Sounds of silence

Language | With only one in 100 a regular church participant, are churches deaf to the needs of the hearing impaired? | Emily Belz

Associated Press/Photo by Mark Humphrey

WASHINGTON—In northeast Washington, D.C., some sidewalks will soon be wider, and buildings will have rounded corners. Reflective glass will help show what's coming on the street. The new street architecture is part of an effort to make streets friendly to those who can't hear.

Washington is home to the world's first and only university exclusively for the deaf, Gallaudet University, with around 1,000 undergraduate students. In coffee shops and on streets around the urban campus, sign language is as common a sight as people talking on their mobile phones. But in past years the college community isolated itself from the city, with iron fences defining the school's borders.

Now Gallaudet is opening up, building housing, offices, retail stores and restaurants around its campus, which looks like many others—green quads, classroom buildings—but is usually blanketed in silence. Friends sign jokes to each other. Students stroll by without the college fashion accessory, an iPod. When a car drives by, blasting dance music, no one looks up. (Gallaudet's football team was the first to develop the huddle in the 1920s so other deaf teams wouldn't see the signs for upcoming plays.)