British Sign Language app goes free for Deaf Awareness Week

A British Sign Language app will be making all of its lessons free for Deaf Awareness Week, in a bid to bridge the gap between the Deaf and hearing communities.

Bright BSL, which launched in March, was created by international start-up SignLab in collaboration with Kent-based Deaf course providers B.S.L. Training.

Karen Belcher, who teaches the lessons alongside partner Andrew, told The Limping Chicken: “Being the middle of three generations has meant that we have seen opposition and challenges faced by older and younger members of the community. Many of these may have been resolved by better understanding, more awareness about deafness and recognising the importance of BSL. 

“However, my family are blessed as we’ve learned BSL intuitively from our forefathers. All too often I meet hearing parents who, despite wanting too, struggle to learn BSL either due to travel distances, costs, timing and being unable to learn as a family.  

“Throughout our teaching careers, we’ve often wished our students had something that helps reinforce basic signs, particularly for those who were just starting on their BSL journey. Often, students would say the same to us, explaining they struggled to find recourses to practice outside the class. 

Karen went on to add the opportunity to address these challenges with SignLab has been an “amazing experience”.

She continued: “In learning that SignLab shared the same visions as us, to create an App which supplements face to face classes but can also be used as a stand-alone study tool, all the while ensuring awareness and cultural values are not lost, has given us, at B.S.L Training the confidence to build a strong partnership. 

“As well as working with a team who are exceptionally talented on the technical aspects, it is refreshing to be listened to and respected as Deaf professionals.

“Via Bright BSL, we hope to share the love of our language and culture through the content of the app. We are very much looking forward to continuing to develop the app, making learning BSL as accessible to as many people as possible. “

Bright BSL is SignLab’s latest sign language app after launching one for Norwegian Sign Language in 2019, which attracted more than 20,000 users with more than one million signs taught.

Subjects available on Bright BSL include greetings, colours and numbers, with users learning through interactive quizzes.

Endre Olsvik Elvestad, founder of SignLab, said: “Learning BSL can be an important way of fostering inclusion between Deaf and hearing communities, but BSL classes remain expensive and hard to access for the majority of people.

“This Deaf Awareness Week, Bright BSL wants to change that, by opening up our fun and engaging sign language lessons to everyone, for free.”

Bright BSL is available to download for free on Google Play and the App Store.

Note: The author of this article also created a company press release upon which this piece is based.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is an award-winning Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.