Why Companies Still Aren't Built to Hire Deaf Talent | Lisa Mae Brunson

Connected Conversations · Aug 12, 2026 · 6m

Lisa Mae Brunson was born hard of hearing. For years, she says, it was just a fact of her life, until she started building for her community and saw how many rooms that call themselves accessible aren't.

In this clip from Connected Conversations, Lisa tells Elena Petrova what changed when a colleague who is a CODA, a child of deaf adults, opened her eyes to the barriers Deaf and hard-of-hearing people face in tech and the workforce. What started as a town hall in her living room grew into one of the largest Deaf-in-tech communities around, and a hard lesson came with it: most companies simply…