This book was not intended to propose a Deaf-led cultural method or platform. It began by listening. Specifically, it started by listening to Deaf participants articulate what museums and cultural institutions consistently failed to provide: not only access, but recognition; not
only interpretation, but presence; not only inclusion, but agency. These accounts of frustration and unmet need formed the initial context of the work and remain historically and politically significant.

However, as the process unfolded, it became clear that focusing exclusively on institutional shortcomings was insufficient. While complaints revealed what was missing, they did not fully account for what was already happening. In workshops, encounters, and collective reflection, Deaf participants not only described exclusion but also actively generated meaning, structured interpretation, guided others, and imagined continuity beyond any single institution or project.
At that point, the center of gravity shifted.

The question moved from what museums fail to do to what Deaf communities are already capable of doing for themselves. This shift was not theoretical or strategic; it emerged directly from practice. Deaf participants did not remain positioned as respondents to institutional frameworks. They became authors of interpretation, holders of method, facilitators of experience, and builders of cultural infrastructure.

This book, therefore, documents a transition: from a politics of complaint to a politics of capacity. Institutional critique remains present, but it no longer defines the horizon of possibility. Museums, cultural institutions, and policy frameworks appear here not as protagonists, but as contexts, spaces in which Deaf knowledge may be exercised, negotiated, or supported, but not dependent.