British Sign Language Census numbers disputed

The number of people who said they use sign language as a first language was revealed today by the Office of National Statistics for the first time at 22,000. 

buy this image from www.welovebsl.bigcartel.com

The government asked the question in the 2011 census, almost 10 years after BSL became a recognised official language in the UK. Until today there had been no official statistic for the number of sign language users in the UK and estimates had ranged from 20,000 to 100,000.

In fact, the number of people declaring BSL as a first language was as low as 15,000 with another 7,000 declaring that they use another sign language.

Over on Limping Chicken, Charlie Swinbourne makes three arguments why the figures may not necessarily be correct - it's worth a read - and here

Interestingly, here on PDDCS News, only a few weeks ago in the anonymous 'One Mother's Diary' we gained an interesting insight into how those numbers could easily be distorted when Calum, a full BSL user, described his first language as English.

‘Now,’ I sign to Calum, ‘what would you say your first language is?’
‘English.’ Calum replies.
‘No,’ I sign back to him, ‘I mean which language do you feel most comfortable using?’
‘English!’ Calum repeats with increasing exasperation.

There will be plenty of debate on the validity of numbers in the years to come and it will be interesting to see how these census influence the government in terms of decisions made about deaf people.