“Touching the light”: the invention of literacy for the blind

Philosophers, physicians and oculists had long investigated the capacities and consciousness of the blind, particularly in the context of debates on perception and understanding, but certain less “scientific” associations pertaining to blindness, derived from the Old Testament and Greek legend, shaped assumptions on the blind person’s educability. Hence, the first attempts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to devise methods for the blind to read and write remained isolated experiments and aroused limited interest. Diderot’s 1749 essay, Lettres sur les aveugles a l’usage de de ceux qui voient, did much to demystify blindness and inspired interest in engaging the blind in intellectual, artistic and professional life. Tutors to blind members of the elite first developed methods of reading and writing for the blind, as they had done for the sighted, but Valentin Hauy, a linguist in Paris, is credited with the first book in relief. He obtained sufficient support to establish the Institut des Jeunes Av...