British sign language

The Scottish Government wants to make Scotland the best place in the world for British Sign Language (BSL) users to live, learn, work and visit.

This means that people whose first or preferred language is BSL will be fully involved in daily and public life in Scotland, as active, healthy citizens, and will be able to make informed choices about every aspect of their lives.

Wherever we refer to ‘BSL users' we mean D/deaf and/or Deafblind people (those who receive the language in a tactile form due to sight loss) whose first or preferred language is British Sign Language.

The BSL (Scotland) Act 2015 requires public bodies in Scotland to publish plans every six years, showing how they will promote, and facilitate the promotion of the use and understanding BSL in Scotland. These plans will take account of local circumstances and consider how best to respond to BSL users’ needs within local communities, organisations or services.

This is our second Ayrshire Shared BSL Local Plan developed in partnership with:

• Ayrshire College
• East, North and South Ayrshire Councils
• East, North and South Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnerships
• NHS Ayrshire & Arran

This BSL Local Plan sets out the priorities identified through consultation with BSL users living, working and studying in Ayrshire. The priorities included within this Plan cover:

• delivering actions to support the implementation of the BSL National Plan
• BSL accessibility
• children, young people and their families
• access to employment
• health and wellbeing
• celebrating BSL culture
• BSL data
• democratic participation

It describes the strategic aims the partners will take between 2024 and 2030 to enable BSL users to be involved in daily and public life in Scotland, as active, healthy citizens, and will be able to make informed choices about every aspect of their lives. The partners will develop a co-produced operational plan (Aim 2) to deliver on the strategic aims.

This second Ayrshire Shared BSL Local Plan is reflective of the priorities contained within the Scottish Government’s National BSL Plan 2023-2029, which was published on 6 November 2023, but importantly the priorities for our local BSL users. We have carried forward a few of the actions from our previous plan as they were delayed due to the pandemic and remain priorities for our local BSL users. 

Ayrshire shared British Sign Language Local Plans

We have produced our plans in two versions, BSL and English, to make it easily accessible to all:

• Ayrshire Shared BSL Local Plan 2024-2030 (PDF 361Kb)
• Ayrshire Shared BSL Local Plan 2018-2024 (PDF 5.29Mb)
• Ayrshire Shared BSL Local Plan Executive Summary 2018-2024 (PDF 608Kb)