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The Long and Winding Road: Part 5

Page 13 of Roadmap:

2.3 THE BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE & LINGUISTIC ACCESS WORKING GROUP 2000-2007

(www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/Equality/disability/remit/Access-Working-Group)

The British Sign Language & Linguistic Access Working Group (BSL&LAWG) convened by the Scottish Government’s Equality Unit has been in existence since 2000. The group consists of representatives from national deaf organisations and government officials (See Appendix 3 of Roadmap for more detail). It enables government to discuss and address issues at the heart of linguistic access for Deaf, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing people, guided by organisations with specialist expertise and with day to day contact with the groups of deaf people mentioned in this report.

The working group has a robust vision of what needs to be in place to improve linguistic access for deaf and deafblind people and it maintains a determined focus of deploying resources towards long term aims. It envisages a world where deaf people would be automatically afforded the same life chances as their fellow citizens. In such a world: families with deaf babies would be supported to meet the linguistic needs of their child at the appropriate age;
deaf pupils would have the same school attainments as their peers;
BSL would be offered as an educational tool for pupils who prefer it;
pupils could study BSL and Deaf culture as a curriculum subject, from primary school through to university;
all public services would be deaf and deafblind aware;
deaf and deafblind people would be provided with timely information
information would always be provided in a range of accessible formats; and
the implications of deafness would be understood and valued by society.

Page 14 of Roadmap:

The BSL&LAWG has directed most of its energies towards identifying what needs to happen to increase the number of professionals who provide linguistic access in Scotland, such as BSL/English interpreters. But in many instances this has required a step backwards before the difficulties could be addressed. This is often because there are either no people or very few people who can provide the training for the professionals. For example, there were hardly any BSL tutors able to teach advanced BSL, so substantial funding was invested by the Scottish Government to provide a Graduate Diploma in the Teaching of BSL Tutors, so that there is a trained pool of tutors to train others who can in the future provide advanced BSL teaching. This will lead to more professionals being able to study BSL to use in their work (teachers, doctors) and more potential students for interpreter training. Building up a route to sustain professional training is essential but takes considerable time and resources and is not achieved quickly.

Page 15 of Roadmap:

The BSL&LAWG wish to work with service providers to apply the learning from short-term projects into their day-to-day delivery. It is a fundamental approach of the group to all aspects of linguistic access that they should be mainstreamed and funded alongside comparable activity.