ASL Didn’t Fail—We Failed to Apply It With the Commitment It Deserves
One of the most painful things I see—as an audiologist, interpreter, and someone who grew up signing—is when parents say, “We tried ASL, but it didn’t work.” Or, “We put them in a class with an interpreter, but they didn’t catch up.”
But that’s not a failure of the language. It’s a failure of implementation. And more often than not, it’s a failure of access.
ASL isn’t a hobby. It’s not like trying out gymnastics or learning to watercolor. It’s a full language system—one that takes years of consistent, immersive input to become fluent. And when it is taken seriously, it changes lives.
I know this personally. My very first exposure to ASL wasn’t through school—it was through the Deaf daughter of a neighbor. That little girl had significant disabilities, and her parents were told to institutionalize her. They were told she would never learn language. That she would never function.
But they didn’t listen.
They committed. They learned ASL. They placed her in a Deaf school. And they made sure that the other kids in the neighborhood—including me—learned to communicate with her.
That was my first experience of language access as love. And that’s when I fell in love with ASL.
That little girl is now in her 40s. She’s a fluent signer. She volunteers in multiple settings. She has a joyous, connected, meaningful life. All because someone believed in her and gave her full access to language from the beginning.
Later, in elementary school, I had Deaf classmates and interpreters in our mainstream classes—mostly Signed English, but it was still language. I continued studying in high school, then took summer classes at Gallaudet starting at age fourteen. I trained under Deaf mentors like MJ Bienvenu and Bill Ennis. I enrolled in interpreter training programs, took classes all over the country, earned national certification, and worked as an interpreter at Cal State Northridge and Pierce College in Sacramento.
But as much as I loved the work, I eventually had to step away.
My team members could process what was being said in noisy, chaotic classroom environments. I couldn’t. My auditory processing issues meant that I had to work twice as hard to decode the message before I could even begin interpreting. The stress of constantly compensating took a physical toll. I developed carpal tunnel, tendinitis, and nerve inflammation. My arms were swollen for months. I had the training, the credentials, the passion—but I couldn’t keep going. It would have broken me.
I couldn’t be an interpreter long-term. I couldn’t be a speech pathologist either—not because I didn’t care, but because I couldn’t meet the multitasking demands. That’s another story. But this one is about something deeper.
It’s about how often people dismiss a solution—not because it doesn’t work, but because they never truly applied it with the level of commitment it requires.
When people say “we tried ASL and it didn’t work,” or “we hired an interpreter but our child didn’t catch up,” what they often mean is they sampled the idea, but they didn’t build the environment. ASL wasn’t given the time, the immersion, the modeling, or the social motivation to succeed. That’s not a failure of the language. That’s a failure of the system that taught families to treat a full language like a side activity.
You can’t learn a language in one class. You can’t give a child access by hiring a single interpreter in a hearing-only space. And you can’t evaluate a tool you never fully used.
ASL didn’t fail. It was never given a fair shot.
I went to Gallaudet after training and working as an audiologist for over a decade. I had already earned my doctorate. I had done everything I was supposed to do. But the further I got into the field, the more disillusioned I became.
As an audiologist, supervisors were constantly pressuring me to complete hearing tests in under 15 minutes, to skip portions of the diagnostic battery just to move patients through faster. There was constant pressure to push hearing aid sales—even at the cost of patient trust. It felt like a race to meet quotas, not a calling to serve people. That’s not why I entered this field. That’s not how I wanted to practice.
So I walked away. I went to Gallaudet not just to learn more, but to reconnect with the purpose I had nearly lost. I wanted to learn in ASL. I wanted to study language, research, and ethics in a space that understood the full human weight of communication. I wanted to find something meaningful again.
And I did.
Because of Gallaudet, I learned more about auditory processing—directly from a student of Dr. Jack Katz, the grandfather of auditory processing as a field. It was at Gallaudet that I first tested a child for APD outside of a research setting. It was at Gallaudet that I fit my first low-gain hearing aids—not in a lab, but for a real patient who needed clarity, not just amplification.
That moment changed everything.
What began at Gallaudet is the reason I do what I do today. The work I started there has now helped thousands of children—and it sparked a shift across the entire field. I was the first person to take low-gain hearing aids out of the lab and fit them clinically. I was the first to talk about them publicly in a parent group—the very same group I now lead in its second incarnation.
It is because of Gallaudet that people across the country—and now, across the world—are starting to understand that hearing doesn’t end at the audiogram. That clarity and access matter. That language matters. That children who “pass” traditional tests can still be struggling, and still deserve support.
I love what I do now. Working in audiology—especially with auditory processing disorder—is meaningful in ways I never imagined. I get to connect with families who feel unseen. I get to offer real solutions. And I get to lead from a place that honors everything I’ve lived through.
But my first love was ASL. And even though I can’t be an interpreter, and I don’t live in that world every day anymore, the values I learned there are at the heart of everything I do.
Because language access is everything.
And ASL didn’t fail.
We just didn’t take it seriously enough.
Our children deserve better than that.
Visual Description:
This cartoon-style image depicts two sign language interpreters sitting at the edge of a classroom. The interpreter on the left has curly hair and a visibly concerned or confused expression, with one hand held close to their chest mid-sign. The interpreter on the right, wearing glasses, is mid-sign as well but is looking at the curly-haired interpreter with a questioning, slightly puzzled expression—clearly noticing something is off.
In the background, a teacher is walking and speaking while passing a noisy wall-mounted air conditioner. Wavy lines radiating from the unit visually suggest sound or airflow, reinforcing the presence of background noise. The classroom chalkboard behind the teacher indicates an academic setting, and the positioning of all three people suggests the interpreters are trying to follow the teacher’s speech amid auditory interference.
Why This Picture Was Chosen:
This image perfectly captures a real, underrecognized struggle in interpreted classrooms: auditory access for interpreters themselves. I chose this image because it reflects my own experience. Even with years of training, certifications, and passion for the work, I often found myself in situations where I simply couldn’t hear clearly enough to do the job effectively—especially in noisy environments.
The interpreter with curly hair is me: trying to follow, trying to process, but battling environmental noise that makes accurate interpreting almost impossible. Meanwhile, the other interpreter, like many of my colleagues, could keep up just fine—and that contrast was painful.
This image is not just about the moment of confusion—it’s about what that moment represents: the physical and mental toll of pushing through when you can’t hear what you need to hear, the misinterpretation that comes from auditory limitations, and the unspoken burden many interpreters carry. It’s why I stepped away from interpreting despite loving the language—because it wasn’t just hard; it was unsustainable.
