Access to Work Programme: Sign Language

(asked on 29th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the accuracy of the current British Sign Language translation published in 2015 of the Access to Work factsheet for customers.


Answered by
Justin Tomlinson Portrait
Justin Tomlinson
This question was answered on 2nd July 2020

Access to Work have been working hard to ensure high standards of their British Sign Language (BSL) translations, including working with the British Deaf Association (BDA) to obtain feedback on their videos and BSL translations and to better understand what matters to BSL users.

Access to Work works with one professional translator when developing BSL products. Recognising the need to ensure the translator has enough time to understand the key messages and interpret them in a way that can be easily understood by BSL users, additional time is built into the contract. The additional times enables Access to Work to work closely with the translator to go through the draft scripts and ensure information is accurately translated and that key messages are interpreted in a way that makes sense for BSL users whilst ensuring accuracy.

Wherever possible, post-production testing is included as part of the assurance process, to ensure user comprehension. This has been more difficult during the COVID-19 outbreak, due to the pace of change and social distancing measures.

Please note that the Access to Work factsheet was not published in 2015 – it was first pub-lished on 1 October 2012 and has been amended 12 times in subsequent years.

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