People with Disabilities--Blind Persons

The term "blindness" is used to refer to "complete or nearly complete vision loss" (Wikipedia). Like many other disabilities, the treatment of blind persons in the United States transitioned from local to institutional across the nineteenth century. Many philosophers and intellectuals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries debated the role of blindness in society and the level to which blind persons could be rehabilitated or integrated into broader society. While eighteenth-century Americans primarily viewed the education and care of the blind as a matter for individual communities to craft responses for, by the 1830s state-funded institutes for the education of the blind arose in many American cities. Samuel Gridley Howe developed one of the first of these in Boston in 1831, known as the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind. Such schools enjoyed enormous success in teaching blind persons to read, write, and integrate into the broader community. Indeed, some institutes for the education of blind persons developed rich academic and intellectual cultures in which blind persons helped redefine what it meant to be blind and what limits it ought to entail. While most education for blind persons remained separated from other schools until the twentieth century, the state-sponsored approach to educating blind persons improved living and learning conditions for blind persons throughout the nineteenth century. CWRGM uses the people-first tag "People with disabilities--Blind persons" to emphasize the personhood of those with blindness over their condition (Britannica; Freeburg, <i>The Meanings of Blindness in Nineteenth-Century America</i>).

The term "blindness" is used to refer to "complete or nearly complete vision loss" (Wikipedia). Like many other disabilities, the treatment of blind persons in the United States transitioned from local to institutional across the nineteenth century. Many philosophers and intellectuals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries debated the role of blindness in society and the level to which blind persons could be rehabilitated or integrated into broader society. While eighteenth-century Americans primarily viewed the education and care of the blind as a matter for individual communities to craft responses for, by the 1830s state-funded institutes for the education of the blind arose in many American cities. Samuel Gridley Howe developed one of the first of these in Boston in 1831, known as the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind. Such schools enjoyed enormous success in teaching blind persons to read, write, and integrate into the broader community. Indeed, some institutes for the education of blind persons developed rich academic and intellectual cultures in which blind persons helped redefine what it meant to be blind and what limits it ought to entail. While most education for blind persons remained separated from other schools until the twentieth century, the state-sponsored approach to educating blind persons improved living and learning conditions for blind persons throughout the nineteenth century. CWRGM uses the people-first tag "People with disabilities--Blind persons" to emphasize the personhood of those with blindness over their condition (Britannica; Freeburg, <i>The Meanings of Blindness in Nineteenth-Century America</i>).