Deaf and blind, she settled for nothing less than Harvard Law School: A woman's journey from darkness to success and what we can learn from her

At Harvard Law School, the usual rhythm of casebooks and classroom debate had to be rebuilt around Haben Girma. Readings arrived digitally, a Braille display carried the words under her fingertips, and voice transliterators in the back of the room turned discussion into something she could follow in real time. That kind of improvisation was not a side note in her education; it was the condition that made it possible. In 2013, Girma graduated as the first deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School, a milestone now anchored in Harvard’s own records and in Girma’s biography. Scroll down to read more...Girma’s story begins in Oakland, California, in an Eritrean immigrant family. Sources from the American Foundation for the Blind and Harvard’s own profile describe her as deaf and blind from early life, with enough residual vision and hearing as a child to navigate the world in fragments before those senses diminished further over time. That meant learning early to improvise, to read rooms differently, and to treat access tools not as extras but as part of daily life. She attended mainstream public school, learned braille, and grew up with the kind of support and accommodation that many deafblind children never receive.That contrast matters. Girma has often described herself as someone shaped as much by access as by struggle. Her family background, her schooling, and the presence of assistive technology gave her a path that allowed talent to surface. The point of her story is not that she succeeded despite support. It is that support made success visible.When Girma arrived at Harvard Law, she entered a place that had never had a deafblind student before. Harvard says she was the first deafblind student to attend HLS, and it was up to her to help build the practical architecture of participation. She used digital readings and a braille display, and she devised a system in which voice transliterators would narrate classroom discussion into her earphones, letting her keep pace with the quick, back-and-forth logic of the Socratic method. She also paired a Bluetooth keyboard with her braille display so people could type directly to her in louder settings.That was more than a clever workaround. It was a quiet argument about what institutions owe students who do not fit the default model. Girma’s Harvard years showed that accessibility is not a charitable add-on; it is the infrastructure that allows competence, curiosity and ambition to be seen in the first place.Girma’s legal career followed a straight line from personal necessity to public advocacy. After law school, she joined Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley as a Skadden Fellow and later worked there as a staff attorney. DRA notes that she helped increase access to technology for people with disabilities and worked on the case National Federation of the Blind v. Scribd, one of the key cases arguing that the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to virtual businesses. She left DRA in 2016 to focus on access and inclusion work full-time. Her visibility widened quickly. The White House named her a Champion of Change in 2013, highlighting her work on behalf of students with disabilities. Harvard and other profiles also note that she later became a public speaker and access advocate whose career centered on removing barriers, especially where technology and education meet.In 2019, Girma published her memoir, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law. Her own site and DRA both identify it as her first book, and the publisher frames it as the story of how she moved from isolation to the world stage. The memoir did more than package a personal narrative. It gave readers a clear view of how mobility, communication, travel and education change when the world is built with blind spots of its own.That visibility has helped shift the public language around disability. Girma has repeatedly pushed back against the idea that disabled people exist for inspiration alone. Her work instead insists on something more demanding and more useful: access, dignity and design that expects disabled people to participate fully.The reason Haben Girma’s name keeps resurfacing is not simply that she broke a record at Harvard Law. It is that she exposed how often institutions still mistake unfamiliarity for inability. Her life suggests a sharper lesson: when schools, workplaces and public systems are designed with disabled people in mind, talent stops being exceptional and starts being ordinary. That is the real power of her story. It is not only about one woman’s ascent. It is about how much stronger the rest of us become when access is treated as the baseline.