A Sign of Accessibility - SLC adopts BSL

At SLC we are committed to ensuring that the information and guidance we produce to support students through their student finance journey is accessible to all.  This includes looking at things such as layout, colour, structure and language.

We have embedded the translation of all our films into British Sign Language as part of our production process and there are now 24 films available for the 18/19 academic year available in BSL. These cover all aspects of student finance for undergraduate student finance, Postgraduate Master’s and Doctoral funding, as well as for the many practitioners that we support across England. 

To do this we work with a deaf signer and their accompanied interpreter to make sure that the films we produce are of a high quality, are easy to understand and contain all the necessary information that this customer group needs to support their application or the repayment of their loan. 

 The British Deaf Association, believe that 127, 000 people in England use BSL and 73, 000 of those are deaf (www.bda.org.uk). Data from the ndcs.org.uk indicates that 56% of deaf school leavers in England go on to study at a UK Higher Education institution and 14% go onto Further Education.  In the last year the 17/18 videos have been viewed over 7, 500 times.

Gregor Dewar, Multimedia Editor said: “Embedding the translation of our film resources into British Sign Language  as part of our day-today process demonstrates that we are committed to providing clear, accessible and easy to understand information to all our customers.”

Customers with hearing difficulties can contact Student Finance England via Textphone service, Minicom and we also support Typetalk customers too.

You can find the #StudentFinanceEngland #BritishSignLanguage playlist on YouTube.