Deaf Culture & History Trivia
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99 free Deaf Culture & History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Deaf Culture & History trivia questions with answers. Deaf history is full of stories most hearing people have never heard: an island where one in twenty-five residents signed, a 1880 conference that banned sign language from classrooms for ninety years, a linguist who proved ASL was a real language, and a week-long student shutdown that put a Deaf president in charge of Gallaudet. This deaf trivia quiz covers Deaf culture and its capital-D convention, American and British Sign Language, the founders of deaf education in France and America, the Deaflympics, cochlear implants and the debate around them, and Deaf achievers in film, television, sport and theatre from Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur to Nyle DiMarco and Rose Ayling-Ellis. The 99 questions run from easy to genuinely hard and are written for Deaf awareness events, ASL classes and general trivia nights alike. Every answer is checked against documented history and primary sources.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does writing 'Deaf' with a capital D signal, as opposed to a lowercase d?
A cultural identity
A cultural identity. Lowercase deaf names the audiological condition, while capital-D Deaf marks a community with its own sign language, many of whose members see deafness as a difference, not a disability.
Q 02ASL is most closely related to the sign language of which country?
France
France. ASL is thought to have taken shape in the early 1800s when French Sign Language met American pupils' own signs, and it differs so much from British Sign Language that the two sets of signers can barely follow each other.
Q 03ASL emerged in the early 19th century among the pupils of which school?
The American School for the Deaf
The American School for the Deaf. Nobody invented ASL: linguists trace it to this school's first pupils, who pooled their home signs and village sign languages with the signs their teachers used.
Q 04Which deaf teacher co-founded North America's first permanent deaf school with Thomas Gallaudet in 1817?
Laurent Clerc
Laurent Clerc. On the long Atlantic crossing the two men tutored each other: Clerc taught Gallaudet to sign, and Gallaudet taught Clerc English.
Q 05In which Connecticut city did Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet open America's first permanent deaf school in 1817?
Hartford
Hartford. Local surgeon Mason Cogswell wanted schooling for his deaf daughter Alice, so he asked his young neighbour Thomas Gallaudet to go to Europe and learn how deaf children were taught.
Q 06Gallaudet University, founded to educate deaf students, is in which US city?
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. It stands on a former postmaster general's estate: in 1856 he gave two acres for a school after finding deaf and blind children in the city going without proper care.
Q 07Which US president signed the act that let Gallaudet confer college degrees?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln. He signed it in 1864, mid-Civil War, and the presidential link stuck: Ulysses S. Grant began signing graduates' diplomas, and the sitting president has signed every one since.
Q 08Which everyday piece of American football is said to have originated on the Gallaudet team?
The huddle
The huddle. Quarterback Paul Hubbard is credited with circling his players in the 1890s so that rival deaf teams couldn't read the plays he was signing.
Q 09What was the 1988 Gallaudet protest that shut down the campus called?
Deaf President Now
Deaf President Now. Students barricaded the gates after trustees picked the only hearing finalist, Elisabeth Zinser, over two deaf candidates; within a week she had resigned and every demand was met.
Q 10Who became Gallaudet's first Deaf leader as a result of the 1988 campus shutdown?
I. King Jordan
I. King Jordan. He grew up hearing and lost his hearing at 21, when a car hit his motorcycle; days before his appointment, the board had passed him over for a hearing candidate.
Q 11The 1880 Milan Conference passed a resolution doing what?
Banning sign language in schools for the deaf
Banning sign language in schools for the deaf. Only the American and British delegations opposed the vote, and speech-only teaching then ruled deaf classrooms for most of a century.
Q 12Which Gallaudet linguist's 1960 book Sign Language Structure established that ASL is a true language?
William Stokoe
William Stokoe. He came to it sideways: a specialist in medieval literature, he had been hired to teach English at Gallaudet, not to study its students' signing.
Q 13On which US island did a village sign language flourish because so many residents were born deaf?
Q 21How do Deaf audiences applaud a performer?
By waving raised hands
By waving raised hands. Visual applause swaps sound for sight: arms go up, fingers spread and wrists twist, so a performer who can't hear the ovation can see it.
Q 22How does a cochlear implant deliver sound?
By stimulating the auditory nerve
By stimulating the auditory nerve. An implant does not amplify sound: it bypasses the damaged part of the ear, so what the wearer hears is unlike normal hearing and has to be learned.
Q 23Who was the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award, for Children of a Lesser God?
Marlee Matlin
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard. In the town of Chilmark about one person in 25 was deaf, so nearly everyone signed, and hearing neighbours even used it among themselves.
Q 14Deaf actress Millicent Simmonds plays the daughter in which horror film about creatures that hunt by sound?
A Quiet Place
A Quiet Place. Its big father-daughter scene was scripted as speech until Simmonds showed director John Krasinski the ASL translation, which he found far more cinematic, so the lines stayed signed.
Q 15In which country did deaf schoolchildren spontaneously create a new signed language in the late 1970s and 80s?
Nicaragua
Nicaragua. Teachers drilling the pupils in spoken Spanish couldn't follow the signs passing between them, so in 1986 the education ministry called in American linguist Judy Kegl to work out what it was.
Q 16A soloist is said to have turned the deaf Beethoven round to see the applause at which symphony's premiere?
The Ninth
The Ninth. By 1824 he was almost completely deaf and shared the podium with a second conductor the players had been told to follow; legend has it contralto Caroline Unger turned him to face the cheering hall.
Q 17How did friends talk with Beethoven from 1818, once his hearing had all but gone?
By writing in conversation books
By writing in conversation books. Visitors wrote their side down but Beethoven usually answered aloud, so the surviving books are a tantalisingly one-sided record of his later years.
Q 18Which author persuaded an oil tycoon to pay for Helen Keller's education?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain. Struck by her quick mind when they met, he urged his wealthy friend Henry Rogers of Standard Oil to help, and Rogers paid for the studies that took her through Radcliffe.
Q 19Which word did Helen Keller first understand when Anne Sullivan spelled it into her palm?
Water
Water. For weeks Sullivan had spelled 'doll' and 'mug' into her hand to no effect; then she held Helen's other hand under a gushing spout, and the idea that things have names finally clicked.
Q 20Which inventor, whose mother and wife were both deaf, championed oralism and taught at the Clarke School?
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell. In the 1880s he warned that deaf people marrying one another would breed a 'deaf variety of the human race', and blamed residential schools and deaf teachers for bringing them together.
Marlee Matlin. She was 21 and it was her first film; at 12 she had told Henry Winkler she wanted to act like him, and after the win she moved in with his family for more than two years.
Q 24Which political drama gave the first deaf Oscar winner the recurring role of pollster Joey Lucas?
The West Wing
The West Wing. Joey Lucas first turns up at the White House to complain about campaign funding; the president tells her to run for office herself, and she becomes his go-to pollster instead.
Q 25What does the title of CODA, which won Best Picture in 2022, stand for?
Child of deaf adults
Child of deaf adults. The heroine is the one hearing member of a deaf fishing family, and the film's backers agreed to cast deaf actors in those roles only after one of its stars threatened to quit.
Q 26Which deaf actor won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing the father in CODA?
Troy Kotsur
Troy Kotsur. In one scene his character asks his daughter to sing for him, then rests his hands on her throat to feel the song he can't hear.
Q 27Which company paid a then-record $25 million at Sundance for CODA, the first streaming release to win Best Picture?
Apple
Apple. It outbid Amazon in an overnight bidding war held online, the 2021 festival being virtual, for a film that was itself a remake of the French hit La Famille Bélier.
Q 28For which Star Wars series did CODA's Oscar-winning actor invent the Tusken Raider sign language?
The Mandalorian
The Mandalorian. He steered clear of American Sign Language, building simple signs to suit the Tuskens' desert culture, and then put on the robes to play one of the Raiders himself.
Q 29In Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed plays what kind of musician losing his hearing?
A heavy-rock drummer
A heavy-rock drummer. Ahmed spent months before the shoot learning both the drums and American Sign Language, taught by a member of New York's deaf community.
Q 30Which company staged Tony-nominated productions of Big River and Spring Awakening in ASL with voicing?
Deaf West Theatre
Deaf West Theatre. The Los Angeles company often splits one role between two performers: in Big River, a deaf actor signed Huck's father while a hearing actor spoke and sang him.