What is today’s Google doodle ? Who is ‘Father of the Deaf’?

NP NEWS 24 ONLINE – Charles-Michel de l’Épée, also known as the ‘Father of the Deaf’, was honoured by Google Doodle on his 306th birth anniversary today. A philanthropic educator of 18th-century France, Michel founded the first public school for the hearing-impaired in his country.

On his 306th birthday today, Google is using an animated doodle to dispel the misconception that people with impaired hearing were incapable of learning. Born in Versailles in 1712, Epee was the son of an architect who studied theology and law before focusing on charity work in Paris. During this time he met two young deaf sisters who lived in the slums of Paris and communicated by using sign language. This inspired him to change countless lives at a time when many deaf people were discriminated against.

The school of De l’Epee (Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris) was conducted entirely at his own expense. “It is not to the rich,” he said “that I have devoted myself; it is to the poor only. Had it not been for these, I should have never attempted the education of deaf and dumb.” He refused aid from the wealthy for fear of being charged with mercenary motives.

He recognized the importance of sign language as the deaf must learn “through the eye what other people acquire through the ear”.

Épée died at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, and his tomb is in the Church of Saint Roch in Paris. Two years after his death, the National Assembly recognized him as a “Benefactor of Humanity” and declared that deaf people had rights according to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.