Bringing Language into Focus

Language access and use is a uniquely human attribute. It shapes and is shaped by its users. It purveys and preserves history. It is how a child asks a question at the dinner table, how a student argues a thesis, how a community remembers itself.

Language creates and unlocks opportunity. It allows vision to become reality. It drives and defines how humans engage. When we talk about access to language, we are not talking about a nicety or an accommodation. We are talking about the mechanism by which people become participants in their own lives.

The assumed reality

For most of the world's population, language acquisition is an assumed reality. Consistent exposure to native language users usually occurs without conscious attention. No one plans it; no one has to. A hearing child swims in language from the first day, and fluency follows as predictably as walking.

However, through no fault of their own, visual access to language is not an historical given for deaf populations. Instead, acquisition of linguistic and cultural competency is often a question rather than the default. Whether a deaf child will have consistent, natural access to a fully visible language, such as American Sign Language or Cued American English, too often depends on decisions made by people who may never have examined the evidence about what visual language access requires.

From historical truth to fundamental right

VLA programs and services are designed in light of this historical truth. The research on visual language access, processing, acquisition, and use is substantial, and it is actionable. It can inform how a school designs a bilingual program, how an agency staffs an event, how a policy is written, and how a family is counseled.

We clearly see the power of transforming what we know about language and history into an ensured fundamental human right. That transformation is the whole of our work. It is what our consultants consult on, what our researchers study, and what our interpreters and transliterators make real in classrooms, clinics, and hearing rooms every day.

"Through our consultants, researchers, clinicians, interpreters, transliterators and programs, VLA aims to apply evidence-based research to advancing the right and opportunity for those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing to access, process, acquire, and use visual language."

That is what it means to bring language into focus.