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Jesus Heals a Deaf man
In the Bible a story about Jesus healing a deaf man with a speech impediment is found in Mark 7:31-37. It stated that when begged to do so, Jesus put his fingers into the deaf man's ears. Then he spit on his finger and put it into his mouth. He said "be opened" and the man was healed and could hear and speak clearly. -
1500
The first published illustration of a manual method of communication
In the late 1500's a Benedictin monk Fray Melchor de Yebra published an illustrated manual alphabet called "Abecedario".These signs were used by other Benedictine monks who had taken a vow of silence and featured an alphabet that needed only one hand. -
Abbe L'Epee opens Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris
Abbe L'Epee met two deaf girls in Paris and was convinced that way for the deaf to communicate is with a visual language. He goes on to fund a school for the deaf in Paris, France. This was the first free school for the deaf. L'Epee is considered the father of ASL. -
Oral school established in Germany
Samuel Heinicke opened an oral school in Leipzig, Germany. He believe that speech was necessary for higher thinking. He also supported the idea of mainstreaming deaf students. -
Deaf education recognized by King Louis
Stating that deaf education was "worthwhile for humanity", King Louis appointed Abbe Sicard the royal instructor of deaf mutes. This helped set up manual language instruction in all the schools for the deaf. -
Martha's Vineyard
During the 1800's a good portion of residents of Martha's Vineyard were totally deaf. The town of Chilmark had one in every 25 babies born deaf (compared to 1 in 6000 elsewhere in the US). The entire Island used a form of ASL (hearing and deaf). The deaf islanders were not considered handicapped but totally integrated into the island's society. -
American School for the Deaf opens
Thomas Gallaudet, Mason Cogswell, and Laurent Clerc open the first American school for the deaf in Hartford Connecticut . -
Alexander Graham Bell
Bell had a very large impact on the deaf community. He had a mother and wife who were deaf and volunteered many hours of teaching to the deaf schools. However, his firm belief in the oral method (versus sign language) of communication, coupled with his fame for developing the telephone, influenced the Milan Conference to ban the use of sign language in schools. He was also a firm believer in Eugenics and felt deaf men and women should be kept from having children. -
Gallaudet University
Starting on land donated by Amos Kendall the U.S. postmaster in 1856, a school for deaf and blind students was founded. In 1864. Congress voted to let the school confer college diplomas and Abraham Lincoln signed the new law. The college portion of the school was named Gallaudet in 1894 with the rest of the school following in 1954 through an act of Congress. This is the Nation's only fully deaf university. -
Clarke School for the Deaf
Around the same time as the Lexington school opened, the first oral school for the deaf opened in Massachusetts, the Clarke School.One of its first students was Mabel Hubbard, a 5 year old whose father did not want her to lose her ability to speak. -
The first oral American School
In New York City the first deaf school that used the oral teaching methods opened in 1867. The school is open today and is called the Lexington School. This and the Clarke school set the tone for many other oral schools in the USA> -
Rochester Method
Founded in the West New York School for Deaf-Mutes by Zenas Westervelt. He started a school for the deaf in Rochester, NY funded by the Perkins family. He wanted students to have good English so he discouraged manual communication and had them manually spell all the words. This became known as the Rochester Method. -
Milan Conference
Sign language for the deaf was banned in schools due to a large conference of deaf educations called the Milan Conference.It was decided by the Second International Congress on the Education of the Deaf that oral education was better than manual (sign) education. -
National Association for the Deaf
A group of deaf leaders who work hard to defend the use of manual language and for the preservation of Deaf culture -
Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan
Helen Keller was a young deaf blind girl who was made famous because she learned to sign, talk and write. She gave hope to many parents that their afflicted children did not have to live in a world locked away from society. Helen raised awareness and money for the cause of deaf/blindness -
"Simplification of the Letters of the Alphabet and Method of Teaching Deaf-Mutes to Speak"
A book written by Juan Pablo Bonet a Benedictine monk who tutored deaf children. It is one of the first books on deaf education. Bonet felt that deaf mutes simply couldn't hear and thus could learn any language. -
William Stokoe - Father of ASL Linguistics
William Stokoe worked as a professor at Gallaudet University from 1955-1970. He was fascinated with sign language and filmed and studied many students using it. He was the one who found the element in it that was needed to elevate it to a true language and not a pantomime. He co- wrote several books on it and published a dictionary that caught the attention of America. -
cochlear implants are invented
The cochlear implant is a surgically implanted device that provides sound to people with sensorineural hearing loss. André Djourno and Charles Eyriès invented the original cochlear implant in 1957. It was refined and improved through the years until 1977 when a team in Austria, led by Ingeborg Hochmair, implanted a multi channel CI in a patient. -
Cued Speech
Cued speech was invented at Gallaudet University to help take the guess work out of lip reading. It uses only 8 hand shapes near the mouth to differentiate between words that look similar on the lips. It was popular for a time as it was quick to learn since it was based on English and teachers and users did not have to learn a new language. -
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Total Communication Introduced
Decision after decades of oral teaching to combine ASL and speech to help teach lip reading and speech. The teacher uses sim/com so that both manual and oral languages are represented. -
Education for all Handicapped Children Act, PL94-142
This law opened the door for IDEA. It began special education in schools. From there more laws were passed to help children with disabilities. -
Closed Captioning
The National Captioning Institute developed real time closed captioning (captioning that can be turned off or on) for live broadcasts. This led to the TV Decoder Circuitry Act being passed by Congress in 1990. This law mandated that all new television made after July 1, 1992 had to have the ability to use closed captioning. This was a real win for deaf and hard of hearing people. -
bi- bi education
Started by Marie Jean Philip at the Learning Center in Framingham, MA, bi-bi education allows a deaf student to get the benefits of Deaf culture and language as well as the hearing culture and English. -
Deaf President Now
The students and staff of Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. protested when a hearing person, E. Zinser, was appointed as president of the college. The protesters demanded that the university choose a qualified deaf president for the first time in the college's 124 year history. The DPN movement was a success and Dr. I King Jordan was appointed as the new president. -
ADA introduced to Congress
After many thousands of disabled people worked countless hours to make their frustrations known to the public, Sen. Weicker and Rep. Coelho introduced the first version of the American's with Disabilities Act to the 100th congress. -
De'Via Art
Deaf View Image Art (De'Via) was a concept conceived by 8 Deaf artists at a workshop at Gallaudet University. It not simply art by Deaf practitioners but art intended to relate the experiences, cultural identity, and perspective of the Deaf Community. -
hearing aid history
As long as there have been deaf people there have been attempts to aid the hearing. From late deafened elders to post lingual children to congenital deafness, hearing aids have changed over the decades.
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Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
A law that ensured that all children with disabilities could access public education in their own towns. This meant that deaf and hard of hearing children did not have to be sent to a residential school. It advocated the "least restrictive environment". This was a Catch 22 for deaf children as they lost access to peers. -
Americans with Disabilities Act
This legislation made it a violation of Federal law to discriminate against people with disabilities. For the Deaf community it ensured interpreters, flashing emergency lights and employment opportunities, among many other things. Now law enforcement, courts, employers and schools had to provide equal access to deaf people. The law was signed by George H. W. Bush in 7/26/1990. -
The National Institute of Health recommends newborn hearing screening.
Thanks to the work of Marion Downs, NIH held a Consensus Development Conference that, in a landmark move, endorsed the screening of all newborns for hearing loss before the child leaves the hospital. As a result of this recommendation, an unprecedented state-by-state effort was initiated to promote the mandatory screening of newborns.
