Turning to the back of the room, I lift my hands, then pause. Around him, seventy students sit in rows of desks facing forward. “Well, you’re responding, so you can kind of hear us, right?” Somewhere in front of me, the professor lectures us on contracts. I prefer to sit in the back, though, just in case I need to communicate with the interpreters. Celia Michau and Erin Foley sit in the back of the classroom whispering into a microphone, which has a wireless connection with the receiver, so I can sit anywhere in the classroom. Harvard Law School hired American Sign Language interpreters with voice transliteration skills to provide access to audio and visual information in my classes. The earbuds connect to an FM receiver, part of an assistive listening device. The voice coming through my earbuds sounds scratchy. The following is excerpted from Haben Girma’s new memoir “Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law.” More information on Haben and her memoir is available here.
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