Signing

Traditionally, with signed programmes, you see a picture of a person signing in a corner of the screen. This is called open signing.

Very few programmes are signed and these are generally shown as repeats late at night. Yet over 50,000 deaf people in the UK use British Sign Language (BSL) as their first language.

Ofcom sets and monitors targets for broadcasters. The current 10-year target is for 5% of programming hours to be signed. Broadcasters are also required to raise awareness of this service and to identify signed programmes with 'SL' in on-screen TV Guides.

Today, if you go digital, you will still get just a few signed programmes. One of the problems is that open signing is expensive to produce, requiring a signer to be filmed separately from the programme. And, of course, non-users can find it intrusive on the screen.

Ofcom has been carrying out a consultation exercise on how to meet the needs of sign language users without imposing unreasonable costs on smaller broadcasters. This has included suggestions from a working group of mainly BSL users. Ofcom expect to publish their future plans for signing on TV in December 2007.

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