In 2013 Haben Girma became the first deaf-blind graduate of Harvard Law. Since then she’s become a member of Disability Rights Advocates, has been honored by the White House as a Champion of Change, and she even gave a speech at the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2015. In 2014 she spoke at a TEDx event in Baltimore, sharing the unique experiences of being a public service lawyer. To sum it up, Girma has been doing more than her fair share of advocating for the idea that experiencing and embracing challenges can help the human spirit develop strengths.
She was able to accomplish all this mostly due to her own amazing ambition and talents. But without a digital Braille device and a QWERTY keyboard her accomplishments might not have been possible. And since the Harvard grad is clearly in the business of doing things the average person would consider impossible, her latest check on the bucket list included something in which she’d have to ditch the technological aid – she went surfing. “One of the biggest barriers facing people with disabilities are negative attitudes – people assuming that someone who’s blind can’t do something, or someone who uses a wheel chair can’t do something. But anything is possible.”
To prepare herself for her first ever surf session, which took place in San Diego, she thought about different ways in which people communicate without talking, hearing or without vision. “So thinking about tactile ways to communicate different surfing position, getting familiar with surfboards and getting familiar with the surf communicate,” she said. So Girma and her instructor/partner used physical queues to get their timing down and push into her first waves. No fancy technological devices and no doubts.
So why did she do it? She says the ocean’s a symbol of possibility, which is pretty fitting for a woman who makes nothing seem impossible.
