smithsonianlibraries:

This month is the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.  To mark the occasion, the National Museum of American History has spearheaded #DisabilityStories—an international conversation on Twitter and other social networks that will take place on Wednesday, July 15, 2015. 

We wanted to highlight this story from the early days of motion pictures and an example of the rich history of the nation’s Deaf community. It comes via Popular Electricity from March, 1914. The story is about a series of films made by Gallaudet University (then Gallaudet College) and its first president, Edward Miner Gallaudet. (The school itself was named for Edward’s father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a pioneer in the education of the deaf.) The University is still

the world’s only university with programs and services specifically designed to accommodate deaf and hard of hearing students, here in Washington, D.C.

While I haven’t been able to find the original film mentioned, Gallaudet does have a video archive of many historic films, including “The Preservation of Sign Language.” The 1913 film advocated the continued use of sign language at a time when oralists (such as Alexander Graham Bell) were pushing deaf and hard of hearing people to learn to lip read and speak through mimicking the breathing patterns and mouth shapes of oral speech. The film was included in the National Film Registry in 2010, selected for its “culturally, historically, or aesthetically” significance.

Check out the hashtag #DisabilityStories for more, and post your own!