Barbara Kannapell, champion of deaf people and ASL, dies at 83

Barbara Kannapell was born deaf and grew up in the 1930s and 1940s in a vibrant deaf community in Louisville. Guided by her parents and several aunts and uncles who were deaf, she learned American Sign Language and flourished.

Even in the warmth of that environment, she was not spared the cruelties of audism, a prejudiced view of deaf people that is expressed in ways subtle and overt. A school principal once slapped her face because she could not correctly pronounce the words “United States.” Adhering to oral method of instruction, which requires deaf students to learn to read lips and speak, a teacher struck the children’s hands with a ruler if she caught them using sign language.