history of the blind

history of the blind, the experience of persons affected by blindness and the development of blind education and organization through time.

The history of the blind is difficult to chart. There are few examples before the 19th century of sustained organized efforts by the blind to act in concert to achieve collective goals, and prior to the 18th century the history of the blind is atomistic, consisting of stories of protagonists in religious and secular stories who weave in and out of popular consciousness, serve as object lessons, or provide inspiration to the sighted. What is left to the historian is a collection of biographies of “extraordinary” individuals, from Homer to Helen Keller, Louis Braille to Jorge Luis Borges, which provides little in the way of a narrative thread that one can pull together to create a tapestry of blind history. The negative historical assumption is of the blind as objects of charity rather than active agents in history. Occasionally, the blind could be found clustered in certain state- or church-sanctioned professions or guilds, but in large part blindness was assumed to be a ticket to misery, a curse, or a sentence to second-class status.

The blind, in truth, occupy no greater or lesser a place in history commensurate to their numbers in the general population. There are historical examples of blind teachers, soldiers, religious and secular leaders, scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, and a variety of other professionals. There are, as with the sighted, countless blind who lived out their lives in quiet obscurity. Thus, it can be said that while history offers a pantheon of blind individuals, there exists nothing unique to blind people that is unknown to the sighted. Even so, since the 19th century the blind have made concerted efforts to come together to improve their situation, to share strategies of success, and to have a voice in society, rather than to be objects of curiosity and speculation.

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The blind in the ancient world

It has long been assumed that in the ancient world the blind enjoyed few opportunities and lived out their days in penury as beggars or as wards of their families in the absence of any systematic state or government assistance. Historical knowledge of the lives of blind people in the premodern Western world is extremely limited, and it is strongly influenced by literary or religious texts. Traditional interpretations of classical literary representations hold that blindness is a punishment for social or religious transgressions or, alternatively, is the price one pays to gain spiritual vision and insight. Oedipus is often cited as an example of the former, while Tiresias may be seen as an example of the latter.

References to blind persons in Classical Greek literature describe blindness as occurring through accident, through warfare, or as punishment for social or religious transgressions. Today it is known, however, that only a very small number of cases of blindness result from accidents, and there is no evidence to support the idea that accidents would have been a major cause of blindness for those living in ancient Greece or Rome. With so few examples to draw on, most of which falsely portray blindness as occurring from accident, literary sources do not provide adequate evidence on which to base broad assumptions about either how the blind lived or how the blind were popularly perceived as a class by their contemporaries.

Religious texts of the Jewish and Christian traditions similarly provide little knowledge of actual blind people during the centuries on either side of Jesus’ birth. Biblical scholars debate whether blindness is to be interpreted in either spiritual or corporeal terms. Some New Testament scholars believe, for example, that depictions of Jesus healing the blind are meant to be seen as curing spiritual blindness, not physical blindness. Nonetheless, ancient and medieval depictions of the blind as either sinners or saints persisted into the modern era in the West and continued to be the subjects of religious and philosophical inquiry.

Although the Greek poet Homer is often assumed to be blind, there is no evidence of whether or not he could see. Homer’s epic poem Odyssey does, however, feature the blind poet Demodocus, who is sometimes considered a Homeric self-portrait. The names of a handful of other blind storytellers survive in Western literature, such as Ossian (Oisín), a Celtic warrior and son of Fingal, the 3rd-century-ce king of Morven; and Turlough O’Carolan (1670–1738), a harpist-composer who was considered the last of Ireland’s bards. Well-known blind scholars of the early Christian era include Didymus the Blind (c. 313–398), a theologian in Alexandria. Didymus invented a means of reading that used carved wooden letters, and he taught St. Jerome, who was widely known for the Vulgate, his Latin translation of the Bible. In the 6th century St. Hervé (Harvey) established a monastery in Brittany, which later became a shrine for blind musicians. Born in what is today Syria, al-Maʿarrī (973–1057) became a preeminent poet after experiencing a childhood disease that damaged his vision. His poetry transcended the topics of love and war and reflected a skeptical view of the world. Other important blind figures include Prospero Fagnani, an influential 17th-century Italian canonical scholar, and the English poet, pamphleteer, and historian John Milton (1608–74), best known for the epic poem Paradise Lost (originally issued in 1667), which he wrote after having lost his sight.

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The blind during the Enlightenment

During the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe, philosophers introduced new questions about blindness and the nature of the blind, moving the conversation away from strictly spiritual questions toward rational interpretations of understanding and knowledge. Scholars debated whether or not the blind were more likely to be atheists as a result of their presumed bitterness against God over their condition. Others argued that the blind were closer to God, as they were spared the burden of earthly distractions because of their blindness. English philosopher John Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), considered the question of whether a person born blind who became sighted would be able to recognize objects previously known only by touch. Locke asserted that newly sighted people would not be able to understand the world using their new vision. Anglican bishop, philosopher, and scientist George Berkeley disagreed with Locke, arguing in An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) that what one saw with the eye was merely the inference, not the essence, of a thing. The question was a favourite among philosophers long after Locke, as the rhetorical scenario allowed speculation as to the nature of learning and understanding.

The debate was not merely rhetorical to the blind, however, as there were direct implications as to whether or not the blind could or should be educated in reading and writing and the classics. If sight was required to understand the essence of a thing, as Locke argued, then educating the blind was a futile enterprise. If understanding was generated from within, as Berkeley argued, then there was no reason a blind person could not learn as well as the sighted.

English mathematician Nicholas Saunderson (1682–1739) was someone who lived that debate. Having lost his sight at the age of one from smallpox, Saunderson went to the University of Cambridge to study mathematics, although he did not attend the university as a student. Rather, he used the library and tutored others in mathematics and Newtonian physics. In 1711 Saunderson became the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, despite his lack of formal credentials. Saunderson inherited the chair from Anglican priest and mathematician William Whiston, himself having followed Sir Isaac Newton. Newton was acquainted with Saunderson and felt that Saunderson was one of few scholars who truly understood the ideas expressed in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687).

Education and the blind

French philosopher Denis Diderot penned one of the first treatises to include significant discussion of the blind and education with his “Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who Can See” (1749). The essay suggested that the sense of touch could be honed for reading in blind persons, foreshadowing the 19th-century invention of the Braille writing system. Diderot included a section on Saunderson and emphasized the role of sensory experience in human accomplishment, espousing the idea that the ability to see was not central to the ability to understand and reason. Another influence on Diderot’s philosophy of the blind was Parisian music sensation Melanie de Salignac, who had devised a tactile form of print to both read music and correspond with friends. Diderot saw de Salignac as an example of what was possible, and he argued that the blind could be educated so long as the educator focused on what skills the blind person possessed and not on the lack of sight. As one of the most-influential philosophers of the French Enlightenment, Diderot provided a philosophical foundation for the education of the blind.

In 1784 French calligraphy professor Valentin Haüy opened the first school for the blind in Paris. Haüy had been influenced by Charles-Michel, abbé de l’Épée, who had opened the first public school for the deaf in the 1770s. Haüy was inspired by a talented blind Austrian pianist, Maria Theresia von Paradis. Von Paradis showed Haüy the tactile alphabet she had developed, which she used to read and write. Von Paradis had been corresponding with a blind German man, Johann-Ludwig Weissenburg, who in turn had taught other blind students the finger alphabet that the two had used to write to one another. Haüy appreciated that the blind could learn by reading with their fingers, and he developed a raised alphabet system to teach his students. Haüy’s methods would become the model adopted by educators of the blind for the next half century. Raised Roman letters were very inefficient to read, however, and Haüy wanted a system that looked attractive to the sighted as much as he was interested in what actually worked for the blind.

The conflict between what the sighted educators asserted the blind needed and what the blind themselves insisted really worked became the central organizing force of blind people in the two centuries that followed. By the early 19th century, several schools had appeared in Britain, including in Liverpool (1791), Edinburgh (1793), and Bristol (1793). Those schools were developed along English trade-school models, where students were taught a trade rather than to read and write. Johann Wilhelm Klein founded a school for the blind in Vienna in 1804. Klein believed that blind students should be integrated into the classroom with their sighted peers. Those three models—Haüy, English trade schools, and Klein in Vienna—drove the debate for the next century about what blind children should learn. Some educators believed that it was better to teach a trade so that the blind could support themselves as adults, while others asserted that a classical education would propel the blind into more-esteemed professions as well as provide examples of the potential of the human capacity for learning.

Just as the blind sparked a debate among Enlightenment philosophers over the nature of understanding in the 17th and 18th centuries, social reformers of the 19th century argued over the degree to which the blind could be “rehabilitated” or trained to take their place in the broader community as contributing citizens. American educator Samuel Gridley Howe, who in Boston in 1831 opened the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind (later known as the Perkins School for the Blind)—the second school of its kind in the United States—argued that the blind could be educated and trained to become independent members of society, earning their own way in the world.

Howe’s school became a model for schools all around the United States. In part, Howe’s success derived from his famous pupils. Laura Bridgman, a deaf and blind girl, entered Howe’s school in 1837. Howe wanted to prove that anyone could learn to read and write, and he set out to teach Bridgman language through finger spelling and raised type. Bridgman eventually gained fame nationally and internationally for her mastery of communication with finger spelling and the written word.

Most schools for the blind that were subsequently established in the United States were state funded, marking a change from the education of the blind as a charitable enterprise to an entitlement paid for with tax dollars. Blind children continued to be educated at residential schools, apart from sighted children, until well into the 20th century. By the 1920s educators and blind advocates had begun to argue forcibly that the blind ought to attend school with their sighted peers. By 1970 that idea formed the basis for a movement known as mainstreaming. With the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975 (the forerunner of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] of 1990), the mainstreaming of blind children became a right. Schools for the blind diminished in importance in favour of integration of the blind with the sighted.

The blind organize

Much of the debate about the abilities of the blind in the years from Diderot to Howe occurred among the sighted. The actual voices of the blind were not part of that debate. However, the advent of schools and institutes for the blind afforded the blind an opportunity to organize as a group for their own interests. The blind were able to talk to one another and learn strategies of success for living as a blind person. Schools and institutes served as hothouses for the development of and experimentation with new devices and systems of writing.

The development of Braille

Louis Braille, a student at the Royal Institute for the Blind (National Institute for Blind Children) in Paris in the 1820s, took a raised-dot system of code brought to the school in 1821 and turned it into the most-important advancement in blind education. Charles Barbier, a sighted French military officer, had invented a raised-dot system that was intended to allow officers to communicate with one another in the dark. The French army never adopted the system, nor did the Paris school for the blind, at first. However, Louis Braille reduced the system proposed by Barbier to six dots, making it relatively simple to read with the fingertips, and created a system of abbreviations and shorthand symbols that would allow the blind to read at a much faster rate. The dots looked nothing like the Roman letters they replaced, but the system was much easier for the blind to read. The school rejected Braille’s system, in part because school administrators were reluctant to replace all the raised-alphabet volumes created at great expense under Haüy and his successors. Braille was a teacher at the school, however, and taught his system to his blind students. By the time of Braille’s death in 1852, the school had finally accepted the superior Braille method of transcription.

Braille’s system also made it possible for the blind to be teachers of the blind, further strengthening resistance to the raised-dot system by sighted teachers. The introduction of Braille not only revolutionized education for the blind, it allowed the blind to communicate with one another without sighted intervention. A community of blind alumni developed, and the blind began to publish their own stories in the form of memoirs intended to capture the interest of a sighted readership. Such narratives were a combination of religious inspiration and captivating details about the lives of blind people.