This article focuses on the experience of signing deaf academics working in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK. I utilise a research method previously unused in this context, eco-mapping, to explore the ways in which deaf academics see themselves and their involvement in their home HEIs and in the academic field more generally. I review the available literature of deaf academic experience in the UK before using extensive quotes from research interviews to illustrate how the burden of making their own workplaces accessible usually falls on the shoulders of deaf academics. I also show that there is a lack of appreciation of the emotional labour and time demands that such work requires from the academics' workplaces using a Lefebvrian understanding of time. I end with some reflections on the method used and on the implications of the barriers deaf academics and those from other linguistic minority communities can face in HEIs in the UK.