuation of Sign Language lessons for the hearing, but also includes more advanced words for the deaf.
• Action Issues - features discussion by children, youth, parents, teachers, and government on education and careers for the deaf in Zimbabwe.

Disability, Rights.

According to CHIPAWO, although broadcast law requires that 10% of the national broadcasters' (Zimbabwe Television) content to cater for the hearing impaired, very few programmes actually do so. Handspeak was created to fill that gap.

CHIPAWO Media claims that they are the only media house in Zimbabwe that produces television for and with the deaf is Zimbabwe. This grew out of the arts education and performance work that CHIPAWO began doing with Emerald Hill School for the Deaf in Harare in 1994.