Recognising British Sign Language in Scotland

Lawson, Lilian; McLean, Frankie; O'Neill, Rachel; Wilks, Rob

Guiding principles and codes of practice: Do teachers of deaf children and young people need them? (2025)
Journal Article

This article analyses the history of the profession of teachers of deaf children (ToD) in the United Kingdom, particularly in relation to the interaction they have with the health service. The views of ToDs were explored in relation to professionalis... Read More about Guiding principles and codes of practice: Do teachers of deaf children and young people need them?.

From barking dogs to roaring dragons the legal recognition of British and Irish sign language in the United Kingdom (2025)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

The United Kingdom's legislative efforts to recognise British Sign Language (BSL) highlight the intersection of law, language rights, and citizenship. Despite varying degrees of recognition across its four nations – England, Scotland, Wales, and Nort... Read More about From barking dogs to roaring dragons the legal recognition of British and Irish sign language in the United Kingdom.

Deaf legal theory: Challenging the law’s hearing bias (2025)
Journal Article

Bryan and Emery introduced a new concept in legal jurisprudence through which a critical examination of how the law deals with deaf people can be undertaken: deaf legal theory (DLT). They define it as “how the law seeks to frame Deaf people” and argu... Read More about Deaf legal theory: Challenging the law’s hearing bias.

Adopting British Sign Language in deaf education: Lessons from Welsh and Gaelic (2025)
Journal Article

While UK deaf education typically focuses on integrating deaf children into hearing culture through auditory/oral methods, there is potential for bilingual and immersion settings with BSL, inspired by Welsh and Gaelic education experiences.

In Wal... Read More about Adopting British Sign Language in deaf education: Lessons from Welsh and Gaelic.

Co-producing the Deaf Legal Theory model final report (2025)
Report

The Deaf Legal Theory (DLT) framework represents a novel approach to understanding and addressing the unique position that deaf individuals find themselves in the world over when navigating the legal systems of their respective nations. Rooted in the... Read More about Co-producing the Deaf Legal Theory model final report.

From barking dogs to roaring dragons: The fight for BSL recognition in the UK (2024)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

The United Kingdom's legislative efforts to recognise British Sign Language (BSL) highlight the intersection of law, language rights, and citizenship. Despite varying degrees of recognition across its four nations – England, Scotland, Wales, and Nort... Read More about From barking dogs to roaring dragons: The fight for BSL recognition in the UK.

Unseen and unheard: How the future generations act is not addressing the needs of the Welsh deaf community (2024)
Journal Article

2015 places a duty on public bodies to consider the impact of their decisions on future generations and to work towards achieving the seven well-being goals. Using doctrinal, socio-legal and autoethnographic methods, this article seeks to ascertain w... Read More about Unseen and unheard: How the future generations act is not addressing the needs of the Welsh deaf community.

Challenging Equality Law: The Deaf Legal Dilemma (2024)
Book

Imagine a deaf child yearning to learn on their own terms, a deaf professional barred from their dream job because they don’t quite fit the mould, a deaf senior passed from pillar to post within health care systems vulnerable and uncertain, and the v... Read More about Challenging Equality Law: The Deaf Legal Dilemma.

Exposing equality law as it relates to Deaf people: Developing Deaf Legal Theory (2023)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

Bryan and Emery (2014) argue that for 'Deaf jurisprudence' to develop, the current underpinnings of law that are based on incomplete assumptions need to be exposed and to do so, Deaf Legal Theory needs to be applied to particular aspects of the law.... Read More about Exposing equality law as it relates to Deaf people: Developing Deaf Legal Theory.

Architects of change: Considering your impact, identity and inclusion (2023)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." At this keynote lecture at the South West Doctoral Training Partnership's annual conference, Rob Wilks considers our role as 'architects... Read More about Architects of change: Considering your impact, identity and inclusion.

Deaf education in Scotland and Wales: Lessons from the Scottish and Welsh approaches (2023)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

Sign language recognition has the potential to achieve transformative equality (Wilks, 2020) in relation to the everyday experiences of deaf people. The importance of recognising minority languages is well documented (Meulder, Murray and McKee, 2019;... Read More about Deaf education in Scotland and Wales: Lessons from the Scottish and Welsh approaches.

The future of BSL in the UK: What will the BSL Act 2022 do for us? (2023)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

This presentation considers the pros and cons of the BSL Act 2022, provides some thoughts on what deaf people want or could have now that we have a BSL Act in place, and discusses some relevant concepts and theories that could be useful in future res... Read More about The future of BSL in the UK: What will the BSL Act 2022 do for us?.

Developing Deaf Legal Theory (2022)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

This is Rob Wilks' first lecture on Deaf Legal Theory in which he presents a summary of Bryan and Emery's (2014) seminal chapter, attempts to develop a model through which Deaf Legal Theory can be applied, and applies it to four different areas of la... Read More about Developing Deaf Legal Theory.

Deaf education in Scotland and Wales: Attitudes to British Sign Language in deaf education compared to Gaelic and Welsh (2022)
Report

Having conducted a review of the impact of the Scottish national BSL plan on deaf education, in particular its issues, failures and successes, during Phase 1 of this project, the purpose of this report was to ascertain whether there is an appetite at... Read More about Deaf education in Scotland and Wales: Attitudes to British Sign Language in deaf education compared to Gaelic and Welsh.

Developing Deaf jurisprudence: The role of interpreters and translators (2022)
Book Chapter

The aim of this chapter is to contextualise the role of sign language interpreters and translators within a Deaf jurisprudence framework. Several critical issues and topics are discussed: the disparity between the Deaf identity and the laws that prov... Read More about Developing Deaf jurisprudence: The role of interpreters and translators.

The impact of the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015 on deaf education (2021)
Report

Since the passage of the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act in 2015 the first national BSL plan has been published. One of the ten goals is that children who use BSL will be encouraged to reach their full potential at school and be supported in the... Read More about The impact of the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015 on deaf education.

The impact of the BSL (Scotland) Act on the education of deaf children and young people (2021)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

Considerable recent research has focused on the legal recognition of signed languages (De Meulder, Murray & McKee, 2019; Wilks, 2020). This talk documents shifting viewpoints of deaf children and young people from professionals and the state as the l... Read More about The impact of the BSL (Scotland) Act on the education of deaf children and young people.

Making equality law work for deaf people (2021)
Presentation / Conference Contribution

This presentation introduces my doctrinal and socio-legal doctoral thesis, which is understood to be the first doctoral thesis on the subject of Law as it relates to Deaf people in the UK and possibly internationally, exploring the possible solutions... Read More about Making equality law work for deaf people.

Recognising British Sign Language in Scotland (2019)
Book Chapter

A delegation of Deaf people met Members of the Scottish Parliament when it was opened in 1999 to discuss the recognition of British Sign Language (BSL). Members of the cross-party group on deafness, along with the positive support from civil servants... Read More about Recognising British Sign Language in Scotland.

All Outputs (22)