Award-winning disability rights advocate and human rights lawyer Haben Girma visited campus on Tuesday, Sept. 30, to share her life story with Swarthmore students. Girma was the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School and has received widespread recognition for her role in promoting inclusivity and raising awareness for individuals with disabilities, including the Helen Keller Achievement Award, Forbes 30 under 30, and the White House Champion of Change award, bestowed by former President Barack Obama. In 2019, she published her memoir, “Haben: The Deafblind Woman.”
The event was a part of Swarthmore’s 2025-26 Cooper Series and was supported by Student Disability Services (SDS), the Black Cultural Center, the educational studies department, the International Student Center, the Office of Inclusive Excellence, and Swarthmore College Libraries. SDS Director Andrea Vassar introduced Girma as she walked up to the podium alongside her guide dog.
Girma began, “All through my life, I’ve wanted to connect with people, but most connections happen in the visual realm or the hearing realm. So I was stuck. How do I connect with people?”
It was a new piece of technology — a braille keyboard connected with Bluetooth — that allowed Girma to read what people were saying on a braille computer if they typed what they wanted to say.
“I [started] more conversations and [met] more friends when I was using this computer and keyboard, but it was awkward at first. There were a lot of people who said ‘No, that’s weird, that’s different.’” This piece of braille technology and others like it, Girma explained, are results of innovation by people with disabilities: “A lot of disabled people grow up facing barriers and turn those into opportunities to create something new.”
With a photo of Girma alongside former President Obama at a celebration of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on the presentation screen, Girma shared that Obama graciously switched from his usual method of communication to typing so that he could communicate with her.
“Inclusion is a choice. All of us have the ability to make our world more accessible,” she said, referencing the photo. “I hope more people learn that deafblindness is not my biggest barrier. My biggest barrier is ableism.”
Ableism can be defined as a system of beliefs, facts, and practices that treat disabled people as inferior to nondisabled people. “When I was trying to get a job when I was in college, my classmates were getting summer jobs and internships but no one wanted to hire me, because they assumed I was incompetent. This is ableism,” Girma explained.
Even if they were impressed with her experiences, she said, as soon as they found out she had a disability, employers would come up with excuses not to hire her. “We need employers to recognize that disabled people are talented … and move away from ableism so we can have workplaces and schools that include disabled talent in addition to nondisabled talent.”
Girma reiterated that there are many different ways of communication, from sign language to dance. She shared a video of her signing with a student from the Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora in Mexico, where she felt the student’s hand as they signed, using American Sign Language as a means of communication with one of the few people at the event who spoke it.
The next video on the screen showed Girma salsa dancing at a club in New York City. Girma trained with a blind salsa dancing instructor, and has since been able to dance all over the world. “One time I tried dancing in Washington, D.C., and they said, ‘No, you can’t come in. No dogs.’” Even after explaining that her dog was a seeing-eye dog, they still refused. “Deafblindness doesn’t prevent me from dancing. Ableism prevents me from dancing.”
Girma recalls advocating for the accessibility of the university’s resources as a deafblind student during her undergraduate education at Lewis & Clark College.
“They bought a braille printer, they brought translation software … Textbooks were in braille. There was just one problem, the cafeteria menu was only in print.” She was told that the university was “too busy” to create a menu in braille. It was only after researching the ADA that Girma found that discrimination against people with disabilities is illegal, and was able to successfully gain access to a braille menu.
“The next year, there was a new blind student at the college. He had immediate access to the menus; He didn’t have to fight for the menus. It makes a difference in our communities.”
Motivated to continue fighting obstacles for people with disabilities, Girma began applying to law schools and was accepted into Harvard, which had never had a deafblind student before. “A lot of people asked me what the hardest thing about Harvard was. The hardest thing was ableism.”
At a Harvard Law networking event, Girma asked to speak with one of the lawyers through her braille computer. “He would not talk with me. He only spoke to the interpreter,” she said. The lawyer walked away after explaining to the interpreter that Girma was “inspiring.”
“No one wants pity. I do like the word inspiration when it is tied to action: ‘I’m inspired to make my classes more accessible,’ or ‘I’m inspired to make my company’s products more accessible.’ That is beautiful inspiration,” Girma stated. “If people tell me I’m inspiring, I ask them, ‘What are you inspired to do?’”
Concluding her lecture, Girma explained why it is so important to invest in accessibility: it grows your audience, reaches more people, and drives innovation. And, she explained, “If they’re still not convinced, tell them about legal requirements.”
During the Q&A session, students walked up one by one and typed questions for Girma, which she read through her braille computer. Students thanked her for speaking, and many inquired about ways to help make the campus more accessible. “What we need to do is actually listen to what [disabled] people are telling us and, once we’ve processed that information, we can take action,” Grima said.
