The BSL Symposium on Monday 19th March is looking really good!

We have Markku Jokinen, former President of the World Federation of the Deaf and currently CEO of the Finnish Deaf Association – he was one of the architects of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and will be coming to talk about how sign language was included in the Convention.

Also to close the event, we have a well-known public figure from Liberty – the civil liberties organisation – the CEO Shami Chakrabarti to talk about human rights and BSL.

We have also got case studies from the UKDPC (either Jaspal Dhani the CEO or Dr Colin Harper) on writing a shadow report for the UNCRPD, an overview of Sign Languages in Europe by Mark Wheatley, Director of European Deaf Union, an overview on Researching BSL by Professor Graham Turner and the BSL Bill in Scotland by Lilian Lawson, CEO of Scottish Council on Deafness.

We think we have the best people around for those case studies so we are very pleased with the way things are going.

And – fingers crossed – we may – may – have HRH the Duke of York, the BDA’s Patron, coming to open the BSL Symposium.

As more details come through – we’ll keep you posted! If you haven’t already booked, book now at http://www.bda.org.uk/bsl-day/bsl-symposium

David Buxton and Paul Redfern

Leaders – BSL Symposium