It’s Sign Language Week and what better way to mark it than to add British Sign Language (BSL) translations to our website! Deaf users can now view or request BSL versions of the text on any page.
Deafblind UK has partnered with Sign Language as a Service (SLaaS) provider, Signly to provide the translation. It is the first charity in the UK to use Signly in this groundbreaking way and joins Lloyds Bank and Microsoft as Signly users.
Marketing Manager Naomi Dainty said: “We are incredibly proud to be leading the way with on-page BSL translations. We consider our website to be part of our support package, providing information and advice to people who need it. To have this information available in BSL means that we can support even more people.”
Tim Scannell, Social Media Ambassador at Signly, said: “I am a BSL user, and I am so thrilled that Deafblind UK has partnered with Signly during Sign Language Week to promote British Sign Language facilities provided by Deaf Translators which add to the everyday accessibility of their website for the Deafblind, Deaf and Hearing BSL users. Signly and Deafblind UK recognise that English and BSL are very different in their syntax, structure, and grammar, and that’s why Deafblind UK has added BSL translation, for equality, inclusion and access to their information.”
There are 87,000 BSL users in the UK for whom BSL is their first language and written English is not always easy to understand. Deafblind UK supports many sign language users.
BSL is available or can be requested on any page of the Deafblind UK website. To access it, users simply hover their mouse (or finger if using a touch screen) over the text they want to read. A small video will appear on screen, which can be enlarged or minimized if not needed.
The accessibility feature was launched during Sign Language Week, which is celebrated each March to coincide with the anniversary of the recognition of BSL by the British Government in 2003.
