Meet the Team

Meet the Team

The directors and founders of Signworld are Linda Day MSc and Tessa Padden MA.

Linda Day is the former Director of the Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol, and a well-known teacher, trainer, video and television presenter.

Tessa Padden has been a teaching and research fellow at a number of UK universities and is a well-known teacher, trainer, video and television presenter.

Both Linda and Tessa are the Deaf children of Deaf parents, so they learned BSL - and in Tessa’s case Irish Sign Language (ISL) as well - from the cradle and through infancy. Both later went on to train as BSL teachers and to become respected academics, both nationally and internationally.

Signworld is the product of their shared passion to see BSL and every other sign language learned and taught in the best possible way, with the best possible learning materials. In the 21st century, that means online distance-learning materials.

Of course, two people don’t make a full team. To create the unique resource that is Signworld, Linda and Tessa have brought in many expert collaborators - most of them Deaf - as presenters, designers, technicians, writers and artists. You’ll see some of them and their work on the website. We’ll be telling you more about them - the human beings behind the rich sign language, the creativity and the cutting-edge technology - in the months to come. Watch this space!