Deaf Online University was founded in Birmingham as a faith-based learning community. Expanding educational access is priority one. Past failures of campus-based educational efforts are long.  Our experiences continue to lead us back to language. Signed language is the most important instrument for communication within the culture.  Because it is the medium of social interaction it is also the medium of education and self-instruction.  Nearly all knowledge comes to the deaf person through signed language. Therefore, our greatest hope lies in ensuring that teacher and student have a shared, fluent, visible language. We work to maximize the use of technology and media to support first, ASL literacy, then to build reading and writing fluency. All our teaching and educational environments are committed to providing access to literate models in both ASL and English.