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We compared everyday language input to young congenitally-blind children with no addi- tional disabilities (N=15, 6–30 mo., M:16 mo.) and demographically-matched sighted peers (N=15, 6–31 mo., M:16 mo.). By studying whether the language input of blind children differs from their sighted peers, we aimed to determine whether, in principle, the language acquisition patterns observed in blind and sighted children could be explained by aspects of the speech they hear. Children wore LENA recorders to capture the auditory language environment in their homes. Speech in these recordings was then analyzed with a mix of automated and manually-transcribed measures across various subsets and dimensions of language input. These included measures of quantity (adult words), interaction (conversational turns and child-directed speech), linguistic properties (lexical diversity and mean length of utterance), and conceptual features (talk centered around the here-and-now; talk focused on visual referents that would be inaccessible to the blind but not sighted children). Overall, we found broad similarity across groups in speech quantitative, interactive, and linguistic properties. The only exception was that blind children’s language environments contained slightly but significantly more talk about past/future/hypothetical events than sighted children’s input; both groups received equiva- lent quantities of “visual” speech input. The findings challenge the notion that blind children’s lan- guage input diverges substantially from sighted children’s; while the input is highly variable across children, it is not systematically so across groups, across nearly all measures. The findings suggest instead that blind children and sighted children alike receive input that readily supports their language development, with open questions remaining regarding how this input may be differentially leveraged by language learners in early childhood. 

As researchers who rely on federal funding and community participation, we have an obligation to return scientific knowledge to the community. Our outreach goals are to share information about language development and sensory impairments, introduce language science to future scientists, distribute scientific results accessibly, and illuminate the breadth of what science and scientists look like. We seek to achieve this in two ways: by sharing about language science beyond the ivory tower through short videos on social media and easy-to-read articles on our blog, and through educational outreach. For the latter, in recent efforts we designed and implemented after-school programming for young public schoolchildren, targeting early negative attitudes about STEM abilities. We presented profiles of underrepresented scientists in a range of fields, including language science, and discussed language modalities using observation games to help children appreciate science as a creative process of questions and failure – something they could do, not just “others” who do not look like them. We used the Draw-a-Scientist Task to assess our impact: children’s drawings were more representative after our program. In this article, we explore our missteps, difficulties, and successes.