Through Instagram, BU Deaf Studies Empowers the Hard of Hearing Community

Accounts focus on research, student life, and public outreach; “All of the posts have impacted someone who is in need.” There’s one post on Instagram explaining financial literacy research that helps deaf students build money skills. There’s a story of a Boston University professor who learned American Sign Language (ASL) so she could communicate with her five-year-old deaf son. There’s a post of BU President Melissa Gilliam receiving her “Sign Name”—an honor where a person is given a unique name through sign language and welcomed into the deaf community. These social media posts are just some examples of the growing digital movement led by the BU Deaf Center and Deaf Studies program at BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Through the team’s two Instagram accounts—BUDeafCenter and BUDeafStudies—they are reframing how academic research can reach, represent, and most important, empower deaf and hard-of-hearing children as well as those who care for them.  According to the 2023 American Community Survey, approximately 2 percent of the US population identifies as deaf or hard-of-hearing, and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders has found that over 15 percent of adults report having some difficulty hearing. Then there is this striking
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