The community of sign language users — which includes deaf people, approximately 40,000 in Italy, as well as hearing individuals who use Italian Sign Language (Lis) for personal or professional reasons — is a vibrant one. Its members express themselves through poetry, theater, and countless other cultural forms. So when Parliament officially recognized Lis in May 2021, it was a watershed moment for a field that scientific research had made central to its concerns since the late 1970s. "From Virginia Volterra's pioneering work at the Italian National Research Council through the founding in 2021 of the Inter-University Center for Cognition, Language, and Deafness — comprising universities in Catania, Milan-Bicocca, Palermo, Trento, and Venice — scientific progress and inclusion efforts have evolved steadily," explains Professor Anna Cardinaletti. She launched the Deaf Studies initiative at Ca' Foscari University in Venice more than twenty years ago and remains a pioneer in the field.
The center brings together linguists, neuroscientists, educators, and sociologists in an interdisciplinary network of shared expertise. Its mission is to advance research and training in Lis and deaf studies — work that is essential for the thousands of deaf people and families navigating daily life, and equally vital if these insights are to reach schools, workplaces, healthcare systems, and society at large. "One of our central challenges is to increase deaf participation at the university level and in academic pathways," Cardinaletti continues. "But the foundation must be accessible education from early childhood, with trained Lis interpreters and specialized educators."
In Italy, regrettably, bilingual education programs remain vanishingly rare. Universities, in fact, have been ahead of the curve — both in guaranteeing equal access for deaf students and in promoting Lis instruction. The University of Catania, for instance, introduced Lis as a three-year course within its Linguistic and Intercultural Mediation program in 2015. Ca' Foscari Venice has offered Lis as a specialized language since 2001/2002, and over more than two decades has trained more than 1,100 students at the bachelor's and master's levels. These are young people who have not only learned the language and culture of the deaf community but also studied how deaf people acquire Italian. "Many now teach in schools and work as Lis interpreters, thanks to training that has recently been formalized — in line with European directives — into a master's degree program in interpretation," Cardinaletti notes.
In Italy, bilingual education remains a rare exception. Universities have stepped ahead, both to guarantee equal rights for deaf students and to advance the teaching of Lis.
In Italy, bilingual education remains a rare exception.Universities have stepped ahead, both to guarantee equal rights for deaf students and to advance the teaching of Lis.
The ventures launched by former students tell a remarkable story of activism and initiative. Recent graduates founded Veasyt, a digital startup that breaks down communication barriers through accessible audiovisual guides and remote Lis video interpretation services. Other graduates established Lisabilità, an association that uses Lis with hearing children who have various communication disorders — autism, Down syndrome, dyspraxia — for whom spoken language is either temporarily or permanently impossible.
"Our responsibility is to spread awareness of Lis's vast potential, which remains poorly understood and underutilized, working with partners like Casa delle Luci in Rome. It is essential that people grasp what is possible: at Ca' Foscari, we are ambassadors for Lis, not only throughout Italy but internationally," Cardinaletti emphasizes. The cohort includes not only deaf students but also children of deaf parents. The work of making university fully accessible to deaf students is complex. Yet it bears noting that these young people were the first to complete their entire degree and advanced studies in their own language and will almost certainly become researchers themselves. "We are proud to have appointed two native Lis speakers as linguistic collaborators — the first in Italy to teach their own language at the university level. They even collaborated on Italy's first comprehensive Lis grammar, published open-access by Ca' Foscari Press," Cardinaletti says. The University of Catania has similarly added a native deaf linguist to its faculty. In partnership with the Lega del Filo d'Oro, the universities have also achieved the remarkable goal of offering tactile Lis courses and promoting socio-haptic communication across Italy.
Now that Lis has been recognized, institutions must act decisively to complete a genuine shift in perspective. "All professionals working with Lis — both deaf and hearing interpreters, linguistic and cultural mediators, communication assistants, teachers, special educators — must have access to quality university training that meets international standards," Cardinaletti insists. "This must be the same standard applied to professionals in all spoken languages and practiced everywhere else." The true dignity of this language and its community rests on placing Lis professionals on equal formal and substantive footing with professionals in other languages. Any lesser path risks emptying the hard-won recognition of Lis of its meaning and reverting to a paternalistic approach to deafness — a step backward we cannot afford.