Academy Of Bsl

The Academy will help you to feel more confident & enjoy communicating with Deaf people by teaching you to sign in a friendly & professional environment.

The Academy of British Sign Language (BSL)

We are a new company established by former staff members of the British Deaf Association (BDA Scotland). At the BDA we had many years of experience and a highly successful track record in the professional delivery of BSL training and teaching.

The BDA has decided to concentrate its focus on campaigning and empowerment of the Deaf Community and no longer works in the area of BSL training and British Sign Language courses. The Academy of BSL is proud to take on the mantle and the role of BSL teaching and training from the BDA.

We will provide everything needed to meet the requirements of companies and individuals who work with or employ Deaf BSL users or other D /deaf people; who serve them as clients and customers; or who just want to get to know and communicate with them better.

The Equalities Act (2010) says: “Service providers should not wait until a customer who is disabled wants to use the service before thinking about adjustments. They must plan ahead, and not sit and wait until a customer asks for an adjustment. ”

We are here to help you make that adjustment. We offer everything from Deaf Awareness and BSL taster sessions, bespoke frontline BSL training for staff, one-to-one BSL tuition and accessibility assessments, to lip-reading tuition and how to use an interpreter. And of course, we offer the highest quality stand-alone courses for any individual who wants to learn BSL.



British Sign Language (BSL)
British Sign Language (BSL) is the third indigenous language to the UK after English and Welsh and recent figures from the British Deaf Association (BDA) suggest that on any day up to 250, 000 people use some BSL.

In 2003 British Sign Language was officially recognized by the UK Government as a full, independent language in March 2003.

It was formally recognized as a language by the Welsh Assembly in January 2004 and under the Belfast /Good Friday Agreement in March 2004 in Northern Ireland and by the Scottish Government in March 2011.

In March 2011, the Scottish Government made a formal statement with the then Public Health Minister Shona Robison saying:

“British Sign Language is a vibrant language which makes a vital difference to the daily lives of many deaf people in Scotland. ”

“It is important that we do all we can to support the use of the language. ”

There is currently a proposed BSL bill, which has had cross-party support, and will be introduced as a Members Bill by Mark Griffin MSP.

One third of Scotland's 129 MSPs signed up to give the bill their support. With 43 MSPs supporting the bill, this far exceeds the requirement for 18 members to back a bill for it to pass to a parliamentary committee. The BSL bill will now be assigned to a committee by the parliament's Presiding Officer

The bill is based in many respects on the model of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005, which also includes a strategy for promoting, and facilitating the promotion of the use and understanding of a language.