Graduation Season: Don’t Let Commencement Be the Moment Access Fails

A commencement is booked a year in advance, rehearsed to the minute, and watched by thousands. The interpreter is too often the last thing anyone thinks about — and the first thing a Deaf graduate’s family notices.

Every May, San Diego schools, colleges, and trade programs pour months of planning into commencement. The stage is measured, the sound is checked, the program is timed to the second. And every May, somewhere in the county, a Deaf graduate watches their own ceremony from a seat where they cannot see the interpreter — or there is no interpreter at all.

It does not have to happen. Graduation is one of the most predictable events on the calendar. There is no excuse for treating access as a surprise.

What Effective Access Looks Like at a Ceremony

A graduation is a performance setting, and it should be staffed like one. That means a qualified interpreter positioned where the Deaf audience member can see both the interpreter and the speaker without choosing between them — usually stage-adjacent, well-lit, with a solid backdrop. For large ceremonies, it often means a team of two interpreters who switch every fifteen to twenty minutes, because sustained interpreting is physically demanding and quality degrades when one person works alone for two hours.

It also means prep. Names get mispronounced even by hearing announcers; an interpreter who has the program in advance — the order of speakers, the list of graduate names, the school’s fight song or any scripted material — delivers a far more accurate, dignified rendering. Fingerspelling four hundred names cold is not the same as fingerspelling them having seen the list.

Who Is Responsible

Under Title II of the ADA, public schools and public colleges must provide effective communication at school-sponsored events, and that includes graduations — not just for graduates, but for Deaf parents and guests in the audience. A Deaf father has the same right to understand his daughter’s valedictorian speech as any other parent in the stands.

The practical failure is rarely a refusal. It is a calendar problem: the request comes in two weeks before the ceremony, qualified interpreters in San Diego are already booked solid for the season, and the school ends up scrambling or settling. Booking in March or April, not the week before, is the single most effective thing an event team can do.

The Takeaway

Commencement is a once-in-a-lifetime moment for the people on that stage. Access should be planned with the same seriousness as the seating chart and the sound system — because for a Deaf graduate and their family, it is the difference between attending their ceremony and merely sitting through it.

Rose Sign Language Interpreting staffs graduations, commencements, and ceremonies across San Diego County. Tell us your date and we will reserve a qualified team before the season fills.