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  | This article about a French writer or poet is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Born into an upper-middle-class family in 1803, Thérèse-Adèle Husson was a French writer in the post-Revolutionary period. At the age of nine months, she became blind as a result of smallpox. She wrote more than a dozen children's novels. She also wrote an autobiography, dictated to two different writers, which was sent to the director of the Quinze-Vingts Hospital in 1825. This autobiography was later discovered by Zina Weygand in the hospital's archives, and with the assistance of Catherine Kudlick, Weygand translated the work and published it as Reflections: The Life and Writings of a Young Blind Woman in Post-Revolutionary France. The book is known for being the first French-language book by a blind person about blindness. Husson died in 1831 following severe burns received when her apartment caught on fire.
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Braille is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone devices. Braille can be written using a slate and stylus, a braille writer, an electronic braille notetaker or with the use of a computer connected to a braille embosser.
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Louis Braille was a French educator and the inventor of a reading and writing system named after him, braille, intended for use by visually impaired people. His system is used worldwide and remains virtually unchanged to this day.
Therese of Lisieux, religious name Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, was a French Discalced Carmelite who is widely venerated in modern times. She is popularly known in English as the Little Flower of Jesus, or simply the Little Flower, and in French as la petite Thérèse.
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.
Night writing is the name given to a form of tactile writing invented by Charles Barbier de la Serre (1767-1841). It is one of a dozen forms of alternative writing presented in a book published in 1815: Essai sur divers procédés d'expéditive française, contenant douze écritures différentes, avec une planche pour chaque procédé. The term does not appear in the book, but was later applied to the method shown on Plate VII of that book. This method of writing with raised dots that could be read by touch was adopted at the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris.
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.
Jacques Lusseyran was a French author and political activist. Blinded at the age of 7, at 17 Lusseyran became a leader in the French resistance against Nazi Germany's occupation of France in 1941. He was eventually sent to Buchenwald concentration camp because of his involvement, and was one of 990 of his group of 2000 inmates to survive. He wrote about his life, including his experience during the war, in his autobiography And There Was Light.
Therese Neumann was a German Catholic mystic and stigmatic. Neumann has been considered Servant of God by the Catholic Church since 2005.
Charles Barbier de la Serre was the inventor of several forms of shorthand and alternative means of writing, one of which became the inspiration for Braille.
Valentin Haüy was the founder, in 1785, of the first school for the blind, the Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. In 1819, Louis Braille entered this school.
Juliette Drouet, born Julienne Josephine Gauvain, was a French actress. She abandoned her career on the stage after becoming the mistress of Victor Hugo, to whom she acted as a secretary and travelling companion. Juliette accompanied Hugo in his exile to the Channel Islands, and wrote thousands of letters to him throughout her life.
Mélanie de Salignac (1741-1763) was a blind French musician whose achievements in the face of her disability were mentioned in the accounts of Diderot.
The Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles is a special school for blind students in Paris, France. It was the first school for the blind in the world, and served as a model for many subsequent schools for blind students.
Frank Haven Hall was an American inventor and essayist who is credited with inventing the Hall braille writer and the stereographer machine. He also invented the first successful mechanical point writer and developed major functions of modern day typography with kerning and tracking.
The Quinze-Vingts National Ophthalmology Hospital is France's national ophthalmology hospital located in Paris, in the 12th arrondissement. The hospital gave its name to the Quinze-Vingts quarter.
Catherine J. Kudlick is an American historian. She is a Professor of History and director of the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University. She is also an affiliated professor in the Laboratory ICT University Paris VII.
Husson is a French surname. Notable people by that name include:
Pierre-François-Victor Foucault (1797–1871) was the inventor in 1843 of the first printing machine for braille, the decapoint.
Zina Weygand is a French historian and emeritus researcher at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. She obtained her PhD from University Paris 1 in 1998.