Meet the Team

The original directors and founders of Signworld were Linda Day MSc and Tessa Padden MA, from 2011 to 2015. In the Spring of 2015 ownership of Signworld was fully transferred to Linda Day.

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. You’ll see some of them and their work on the website.