We are pleased to announce that we are part of a major new cross-sector project focused on the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and British Sign Language (BSL).
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BSL signers face daily exclusion due to systemic barriers in service design and delivery.
AI-enabled BSL translation could affect how the signing community, government, business and public services interact. However, done poorly and without meaningful community co-design and input into its appropriate use, it risks creating new barriers and even endangering the language itself.
This is why seven charity partners from across the deaf sector, coordinated by RNID, are leading this groundbreaking project. The project is a type of public dialogue, delivered under the UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) Sciencewise Programme.
Sciencewise public dialogues go beyond one-off engagements and provide a structured methodology to engage deeply with communities. This method allows time for participants to learn about AI and hear from specialists about what current cutting-edge technologies can and can’t achieve in relation to BSL.
Participants can then combine this with their lived experience and vision for the future, to give nuanced and specific guidance to government, businesses and the technology industry.
More than 150,000 people in the UK are BSL users, 87,000 of whom are deaf. This is the first Sciencewise dialogue centred upon BSL signers and provides a valuable opportunity to demonstrate how these kinds of processes can be made more inclusive for BSL signers on a wide range of science and technology topics.
This project is being led by RNID, partnering with Action Deafness, British Deaf Association, Cambridgeshire Deaf Association, Deaf Plus, National Deaf Children’s Society, Royal Association for Deaf People and SignHealth.
The project is co-funded by UKRI through the Sciencewise programme and match funded by a consortium including: the UK Government, the British Academy, HSBC, NHS England, the Royal Society and the SignGPT Project.
We will shortly be inviting bidders to tender to be delivery, evaluation and interpretation partners for this project.
Over the spring and summer of 2026, we will be working to engage the wider BSL community in this groundbreaking project and look forward to sharing more about our plans over the coming weeks and months.