Ella: BSL courses for families

British Sign Language (BSL) is the first or preferred language of many deaf people. For their hearing family members, it’s important that they can communicate in BSL too. But learning to sign can be very expensive, and funding is not available for everyone.

In this brilliant blog, Ella explains how free BSL training would have helped her hearing family learn her preferred language and understand more about Deaf culture.

Now, I never expected to become deaf. And at the time of being diagnosed, I certainly did not expect my deafness to become such an integral, precious and joyous part of me. The real change in mindset occurred when I was thirteen and by luck someone else’s support worker volunteered to teach me BSL – it was my first moment of experiencing deaf culture, and the first time I saw a product of deafness as being useful and exciting.

Over the next few years, my proficiency and fluency with BSL improved as I spent more time in Deaf spaces, through opportunities available to me as a deaf young person. BSL has become my preferred language, despite English being my first.

I talk a lot about being an “incognito hearing person”, with my cochlear implants, fluent English speech, and “not looking deaf” (what is a deaf person meant to look like anyway?). However the fact remains that not only am I clinically deaf, but I also identify myself as such, and take pride in the world it gives me access to.

My parents, however, do not really have access to that world. I’ve been deaf for nearly seven years now, and my family have been trying to learn to sign all through that time. I’ve been teaching them things I pick up as and when I can. BSL Zone programmes are occasionally useful for receptive practice and fingerspelling gets us by, but as a household we are by no means fluent in BSL.

My mum explains that money has been a significant barrier to my family learning BSL. They have faced simultaneous costs of travelling for my hospital treatment whilst having to have days off work, and there has also been a lack of local BSL courses. They have had to learn “third-hand” through me – I was still learning BSL myself, so it wouldn’t always be correct.

It feels so bizarre to me that I have to constantly translate my thoughts from BSL into English when I am in my happiest space at home. We do the best we can now, and I must commend my family in saying that they have been quite incredible at picking some BSL up. They’ve never been on any formal courses, plus it’s definitely harder for adults to learn new things than children. However, the fact remains that my home is my space, yet I cannot be the truest version of myself there. This is simply due to the government’s neglect of my preferred language, which is now supposed to have legal status.

It makes no sense. Deaf people are welcomed into Deaf spaces, where BSL can be practised and acquired. Where is the space for parents of deaf people to acquire the language and the culture? Does it really have to be second-hand through their child? The government spoke so positively of aiming to make BSL users feel equal and welcomed into British culture – I’d say we need the opportunity to feel equal in our own homes first, and that can not happen until parents of deaf children have the accessible opportunity to learn BSL. It has to be free, it has to be local, and it has to be available without a mountain of bureaucracy.