The subject of blindness and education has included evolving approaches and public perceptions of how best to address the special needs of blind students. The practice of institutionalizing the blind in asylums has a history extending back over a thousand years, but it was not until the 18th century that authorities created schools for them where blind children, particularly those more privileged, were usually educated in such specialized settings. These institutions provided simple vocational and adaptive training, as well as grounding in academic subjects offered through alternative formats. Literature, for example, was being made available to blind students by way of embossed Roman letters.
The Perkins Brailler is a "braille typewriter" with a key corresponding to each of the six dots of the braille code, a space key, a backspace key, and a line space key. Like a manual typewriter, it has two side knobs to advance paper through the machine and a carriage return lever above the keys. The rollers that hold and advance the paper have grooves designed to avoid crushing the raised dots the brailler creates.
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) is an American non-profit organization for people with vision loss. AFB's objectives include conducting research to advance change, promoting knowledge and understanding, and shaping policies and practices.
The Lawrence School, Lovedale, is a co-educational private boarding school located at Lovedale, which is a little town on the Nilgiri Mountains in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Sri Rakum School for the Blind is a school for the visually impaired in Bangalore, India. It offers free education to blind students from kindergarten to post-graduation. The training imparted includes reading and writing through Braille and mobility training for totally blind children. Pre-school-aged pupils with blindness are trained early to prepare them for their eventual completion of school, college, and vocational education.
Alampur Saibaba Goud is an Indian ophthalmologist and founder-chairman of the Devnar Foundation for the Blind. He is also a social entrepreneur, and active in the voluntary organization at Secunderabad in Telangana, a state of India. He works in the field of providing aid to visually challenged and visually disabled children in India.
Telesensory Systems, Inc. (TSI) was an American corporation that invented, designed, manufactured, and distributed technological aids for blind and low vision persons. TSI's products helped visually impaired people work independently with computers and with ordinary printed materials.
A sighted child who is reading at a basic level should be able to understand common words and answer simple questions about the information presented. They should also have enough fluency to get through the material in a timely manner. Over the course of a child's education, these foundations are built on to teach higher levels of math, science, and comprehension skills. Children who are blind not only have the education disadvantage of not being able to see: they also miss out on the very fundamental parts of early and advanced education if not provided with the necessary tools.
The Cleveland Sight Center (CSC) is a non-profit organization that provides services to individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Founded in 1906, it is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) and serves around 10,000 clients annually in Northeast Ohio. The organization also has radio-reading and community outreach programs that benefit a larger number of individuals.
Ashish Goyal is a recipient of the National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities 2010. This is India's highest civilian award for a disabled individual, It was awarded on 3 December 2010 by President of India Pratibha Patil in New Delhi. In 2015, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
Mitra Jyothi established in 1990, is a charitable trust registered under Indian Trust Act based in Bangalore. Its aims to support the visually impaired through various programs it offers. These programs include Talking Book Library, Computer Training Center, Independent Living Skills, Braille Transcription Center and Job Placement. It received State Award in 2010 from the Directorate of Disabled Welfare and Senior Citizens, Government of Karnataka for its exemplary service for persons with disabilities. Mitra Jyothi is also a member of the DAISY Forum of India (DFI). DFI is a forum of Not for profit organizations from India who are involved in production of books and reading materials in accessible formats for persons who cannot read normal print.
Chakshumathi is a nongovernmental, not for profit organization based in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, working for developing resources for the use of visually impaired people. It is an "Empowerment and Assistive Technology Centre for Blind". The organization, which was inaugurated in June 2011, is a member of DAISY Forum of India. The organization is currently headed by V.K. Damodaran, a former President of Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad.
Braigo is a Braille printer design. Braigo version 1.0 uses a Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit, which includes a microprocessor with assorted components such as electric motors, sensors and actuators. Braigo v1.0 was designed by 13-year-old Shubham Banerjee in January 2014, as an entry in 7th grade school science fair project. The model was based on the PLOTT3R, a bonus model released with the EV3 kit and originally designed by Ralph Hempel. The cost was said to be about US$350 or 250 Euros for the Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit and some extra commonly used hardware whereas a conventional Braille printer retails starting from about $1,900.
Softeq Development Corporation is a privately-held, full-stack development company focusing on low-level programming hardware,, and software apps for web, desktop, and mobile. Softeq builds end-to-end IoT and cloud infrastructure solutions, and provides technology business consulting services, and is an ISO 13485:2016 company with certified partnerships with Amazon, Microsoft, and Xamarin. Softeq serves Fortune Global 500 companies: Verizon, Epson, Purple Innovations, Microsoft, Lenovo, AMD, Disney, Intel, NVIDIA, and Halo by PAWS. From 2018 to 2021 Softeq appeared in Inc. 5000, the annual rankings of the fastest-growing privately-held companies in the United States. Softeq company is headquartered in Houston, TX with development centers in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Monterrey, Mexico with offices in Munich, Germany, and London, United Kingdom. Softeq has over 500 employees globally.
Jawahar Lal Kaul is an Indian social worker and the founder of the All India Conference of the Blind, an NGO working towards the rehabilitation of the blind. He was honoured by the Government of India, in 2014, which bestowed on him the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, for his services to the field of Social Work.
OrCam devices such as OrCam MyEye are portable, artificial vision devices that allow visually impaired people to understand text and identify objects through audio feedback, describing what they are unable to see.
Srikanth Bolla is an Indian industrialist and the founder of Bollant Industries. He is the first international blind student in Management Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Oswald Labs is a Dutch-Indian based accessibility technology company that builds products for individuals with disabilities. It specializes in enterprise web accessibility, offers smartphone apps, and also runs a startup accelerator. It was established in 2016 by Anand Chowdhary, Nishant Gadihoke and Mahendra Raghuwanshi after their product, Oswald Extension, won an event at the AngelHack hackathon in New Delhi.
Henry "Hoby" Wedler is an American chemist and entrepreneur. He was born blind and has advocated for greater accessibility of science to disabled students. Wedler even suggests that visually impaired chemists could have an advantage over sighted colleagues, due to the need to mentally imagine the structure of organic compounds; "I've been visualizing things my entire life".
Be My Eyes is a Danish mobile app that aims to help blind and visually impaired people to recognize objects and cope with everyday situations. An online community of sighted volunteers receive photos or videos from randomly assigned affected individuals and assist via live chat. The app is currently available for Android and iOS.
