Marlee Matlin — a deaf Academy Award-winning actress, author and activist — captivated hundreds with her words, not spoken but signed, as she walked on the main stage of the RootsTech 2026 conference on Thursday in Salt Lake City.
“When we talk about family trees, we often talk about names, dates and places,” Matlin said, with an interpreter communicating her message to her broader audience.
“What we’re really talking about are people, stories (and) lives that matter, and inclusion determines whose stories get remembered.”
As one of the first keynote speakers at this year’s RootsTech conference, the world’s largest family history conference, Matlin discussed the impact and importance of inclusion in family history.
She spoke from her experience as someone who became deaf at 18 months old and issued a challenge for listeners to strive for greater accessibility.
“Every person deserves to be remembered,” Matlin said. “Every life deserves to be searchable, and every family tree deserves to reflect the full beautiful diversity of humanity.”
Inclusion is a ‘historical responsibility’
Inclusion is more than just a “social value,” Matlin told the crowd of RootsTech attendees who viewed her remarks both in-person and online at RootsTech.org. “It is a historical responsibility.”
As someone who is deaf, Matlin said she has often thought about how easy it is for people like her to “just disappear” from historical records — not because they don’t “love, work, dream and contribute,” but because their stories aren’t always “documented in ways that make them visible.”
She added that when families search their roots, they’re looking for connection, and if certain ancestors are missing — be they “people with disabilities, immigrants who didn’t speak the dominant language, women whose names changed or were never formally recorded” — then the tree becomes incomplete and that connection is weakened.
Thus family history research has “incredible power,” Matlin said. “It tells us who we are and where we come from, but it can also unintentionally repeat patterns of erasure.”
Matlin thus said inclusion also means “learning to read records with empathy” and “asking different questions.”
“Deaf ancestors might have attended a residential school, used sign language that wasn’t officially recognized or been labeled in records with outdated or harmful terminology,” she said.
“If researchers don’t understand that context, they might overlook key records or misunderstand a life story.”
‘Inclusion also means accessibility’
Matlin further said “inclusion also means accessibility — right now in the present.”
“If we want everyone to discover their family history, then platforms, archives and events must be accessible to everyone,” Matlin said, then listing captioned videos, sign language interpreters, screen reader friendly websites, clear language and multilingual resources as ways that accessibility can be improved.
“When access barriers exist,” she added, “they don’t just prevent participation, they send a message about who belongs, and belonging is exactly what family history is all about.”
Matlin then also spoke of the impact that representation in family history can have.
She pictured what it would have been like to discover as a child that her great great grandmother was also deaf and that she thrived, married, raised a family, had a career and built community.
“That discovery could have changed my sense of possibility,” Matlin said.
Thus “representation in our ancestry is powerful,” she added, “but inclusion goes beyond disability.”
Inclusion encompasses race, culture, gender identity, economic status, geography and “those whose stories were recorded in the margins or not recorded at all,” Matlin said.
Matlin then told listeners that technology presents “new opportunities” to correct a past lack of inclusion and that FamilySearch is uniquely positioned to lead in this area because it is not only building a database, but building a “living network of memory.”
Technology alone, however, isn’t enough, Matlin explained. “We need intentional inclusion.”
“We need archivists and genealogists trained to recognize biases in historical records,” she said. “We need community partnerships with marginalized groups to ensure that histories are preserved respectfully, and we need to invite people not just to consume history, but to contribute to it.”
Matlin challenged listeners to make their tools accessible, “question the gaps in the records, seek out the silenced stories (and) invite communities to tell their own histories.”
“In my career, I’ve had the privilege of being visible in spaces where deaf people were once excluded,” Matlin said.
“When we intentionally include those who are overlooked, we don’t just add branches to a tree, we strengthen its roots.”
Following her address, RootsTech host Kirby Heyborne sat with Matlin as a FamilySearch representative read Matlin some of what they discovered about her family history with information she gave them in advance.
“You come from a long line of people who bravely left the world that they knew,” the FamilySearch representative told Matlin at the conclusion of her research presentation.
“With their hands, they worked (as tailors, barbers and carpenters), and with their hands, they chose courage.
“With their hands, they changed the trajectory of your family forever, and from those hands came you, Marlee Matlin, whose hands would one day move the world.”
Matlin reacted to what she learned in a subsequent interview with the Deseret News and other media representatives. She said she was “very deeply touched” to learn about her ancestors’ vocations and how they relate to her.