Lou Fant

Lou Fant (December 13, 1931 to June 11, 2001) was an American teacher and a pioneering figure in American Sign Language education. A hearing child of deaf parents, he grew up natively bilingual in ASL and English and devoted his career to teaching and promoting sign language as a genuine language rather than a simplified code. He taught at the New York School for the Deaf and at Gallaudet University, and he helped establish the National Theatre of the Deaf in 1967. Fant's book Ameslan: An Introduction to American Sign Language, published in 1972, was groundbreaking for treating ASL as a distinct language with its own grammar, and it became an influential text in the development of formal ASL instruction. His work helped move sign language teaching from informal transmission toward a structured field of language pedagogy, and he also worked as an actor and sign language consultant for film and television productions.