British Sign Language

British sign language (BSL) is the sign language used in Great Britain. BSL is the first or preferred language of nearly 70,000 Deaf or hearing-impaired people in the United Kingdom. It is a language of space and movement using the hands, body, face and head. Many thousands of hearing people also use BSL: more people use BSL than speak Welsh or Gaelic.

Although the United States and Britain share a spoken language, British Sign Language is separate and distinct from American Sign Language. One example of their differences is that ASL uses a single-handed alphabet while BSL uses two hands for their fingerspelling system. The Makaton system was developed by borrowing signs from British Sign Language.

There have been campaigns to have BSL recognised on a similar level to Welsh and Gaelic. The BBC broadcasts many programs with in-vision signing, using BSL. Also it makes the program See Hear, which is aimed mainly at deaf people.

See also: Makaton UK topics