Lloyd began her teaching career in Ireland at the
Claremont Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in
Glasnevin,
Dublin, in 1891 and then moved to London to teach at the
Jews' Deaf and Dumb Home for Children until 1893, when she returned to Derby. In 1895, she followed her fiancé Cecil Charles Bryan, a former classmate, to
Adelaide,
South Australia, where they were married on 29 June. He had been hired as a senior teacher at the
South Australian Institution for the Blind, Deaf and Dumb but he died in 1897 after a brief illness and she returned to
Great Britain, as a private teacher in
Portrush,
Northern Ireland. In 1899, she moved to
Tyndall's Park,
Bristol, to teach at the
Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. In 1901, Bryan was hired as the head teacher at the school run by the
Queensland Blind Deaf and Dumb Institute charity organization.
Isaac Dickson, was the supervising officer of both the home and school run by the organization. On 12 November, Bryan arrived in
Brisbane to take up her post and served as the head teacher until 1926, though in 1918 the charity was taken over by the government and she became a state employee. In 1902, she was one of the founders of the Queensland Adult Deaf and Dumb Mission and successfully organized a support group for parents. In addition, she attended appointments with deaf members of the community, acting as an interpreter for their interactions with public officials, doctors, lawyers, and other private practitioners. As a proponent of compulsory education for disabled people, Bryan became an advocate for mandatory early education as well as adequate teacher training. In 1912, she participated in a delegation to discuss these ideas with the Minister for Public Instruction, but they were unsuccessful. Because of the difficulty in finding teachers who had the necessary training to work with their students, Bryan used the pupil-teacher method under which she had been trained. Teachers taught during the day, while learning
braille, specialized articulation, or sign language at night, or before classroom activities began. In 1916 another delegation attempted to gain acceptance for compulsory education, but was similarly unsuccessful. That year, Bryan attended courses at the
Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children in
Sydney to observe their teaching methods and upon her return made some adjustments to the gestures used at the Queensland school. Two years later primarily because of funding issues, the school was taken over by the
Department of Home Affairs, rather than the
Department of Public Instruction, making it the first special education school under government supervision, rather than operating as a charity. Hopeful for change in 1918, Bryan wrote a letter to
John Huxham, the Home Secretary, requesting that the salaries for special education teachers be aligned with those of other teachers. No action was taken until two years later, after special education teachers joined the
Queensland Teachers' Union and agitated for equitable pay and a reduction in their hours. After a third deputation met with Huxham in 1923, the
Blind, Deaf and Dumb Instruction Act of 1924, made education of visually- and hearing-impaired children compulsory in Queensland. Because of the increased enrollment, in 1926, "it was deemed appropriate that a man should take over the school", but Bryan remained in charge of the courses for deaf students, until her 1937 retirement. In 1950, the
Edith Bryan Hostel, a facility designed to house and provide medical care for deaf people, was inaugurated at the corner of Free and Goring Streets in Brisbane. Bryan became a volunteer, working at the centre. ==Death and legacy==