The entire lecture hall fell silent as a university lecturer stared at Tigist Alemayehu.
“Can’t you read, or can’t you write?” the lecturer asked the young woman whose behavior had caught his attention.
“I can, but I’m deaf,” Tigist replied with a smile.
The lecturer grew angry and told Tigist to leave. Having lost her hearing at the age of 16, she read his words on his lips and left the hall, shocked. She walked to the university café, ordered a coffee, and tried to calm herself, though she felt like crying.
It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. Because Tigist became deaf as a teenager, she speaks, and that often confuses people. Many think she’s joking or pretending.
“I can’t hear my own voice, so I don’t know how loudly I speak, but I speak anyway,” Tigist explains. “As deaf people, we don’t listen with our ears but with our eyes. We communicate with our hands, our bodies, and our expressions. Some of us speak, others write.”
After the lecture, Tigist’s classmates assured the lecturer that she truly was deaf. Later, he apologized and introduced Tigist to the entire university staff. She was the first deaf student in the Unity university’s history.
After graduating with a degree in accounting, Tigist initially found only unpaid volunteer positions. When she finally began to receive salary, it was lower than that of her hearing colleagues.
Tigist’s story illustrates that the rights of persons with disabilities do not come automatically, they must be negotiated again and again. For example, securing a driver’s license for deaf people in Ethiopia took 45 years of advocacy and was achieved only in 2020, with Tigist representing the Ethiopian National Association of the Deaf.
Now, holding a bachelor’s degree in Ethiopian Sign Language and Deaf Culture and a master’s degree in Special Needs Education, Tigist works as Felm’s Disability Inclusion Advisor in Ethiopia. She shared her story at a disability inclusion training organized by Felm in Addis Ababa in October 2025 for all local partners.
Rights Are Not Realized Without Accountability
“We work according to the principle of ‘nothing about us without us,’” says Anna Suoheimo, Felm’s Country Director in Ethiopia, opening the inclusion workshop.
“When we work for women’s rights, women are at the center. When we work for the rights of persons with disabilities, they must be the ones leading and training others.”
The workshop’s trainer, lawyer, social worker and human rights expert Rigbe Gebrehawaria, nods in agreement. She has worked as a Commissioner for the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, US Embassy in Addis Ababa and the national umbrella organization for persons with disabilities, a local NGO named Ethiopian Center for Disability and Development (ECDD). She also speaks as an expert by lived experience, as she uses a crutch and a leg brace due to a physical disability.
“If I could change one thing in Ethiopian society, it would be accountability,” Rigbe emphasizes. “Laws must be implemented, and public institutions must be held responsible for failing to uphold the rights of persons with disabilities.”
It is estimated that more than 20 million people in Ethiopia live with disabilities. Accurate data is hard to obtain, one of the reasons being many families hide disabled family members for fear of stigma or discrimination.
Negative attitudes toward persons with disabilities are a global issue. Although laws and regulations on disability rights exist, they often remain only on paper. In Ethiopia building codes require accessibility, yet ramps are too steep, elevators remain uninstalled, and accessible information is frequently overlooked. When barriers are ignored and responsibility is not taken, daily life becomes deeply unequal.
During the training, I realize how strange it is that we often talk about “the disabled” as a single group. The challenges faced by blind, deaf, and physically disabled people can differ like night and day. Treating them as one homogeneous group means that only certain disabilities receive support. Still, one challenge is common to almost all: a deeply rooted culture of negative attitudes.
Inclusion Without Appropriate Modifications is the Worst Kind of Discrimination
Attitudes toward persons with disabilities are often colored by pity and charity. Rigbe describes how, in Ethiopia, a person with a disability entering a church is immediately offered prayers for healing and sometimes even money.
“People with disabilities come to church to listen to God’s word and take part in the congregation’s life like everyone else, not to beg or seek sympathy,” she says.
According to Rigbe, people with disabilities are often automatically placed into one or more stereotypes: helpless, heroic, tragic, an object of charity, or smiling despite their disability.
These assumptions are harmful and offensive. Persons with disabilities are not a single, uniform group. They are women and men, children and elders, urban and rural residents, people with different needs, experiences, and dreams. Until you get to know someone, you cannot know who they are.
One workshop participant summed it up clearly: inclusion without reasonable accommodation is the worst kind of discrimination. They shared an example of a wheelchair user invited to a meeting only to find the meeting room and restrooms inaccessible. Change starts with attitudes, or does it?
“Do we have time to wait for attitudes to change?” Rigbe asks. “No. Institutional, physical, and communicational barriers must be dismantled simultaneously. If we wait for attitudes to change first, we will wait too long.”
Felm has received multiple awards for its long-term commitment to promoting the rights of persons with disabilities. In 2020, its program supporting education for deaf students in Ethiopia received the Zero Project Award for innovative practices. In 2019, Felm was honored in Finland with the Disability and Development Award, and in 2018, Felm’s Project Coordinator Mekonnen Mulat received Ethiopia’s Bego Sew Award for his humanitarian work on behalf of the deaf community.
Text and photos: Linda Juntunen, Communications Specialist for Eastern and Southern Africa
