(Margalit Fox’s article appeared in The New York Times, 5/14, via Pam Green.)
Audree Norton, a deaf actress whose fight to be cast on a television show in the late 1970s effectively ended her career in the medium but greatly helped the careers of deaf actors who followed her, died on April 22 at her home in Fremont, Calif. She was 88.
Her death was announced by her alma mater, Gallaudet University, in Washington. At her death, Ms. Norton was an emeritus professor at Ohlone College in Fremont, where she taught English, psychology and drama.
Ms. Norton was a founding member, in 1967, of the National Theater of the Deaf. The company’s formation was a watershed moment in the employment of deaf actors, who had enjoyed steady work in the silent-film era but had been marginalized with the coming of talkies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/arts/audree-norton-dies-at-88-paved-way-for-deaf-actors.html?_r=0