This is a plug to encourage more people to sign up and support the cause…..it aspire to closely emulate the Welsh Language Act – another minority language within these British Isles.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Detail, in a form of a British Sign Language Bill, how all Deaf and hard of hearing people will have the legal right to learn, use and access British Sign Language as ratified in the UN Convention of Human Rights for People with Disabilities.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/BSL-human-rights/
On 30th March 2007, UK signed the Covention of Human Rights for People with Disabilities. This convention states that Deaf and hard of hearing people have a right to:
1. Access through the use of professional sign language interpreters (Article 9(2e)).
2. The acceptance and facilitation of the freedom of expression and opinion, and access to information, in British Sign Language (Article 21b).
3. The recognition and promotion of the use of British Sign Language (Article 21e).
4. In Education, the facilitation of the learning of British Sign Langauge and the promotion of linguistic identity of the deaf community (Article 24(3b)).
5. The employment of teachers who are deaf and qualified in British Sign Language to teach deaf and hard of hearing children (Article 24(4)).
6. The recognition and support of the cultural and linguistic identify of deaf people who use sign language and their deaf culture (Article 30(4)).
These fundamental principles already ratified by the UK Government, can be implemented by the adoption of a ‘BSL Bill’ (as an addition to the Sign Language Recognition presented by the DWP on 18th March 2003) and be developed at the soonest opportunity.
Yes, BSL or any linguistic minority that are used as a basic linguistic deaf cultures apply to human right! USA number of Deaf community use ASl never be a part of basic human right because there has no recognization of any linguistic minority! There is no law under our constitutional not even mention to recognize the languae rights at all. No wonder in this country we have a serious problem with lack of recognization in our language rights! Compare to British Signing Language apparently advance in better understanding in politic that help them to get rcognized of their own language rights! Lately in our Deaf community support ASL but never put ASL as a language right of our own1
Why was it sponsored by Interpreters teachers of BSL, and not deaf people direct ? Hadn’t the deaf already done a petition of its own before via John Savva and others ? There is a lot of technical bumpf in this blog, most, WELL ABOVE the heads of grass root deaf people ! but it left out the BDA’s misinformation to deaf people in 2002, in that BSL recognition was ALREADY on the books, when it wasn’t. Perhaps they couldn’t read the small print either ?