Haben Girma | |
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 Girma in December 2019. | |
| Born | July 29, 1988 Oakland, California, U.S. |
| Education | Lewis & Clark College (BA) Harvard University (JD) |
| Occupation(s) | Lawyer Disability rights advocate |
| Website | Official website |
Haben Girma (born July 29, 1988) [1] [2] is an American disability rights advocate, and the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School. [3] [4] [2]
Girma was born in Oakland, California in 1988 to an Eritrean immigrant family. Her father Girma Kidane Adgoy was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and her mother Saba Gebreyesus was born in Asmara. [5] [6] Her mother fled Eritrea to Sudan among many other Ethiopian/Eritrean refugees in 1983 during the Eritrean War of Independence and Ethiopian Civil War. Her mother met her father, an Eritrean born and raised in Addis, in California. [2] Haben's parents are fluent in three languages; Tigrinya, Amharic, and English.
Girma lost her vision and hearing as a result of an unknown progressive condition beginning in early childhood. In a news article Girma states, "I was frequently left out of the spotlight, unable to fully engage in a world that seemed to forget I existed." [1] She retains 1% of her sight. [7]
Growing up in the United States, Girma benefited from civil rights laws including the Americans with Disabilities Act. [2] She also had accessible technology, such as a digital Braille device—something her elder brother Mussie Gebre, who is also deafblind, did not have access to in Eritrea. [2] She graduated from Skyline High School, a mainstream public school, in 2006. [8]
At the age of 15, Girma traveled to Mali to do volunteer work, building schools with buildOn. [9]
Girma attended Lewis & Clark College, where she successfully advocated for her legal rights to accommodations in the school cafeteria. [10] She graduated from Lewis & Clark magna cum laude in 2010. [11] She then became the first deafblind student to attend and graduate from Harvard Law School, earning her J.D. in 2013. She states, "Many schools didn't know how to teach me, and I was often told I would not succeed." [10]
In 2013, Girma joined Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) in Berkeley, California as a Skadden Fellow. She worked there from 2015 to 2016 as a staff attorney, working on behalf of people with disabilities. [4] [3]
Girma says she became a lawyer in part to help increase access to books and other digital information for persons with disabilities. [12] She now works to change attitudes about disability around the world, including the development of accessible digital services: "Digital information is just ones and zeroes...It can be converted into any kind of format. And those people who develop these services—programmers, technology designers—they have an incredible power to increase access for people with disabilities. And I hope they use it." [2]
While working for DRA in July 2014, Haben represented the National Federation of the Blind and a blind Vermont resident in a lawsuit against Scribd for allegedly failing to provide access to blind readers, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. [13] Scribd moved to dismiss, arguing that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) only applied to physical locations. In March 2015, the U.S. District Court of Vermont ruled that the ADA covered online businesses as well. A settlement agreement was reached, with Scribd agreeing to provide content accessible to blind readers by the end of 2017. "I found my voice when I was given the tools to learn," Girma emphasizes. [14]
In 2014, Girma gave a talk at TEDx Baltimore. [15] She confronted TED for not readily providing captions for all of their recorded TEDx talks, including her own. [16]
In January 2015, Girma was appointed to the national board of trustees for the Helen Keller Services for the Blind. [17]
On July 20, 2015, Girma met with US President Barack Obama at the White House to highlight the importance of accessible technology. [2] She provided introductory remarks on the occasion, the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. [18]
In April 2016, Girma left DRA to take up non-litigation advocacy full-time. [19]
In June 2016, Girma gave a talk on accessible design at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. [20] [21]
In 2018, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Girma directed at the Texas State Board of Education, which had voted to remove Helen Keller from the social studies curriculum. The board ultimately reversed its decision. [22] [23]
In August 2019, she released a memoir, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law . [24] [25]
Girma enjoys participating in physical activities including surfing, rock climbing, kayaking, cycling, and dancing. [11] </ref name="oxygen-13oct2016" > [26] [27]
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Perkins School for the Blind, in Watertown, Massachusetts, was founded in 1829 and is the oldest school for the blind in the United States. It has also been known as the Perkins Institution for the Blind.
Deafblindness is the condition of little or no useful hearing and little or no useful sight. Different degrees of vision loss and auditory loss occur within each individual. Because of this inherent diversity, each deafblind individual's needs regarding lifestyle, communication, education, and work need to be addressed based on their degree of dual-modality deprivation, to improve their ability to live independently. In 1994, an estimated 35,000–40,000 United States residents were medically deafblind. Laura Bridgman was the first American deafblind person known to become well educated. Helen Keller was a well-known example of an educated deafblind individual. To further her lifelong mission to help the deafblind community to expand its horizons and gain opportunities, the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults, with a residential training program in Sands Point, New York, was established in 1967 by an act of Congress.
Tactile signing is a common means of communication used by people with deafblindness. It is based on a sign language or another system of manual communication.
Alice Mary Betteridge Chapman was an Australian woman known as the first deafblind child to be educated in the country.
Ragnhild Tollefsen Kåta was the first deafblind person in Norway who received proper schooling. Despite being deafblind, she learned to talk. The story of her success was an inspiration to Helen Keller.
Girma is a male name of Ethiopian and Eritrean origin that may refer to:
Sophia Kindrick Alcorn was an educator who invented the Tadoma method of communication with people who are deaf and blind. She advocated for the rights of people with disabilities and upon retiring from her long career in teaching, she worked with the American Foundation for the Blind.
Eritrean Americans are an ethnic group of Americans who are of full or partial Eritrean national origin, heritage and/or ancestry.
Claudia L. Gordon is the first deaf Black female attorney in the United States and the first deaf graduate of American University's law school. She currently serves as Chair of the National Council on Disability as well as Senior Accessibility Strategy Partner at T-Mobile within its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team. Prior to joining the telecom industry, Gordon held various roles in the public sector from 2002 to 2017—most notably as the associate director in the White House Office of Public Engagement, where she advised White House offices and senior officials including former President Barack Obama on disability issues. This political appointment made Gordon the first deaf person to work at the White House in a detailee capacity.
Rebecca Ann Alexander is an American psychotherapist and author. Deafblind due to Usher syndrome, Alexander wrote a memoir in 2014 about coming to terms with her deteriorating sight as well as her feats as an extreme athlete, such as climbing to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. In 2016, she received a Helen Keller Achievement Award from the American Foundation for the Blind.
Na Laga'at is a nonprofit organization founded in 2002 by Adina Tal and Eran Gur around the first of its kind in the world ensemble whose actors are all deafblind. The organization established a unique cultural center at the Levantbondet House in the Port of Jaffa in Tel Aviv. The center is a platform for creative arts, which promote equal and open dialogue and lead to social change built on the belief in the human spirit and its ability to reach out and make a change.
Geraldine Jerrie Lawhorn was a figure of the American deafblind community, a performer, actress, pianist, then instructor at the Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired. At 67 years old, she became the first deafblind African American to earn a college degree in the United States of America.
Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law is a memoir by Haben Girma, disability rights advocate and first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School.
Deafblind UK is a national charity in the United Kingdom supporting people with sight and hearing loss to live the lives they want. Founded in 1928, Deafblind UK has its headquarters in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. The charity help people to live with deafblindness by making connections, and building their confidence and independence through a range of services and campaigns. Run by staff and volunteers, the current CEO is Steve Conway, who has been in position since 2018. The current chairman in Robert Nolan.
Anindya Bapin Bhattacharyya is an Indian American technology instructor for the deafblind. He coordinates the National Outreach Technology Development and Training Program at the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults, traveling the country teaching deafblind people to use adaptive technology. Deaf from birth and blind at the age of nine, Bhattacharyya has been an advocate for deafblind individuals in the United States and beyond.
Satoshi Fukushima is a Japanese researcher and advocate for people with disabilities. Blind since age nine and deaf from the age of eighteen, Fukushima was the first deafblind student to earn a degree from a Japanese university when he graduated from Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1987. Fukushima leads the Barrier-Free Laboratory, part of the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo; the research done by members of the lab's staff focuses on accessibility.
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