Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what British Sign Language (BSL) standards are being used in (a) government and (b) public services in the commissioning of BSL AI.

Providing BSL translations of pre-recorded audio and video content is a WCAG 2.2 AAA criterion. As outlined in the Government Service Standard, all digital government services must as a minimum meet Level AA. AAA is best practice.

Current best practice guidance for use of BSL in digital public services advises that BSL videos are independently assured by a Deaf-led BSL supplier.

We are not aware of any digital public services currently using AI generated BSL content. No specific accessibility standards for this use case of AI are currently applied and would be guided by both the government’s Data Ethics Framework and Service Standard.