Gallaudet University

Deaf students, faculty, and alumni use Gallaudet University (the world's only university designed for Deaf and hard of hearing people) to learn, teach, and research in ASL without the compensations that hearing institutions impose, after spending 124 years fighting to lead the institution that hearing people built for them.

ENABLE Model location

• Builder-side Interventions → Set Requirements that Include Accessibility
• Builder-side Interventions → Design Accessible Experiences
• Builder-side Interventions → Create Accessible Content
• Builder-side Interventions → Develop Accessible Implementations
• Builder-side Interventions → Iterate to Address Shortcomings
• Navigator-side Compensations → Stage a Protest

What it is

Gallaudet University, a private, federally chartered university in Washington, D.C., is the only university in the world where all programs and services are designed for Deaf and hard of hearing students. In 1856, Amos Kendall, a hearing former postmaster general who had become guardian to several deaf children, donated land to establish a school for deaf and blind children. He hired Edward Miner Gallaudet (hearing, though his mother Sophia was Deaf) to run it.¹ In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed the act authorizing it to grant college degrees, making it the first institution of higher education for deaf people anywhere.

For the next 124 years, every president was hearing, but the institution that hearing people built for Deaf people became, through sustained protest and advocacy, an institution increasingly shaped by Deaf people themselves. Today, Deaf faculty and researchers set the requirements (ASL as the language of instruction), contribute to the design of the spaces (DeafSpace architecture, developed in collaboration with hearing architect Hansel Bauman and his brother Dirksen Bauman, who chairs the ASL and Deaf Studies department), create the content (bilingual ASL-English literacy materials), and develop the research (VL2, the Technology Access Program, the AI and Sign Language Center). The result is an environment where communication, navigation, and learning minimize compensation, but the path to that result required Deaf people to fight for control of the institution that claimed to serve them. I. King Jordan, who in 1988 became Gallaudet's first Deaf president after students shut the campus down, described what Deaf-led education makes possible: "Understanding your professor? That's not supposed to be hard. So here, we make easy all of the things that should be easy."²

DeafSpace: In 2006, hearing architect Hansel Bauman, whose brother Dirksen chairs Gallaudet's Department of ASL and Deaf Studies, established the DeafSpace Project. Bauman and Dirksen co-taught a class with professor Ben Bahan that produced over 150 architectural design patterns derived from Deaf people's ways of inhabiting space.^{3 4} DeafSpace is not accommodation. It does not start with a hearing building and retrofit it for Deaf users. It starts from Deaf experience and designs outward. The designer translating that experience into architecture was himself hearing, working alongside Deaf collaborators who shaped the principles. Wide hallways allow signers room to gesture while walking. Automatic doors eliminate mid-conversation interruptions. Horseshoe-shaped seating preserves sightlines for group conversation. Blue-toned walls make hands visible against skin tones. Soft, diffused lighting reduces the eye strain that comes from reading signed language all day. Sloping walkways replace stairs so two people signing can maintain eye contact as they move between floors.⁵ Sara Hendren, an Olin College professor, described the difference: "We tend to think it's about ramps and elevators. But it isn't ticking off compliance-based rules to avoid being sued," it's asking what architecture could do if it started from disabled people's experience rather than ending with their checklist.⁵ DeafSpace received the International Association of Universal Design Gold Award in 2015.³

Research and content: Gallaudet's Visual Language and Visual Learning Center (VL2) and its Motion Light Lab produce bilingual ASL-English storybook apps, literacy research, and authoring tools that embed signed language into children's media.⁶ The Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center operates K-12 demonstration schools and national training resources for deaf education.⁷ These function as builder-side content and development interventions, creating accessible materials at the source rather than leaving families to find or improvise them.

Why it matters

Gallaudet's history traces an arc that the ENABLE Model documents: from an institution built by hearing people for Deaf people, to one increasingly led by Deaf people themselves -- through protest, advocacy, and the slow transfer of decision-making power. The question that Gallaudet University allows the ENABLE Model to ask is "When Deaf people gain requirement-setting authority over an institution designed around their needs, what is changed?"

DeafSpace demonstrates what builder-side design looks like when it starts from disabled experience rather than ending with a compliance checklist. Conventional accessibility retrofits a hearing building: add an interpreter, install a visual fire alarm, caption the video. DeafSpace builds from the premise that communication is visual, spatial, and embodied. Bauman -- a hearing architect who had previously designed research buildings in San Francisco -- described the difference: "Universal design has been about trying to create standardized environments for people with all sorts of different abilities. What DeafSpace does is it actually reverses that and is about particularity."³ That a hearing architect codified Deaf spatial experience into architectural guidelines is itself an ENABLE Model observation on precarity: even at an institution designed for Deaf people, the translation of lived experience into built form required professional expertise that the Deaf community did not hold. Bauman's collaboration with Deaf colleagues shaped a design language that neither could have produced alone.⁴

The 1988 Deaf President Now (DPN) protest demonstrated that disability communities could organize, win, and govern. For 124 years, Gallaudet never had a Deaf president. When the Board of Trustees selected Elisabeth Zinser -- a hearing candidate who did not know ASL -- in March 1988, students shut the university down. They blockaded campus gates with buses, marched to the Capitol, and presented four demands: Zinser's resignation, Board Chair Jane Bassett Spilman's resignation, a 51% Deaf majority on the Board, and no reprisals.⁸ All four demands were met in one week. I. King Jordan became Gallaudet's first Deaf president, serving for 19 years. The protest demonstrated that requirement-setting -- who leads, who decides, whose language is used -- determines whether everything downstream is care or compensation. Jordan later said the movement "changed the way deaf people think about ourselves and the way hearing people think about deaf people."² Both sponsors of the Americans with Disabilities Act -- Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Tony Coelho -- said that without the Deaf President Now movement, the ADA probably never would have happened.⁹ Two years later, activists crawled up the Capitol steps to demand the law that DPN had helped make politically possible.

More than 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who typically do not know sign language.¹⁰ Research published in Maternal and Child Health Journal establishes that language deprivation during the critical acquisition period -- approximately the first five years -- causes permanent cognitive, social, and neurological harm.¹¹ Less than 6% of deaf children in the United States receive access to a signed language in early childhood. The ENABLE Model identifies Gallaudet's VL2 research, Clerc Center training, and bilingual literacy materials as upstream interventions designed to prevent this harm -- builder-side content that reaches families before deprivation sets in. Where those interventions are absent, families must compensate: seeking interpreters, improvising signed materials, or relying on informal networks -- navigator-side burdens the ENABLE Model documents.

Real-world examples

In the news

Gallaudet University's Brilliant, Surprising Architecture for the Deaf (January 2016)
-- Amanda Kolson Hurley, Washingtonian

• The Washingtonian profiled DeafSpace as architecture that starts from Deaf experience rather than compliance codes. The Sorenson Language and Communication Center (2008) -- the first DeafSpace building -- features automatic doors, horseshoe seating, glass walls flooding the lobby with natural light, and wide hallways enabling cross-level visibility. MJ Bienvenu, a Gallaudet faculty member, described the early design process: "We knew what we didn't want, but we weren't sure what we wanted." DeafSpace gave architectural form to what Deaf people had always known but never had designed for them.⁵

A Look at DeafSpace Design at DC's Gallaudet University (2018)
-- Clara Davison, National Endowment for the Arts

• The NEA documented DeafSpace's five design principles -- sensory reach, space and proximity, mobility, light and color, and acoustics -- and how they shaped specific buildings. Living and Learning Residence Hall 6 (2012), designed by LTL Architects, features sloping walkways replacing stairs, blue walls that contrast with skin tones for gesture visibility, and kitchen islands positioned so residents can monitor appliances while signing. The design evolved through iteration: early rounded hallway corners increased collisions, leading to frosted glass solutions that balance visibility with safety.³

The Gallaudet Four Demanded a Deaf President. Their Legacy Transformed Disability Rights
-- Michael Natale, Biography.com

• Biography.com profiled the four student leaders of DPN -- Greg Hlibok, Tim Rarus, Jerry Covell, and Bridgetta Bourne-Firl -- as a cohesive leadership team. Hlibok, elected student body president one day before the protest began, appeared on ABC's Nightline opposite Elisabeth Zinser and Marlee Matlin and was named ABC's Person of the Week. Covell served as the "spiritual leader," while Bourne-Firl channeled her organizing skills to transform chaotic gatherings into disciplined demonstrations.¹²

I. King Jordan: Reflections on a Changing Culture (April 2006)
-- Joseph Shapiro and Vikki Valentine, NPR

• NPR interviewed Jordan near the end of his 19-year presidency. He described what Gallaudet makes possible: "Understanding your professor? That's not supposed to be hard. So here, we make easy all of the things that should be easy." He also noted the ADA's incomplete promise: "The employment of people who are disabled is just as bad today as when the ADA was passed."²

• After Jordan's retirement, the Board selected Jane Fernandes as his successor in 2006. Though born deaf, Fernandes had not learned ASL until adulthood. The faculty voted no confidence (93-47). Students blockaded campus again, and on "Black Friday" (October 13, 2006), 133 protesters were arrested when police were called in. The Board ultimately rescinded Fernandes' appointment.¹³ The 2006 protest reprised DPN's central demand: that Deaf leadership is not optional.
• Jordan's "Deaf people can do anything except hear" became internationally famous -- displayed as a sign at London's Royal National Institute for Deaf People and shortened colloquially to "Deaf can!"⁹
• VL2's Motion Light Lab released its first bilingual storybook app, The Baobab, in 2013 and continues to develop titles and an authoring portal for developers to build bilingual storybook apps.⁶

What care sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Care at Gallaudet involves Deaf people building systems where accessibility is the default, not the exception:

• "Deaf people can do anything except hear." -- I. King Jordan⁹
• "Understanding your professor? That's not supposed to be hard. So here, we make easy all of the things that should be easy." -- I. King Jordan²
• "What DeafSpace does is it actually reverses [universal design] and is about particularity. It's really good thoughtful design that influences process and engagement." -- Hansel Bauman³
• "We embed ASL storytelling and interactive vocabulary so families get early visual language exposure -- at release, not as an afterthought."
• "All faculty, staff, and students are expected to communicate in ASL. This is not an accommodation. It is the language of this institution."

What neglect sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Neglect is what the hearing world provides when it treats deafness as a problem to manage rather than a language community to build for:

• "We'll add captions later if there's demand." *1
• "The interpreter can translate -- the deaf student doesn't need the professor to change anything." *2
• "Families can find sign content on social media; we don't need to provide it." *3
• "We'll add signed versions later." *4

*1: There are 48 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States.
*2: The interpreter is a navigator-side compensation. The professor's inaccessible lecture is the builder-side failure.
*3: Less than 6% of deaf children receive early access to signed language. The content doesn't exist unless builders create it.
*4: By then, the critical language acquisition window has closed.

What compensation sounds like (navigator-side compensations)

Compensation describes the labor Deaf people and their families carry when hearing institutions fail to build with them:

• "I had to search months for a signed version of that children's story."
• "Our classroom volunteers record their own signing of stories so our students can access books."
• "I had to learn to sign parts of the story to make the picture book meaningful for my child."
• "The interpreter missed half of what the professor said, but I couldn't ask the professor to repeat it -- that would slow down the whole class."
• "I spent more time arranging accommodations than studying."
• "There are many ways to be deaf and many ways to communicate. All of them should be respected." -- I. King Jordan⁹

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All observations occur within the context of Deaf higher education in the United States, where Gallaudet University traces the arc from an institution built by hearing people for Deaf people to one increasingly shaped by Deaf leadership -- an arc that required 124 years, two campus protests, and the ongoing negotiation of who sets the requirements for whom.

Footnotes

1. Britannica: Gallaudet University ↩

2. NPR: I. King Jordan: Reflections on a Changing Culture ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. National Endowment for the Arts: A Look at DeafSpace Design at DC's Gallaudet University ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. Washingtonian: Gallaudet University's Brilliant, Surprising Architecture for the Deaf (Bauman profile) ↩ ↩²

5. Washingtonian: Gallaudet University's Brilliant, Surprising Architecture for the Deaf ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Gallaudet University: VL2 / Motion Light Lab -- Bilingual ASL/English Storybook Apps ↩ ↩²

7. Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center ↩

8. Swarthmore College Global Nonviolent Action Database: Deaf President Now, 1988 ↩

9. Johnson Scholarship Foundation: An Interview with I. King Jordan ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

10. National Association of the Deaf: Language Deprivation ↩

11. NIH/PMC: What you don't know can hurt you: The risk of language deprivation ↩

12. Biography.com: The Gallaudet Four Demanded a Deaf President ↩

13. NPR: Leader: Gallaudet Protest Sought Equal Treatment ↩