Policy paper

British Sign Language 5-year plan: Cabinet Office – 1-year update, July 2026 (English and BSL versions)

Updated 15 July 2026

This was published under the 2024 to 2026 Starmer Labour government

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fITi8R1oCgQ

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Progress and impact in the last 12 months

The Cabinet Office’s 5-year British Sign Language (BSL) plan prioritised 4 key areas and we have made some significant progress in addressing our short-term goals.  

The fourth BSL report shows that we continue to endeavour to provide BSL interpretation in vision during live streams of the Prime Minister’s major government speeches. We also strengthened our engagement with UK broadcasters through attendance at Ofcom’s Accessibility Forum in November 2025, where we discussed opportunities to improve BSL communications.  

In October 2025, we appointed a senior responsible officer (SRO) to take forward our BSL commitment. In November 2025, we shared Deaf awareness training with CO’s line managers, reaching 2,000 managers with the final materials.

We continue to work with members of the Deaf community, including the government’s BSL Advisory Board and their newly-appointed Interpreting and Translation subgroup, to support this work.  

To support other departments to deliver their BSL commitments, we encouraged them to appoint their own SROs, with 10 departments doing so. These SROs subsequently met to share progress and discuss opportunities and challenges. Regular meetings have also taken place across government departments with people responsible for BSL communications and 5-year plan reporting, where we share best practice and discuss opportunities for improving BSL communication.  

Officials in the government’s Disability Unit have raised awareness of BSL across the Civil Service by hosting Deaf Awareness sessions for staff in departments including the Department for Work and Pensions, Department for Education, Home Office, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Ministry of Justice, and the Government Legal Department. CO has also included a BSL translator on its internal staff calls since October 2025.

To support simplifying processes for BSL content creation, the CO digital team carried out an assessment of BSL digital software tools. This led to a workshop with officials from CO commercial teams, Government Commercial Agency and a representative of the cross-government languages group which is chaired by GCHQ, to identify barriers to exploring use of technology for BSL translation on GOV.UK. This work is ongoing.  

Priorities for the next 12 months

Our upcoming priorities remain to support other departments to deliver their BSL commitments and to continue to raise awareness of BSL across the Civil Service.  

We are already in the process of implementing some of our longer-term commitments.

We continue to work with providers and the BSL Advisory Board’s Technology subgroup to explore technological solutions that will support government departments to enhance their BSL communications. This includes involvement in a public dialogue project on the future of AI and BSL, co-ordinated by RNID, part-funded by CO, and delivered under the UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) Sciencewise Programme. This project started in April 2026.  

We are committed to hosting Deaf awareness training and a BSL taster session on the Civil Service Learning platform. This training – in partnership with Signature, the leading award organisation for BSL qualifications – has the potential to reach 660,000 civil servants from over 150 departments and arm’s length bodies who are registered on the platform. 

We are also working through the Office for Equality and Opportunity to encourage ministerial departments delivering the government’s priorities to consider where BSL is needed to meet Deaf BSL users’ needs.