Sanja Tarczay

Dr. Sanja Tarczay was born in Zagreb as a deaf child in a deaf family and later became Deafblind. In 1994, she established the Croatian Association of Deafblind Persons "Dodir" where she is acting as president. She is the creator of a Croatian Sign Language course, courses for Service Support Providers (SSPs), courses for Deafblind interpreters, and the founder of the Croatian Sign Language Interpreting Centre.

Since 2008, she has been the practicum leader for a module on Deafblindness at the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb, where she earned her Ph.D. in 2014, making her the first Deafblind person in Croatia to graduate with a doctoral degree. In addition, she is a lecturer on the subject of Sign Language at the University of Applied Health Studies at the University of Zagreb. She also held lectures at numerous other universities, nationally and internationally as a guest lecturer. She has published several expert and research papers and articles, both as a sole contributor and as a co-author.

From 2013 until 2022, Dr. Sanja Tarczay served as the president of the European Deafblind Union (EDbU), and she was also a member of the Grant-making committee of the Disability Rights Fund (DRF). Since October 2022, Sanja Tarczay has been the president of the World Federation of the Deafblind (WFDB), an active member in the OPD Steering Group of International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC), a participant in the OHCHR Community 2030 Initiative and a board member of International Disability Alliance (IDA).

Her lifelong mission to promote the rights of Deafblind persons to equality, accessibility, and inclusive education has earned her several awards and honors. Among these, the special honor she received was in 2015 by the President of the Republic of Croatia for extraordinary services to healthcare, social welfare, and the promotion of social values for the quality of life of Deafblind persons in Croatia and the world.

Sanja is fluent in five sign languages, as well as in spoken Croatian and English.

Sponsored by Wilkes University