A continuing area of growth in the education sector is related to coding and its impact on disabled students has not gone unnoticed. In the same vein as organizations like Girls Who Code, comes Deaf Kids Code. They are an American non-profit with an international reach that is trying to shift the narrative when it comes to what children with hearing disabilities are equipped to learn and create.
Founder Shireen Hafeez says the organization, from its earliest workshops in schools to the current count of working with over 8,500 learners, has always been about challenging how Deaf and Hard of Hearing students are thought about when it comes to professional and personal development.
“It was disruptive, but in a beautiful way, it was a way of taking an old system, an antiquated system, a way of thinking about things that had not evolved, and providing a new level of inspiration, a new way of looking at the way our kids can contribute to the world.”
She’s quick to point out that although the program was born partially because she is the parent of a Deaf child, she does not draw a salary from the work.
“If you're an ally, then you should not be taking a salary on behalf of a community that is disenfranchised [...] those that you are seeking to serve are the ones that you should be fighting for, and I'm happy to die on that hill.”
Any disability-focused education program needs allies of its own and Deaf Kids Code has found one in the Scratch Foundation. Started as a project by a professor at the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is a coding platform for kids. Through conversation, Scratch executive director Shawna Young and her team found out that the main tool the organization was using for auditory accessibility – captioning – was not the best or only way to meet the needs of the community.
“With the pandemic, I think one thing that we've recognized is that those inequities that exist in the world have become even broader, right? So, who has access to be able to do creative learning? And who does not have access? And how can we change that? So we as a platform, and as an organization, we're not in communities directly ourselves, but what we can do is partner with organizations that are doing the work and communities and eliminate barriers they may have.”
In Deaf Kids Code’s case, partnership meant becoming part of Scratch’s first education collaborative. From there, an ASL interpreted tutorial was created. The inclusion and the ease that the process allowed was something that Hafeez says differentiates the two organizations’ relationship from other opportunities they’ve been presented with. She credits the project’s success to Scratch’s leadership being willing to provide their team the space to “hone it all in” with very little resistance, as opposed to what she says happens far too often within other institutions. “The opposite is us chasing other institutions and saying, ‘You know, why don't you do this [create access]?”
“Those that are legitimately walking the walk, that's a different discussion. And I cannot speak on behalf of hundreds of 1000s of institutions, and what may internally be going on, but I will say that the great thing is that a lot of people who are, they're on the disability spectrum within institutions, are being more emboldened in speaking out.”
The tutorial can be found on Scratch’s website.