British Deaf Association<\/a>, which cites official statistics, there are 151,000 BSL signers in the UK, of which 87,000 are deaf.<\/p>\nWhile the PM\u2019s video \u2013 shared to his social media channels on Wednesday morning \u2013 comes with closed captions, English is a second language for many signers.<\/p>\n
BSL is different to English, with its own syntax and grammar.<\/p>\n
In the message, Starmer says: \u201cI\u2019d like to wish the whole country a very happy Christmas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a truly special time of year, and it\u2019s a time to remind ourselves what\u2019s really important: family, friends, community.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom my family to yours, to everyone in the United Kingdom, I hope you all have a very happy Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Labour leader\u2019s video is the latest in a string of statements and press conferences from the UK Government to come without BSL interpretation, with remarks on the recognition of Palestine; \u201cthreats to the UK\u201d in November and the Manchester terror attack in October among those made inaccessible to deaf signers.<\/p>\n
No 10 has repeatedly insisted it is \u201ccommitted to ensuring our communications are as accessible as possible\u201d and has pointed to the government\u2019s five-year plans to improve the \u2018promotion and facilitation\u2019 of BSL which it published in July.<\/p>\n
One longer-term goal listed in the Cabinet Office\u2019s plan concerns a pledge to \u201ccontinue to increase the proportion of external communications\u201d from the department which are available in BSL, to \u201cinclude major CO minister press conferences and speeches\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When approached by Liam O\u2019Dell for comment on Wednesday, a Downing Street spokesperson confirmed \u201cthere is not a BSL version of the message\u201d from the Prime Minister.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have issued the transcript of the words to outlets and print media in line with previous years,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
Images: Keir Starmer\/YouTube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer wished \u201ceveryone in the United Kingdom\u201d a \u201cvery happy Christmas\u201d on Wednesday, despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-333941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}