An action plan aimed at improving life for deaf and deafblind people who use British Sign Language (BSL) has been published by the Scottish Government.

The government said the national plan - the first to be produced in the UK - was designed to make Scotland the best place in the world for BSL users to live, work and visit.

It sets out 70 actions to be taken by 2020, aimed at achieving 10 long-term goals covering areas including education, employment, health, transport, culture and justice.

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The actions include enabling more pupils to choose to learn BSL, developing school level qualifications in BSL, and requiring all colleges and universities to publish BSL plans, setting out how their students will be supported.

Meanwhile, all government-funded employment initiatives and the new Scottish social security system will be made fully accessible to BSL users.

Ministers will also work with the General Teaching Council for Scotland to remove barriers that make it difficult for BSL users to become registered teachers.

Elsewhere, the government has pledged to build the skills of qualified BSL interpreters to work in specialist settings like health, mental health and justice, and consider what further work is needed to ensure that a strong pool of interpreters are working efficiently across Scotland.

A progress report will be published in 2020 detailing a further set of actions to be delivered by 2023. Future plans will be published every six years.

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Funding of £1.3 million will be provided to the BSL (Scotland) Act Partnership over the next three years to implement the plan.

Early Years Minister Mark McDonald said: "Our long term aim is ambitious - we want to bring about change that has a real, practical impact on the day to day lives of BSL users and which puts Scotland right up there as the best place in the world for BSL users to live and visit.

"This plan, which has been developed in partnership with the BSL National Advisory Group, reflects the priorities of deaf and deafblind BSL users in Scotland and I am confident that it will help us to make substantial progress towards achieving that ambition."

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The plan was welcomed by opposition parties at Holyrood.

Conservative MSP Liz Smith said BSL users would be "very much better served both in terms of education and all the public bodies which they come into contact with".

Labour's Mark Griffin said he "warmly welcomed the publication of the strategy and the ambition shown in it".