Special Collections
Blindness and Visual Impairment Special Collection
Description: A collection featuring biographies, memoirs, fiction and non-fiction by and about members of the blind community. #disability
- Table View
- List View
Overbrook School for the Blind (The Campus History Series)
by Edith WilloughbySince 1832, Overbrook School for the Blind has been a leader in providing educational programs to children and young people who are blind and visually impaired. Julius Friedlander, the schools founder, and other early leaders worked hard to inform people about the educational needs of the children. Their efforts resulted in providing reading material for the blind and Overbrook's production of the first embossed book in America, the Gospel of Mark, and the publication of the first magazine for the blind, Lux en Tenebrae. Offering students access to all educational opportunities continues to be the schools main goal, and in the early 1990s, Overbrook pioneered the development of a school wide technology initiative that provided students with the ability to access the curriculum, communicate, and be successful in employment. Through rare photographs and documents, Overbrook School for the Blind offers a glimpse at the schools role in reaching out to people who are blind and it showcases how Overbrook has helped thousands of students to achieve independence, self-confidence, and the skills to experience active and fulfilling lives.
A Most Noble Benefaction
by C. Michael MellorFrom the letter in 1908 that started it all, this book tells the story of the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind, how it changed history, and has helped change many lives for the better.
Blind Rage
by Georgina KleegeThe author writes letters to the late Helen Keller to explore different aspects of her life.
Infinite Vision
by Suchitra Shenoy and Pavithra MehtaThe Aravind Eye Care System reinvented the rules of business to restore sight to the blind. Based in India, it is the world's largest provider of eye care and delivers surgical outcomes that equal or surpass those of developed countries--at less than 1 percent of the cost. In thirty-five years it has treated over 32 million patients, the vast majority for free. Those who can pay choose what they pay, and there is no paperwork. Refusing to rely on donations, Aravind is self-sustaining and highly prof- itable. Its baffling model is the subject of a popular Harvard Business School case study and has won admiration from Peter Drucker, Bill Clinton, and Muhammud Yunus. Infinite Vision is the first book to probe Aravind's history and the distinctive philosophies, practices, and values that unleashed its phenomenal success. The authors share Aravind's improbable evolution from an eleven-bed eye clinic founded by Dr. G. Venkataswamy, a retired surgeon with crippled fingers, no money, and a magnificent dream. Drawing inspiration from his spirituality and, of all things, the low-cost, high-volume, standardized approach of fast-food franchises, Dr. V. and his team (which includes thirty-five ophthalmologists from his family) created an or- ganization that has treated everyone from penniless farmers to the president of India. How does Aravind flourish while flouting conventional logic at every turn? What can enterprises worldwide learn from it? Infinite Vision reveals the power of a model that integrates innovation with empathy, service with business principles, and inner change with outer transformation. It shows how choices that seem nai?ve or unworkable can, when executed with wisdom and integrity, yield powerful results--results that light the eyes of millions.
Let Freedom Ring
by National Federation of the BlindA collection of letters to President Obama about the experience of using braille.
Downcast Eyes
by Martin JayLong considered "the noblest of the senses," vision has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by a wide range of thinkers who question its dominance in Western culture. These critics of vision, especially prominent in twentieth-century France, have challenged its allegedly superior capacity to provide access to the world. They have also criticized its supposed complicity with political and social oppression through the promulgation of spectacle and surveillance. Martin Jay turns to this discourse surrounding vision and explores its often contradictory implications in the work of such influential figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Jay begins with a discussion of the theory of vision from Plato to Descartes, then considers its role in the French Enlightenment before turning to its status in the culture of modernity. From consideration of French Impressionism to analysis of Georges Bataille and the Surrealists, Roland Barthes's writings on photography, and the film theory of Christian Metz, Jay provides lucid and fair-minded accounts of thinkers and ideas widely known for their difficulty. His book examines the myriad links between the interrogation of vision and the pervasive antihumanist, antimodernist, and counter-enlightenment tenor of much recent French thought. Refusing, however, to defend the dominant visual order, he calls instead for a plurality of "scopic regimes." Certain to generate controversy and discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences, Downcast Eyes will consolidate Jay's reputation as one of today's premier cultural and intellectual historians.
Second Suns
by David Oliver RelinFrom the co-author of Three Cups of Tea comes the inspiring story of two very different doctors--one from the United States, the other from Nepal--united in a common mission: to rid the world of preventable blindness.
In this transporting book, David Oliver Relin shines a light on the work of Geoffrey Tabin and Sanduk Ruit, gifted ophthalmologists who have dedicated their lives to restoring sight to some of the world's most isolated, impoverished people through the Himalayan Cataract Project, an organization they founded in 1995. Tabin was the high-achieving bad boy of Harvard Medical School, an accomplished mountain climber and adrenaline junkie as brilliant as he was unconventional. Ruit grew up in a remote Nepalese village, where he became intimately acquainted with the human costs of inadequate access to health care.
Together they found their life's calling: tending to the afflicted people of the Himalayas, a vast mountainous region with an alarmingly high incidence of cataract blindness.
Second Suns takes us from improvised plywood operating tables in villages without electricity or plumbing to state-of-the-art surgical centers at major American universities where these two driven men are restoring sight--and hope--to patients from around the world. With their revolutionary, inexpensive style of surgery, Tabin and Ruit have been able to cure tens of thousands--all for about twenty dollars per operation.
David Oliver Relin brings the doctors' work to vivid life through poignant portraits of patients helped by the surgery, from old men who cannot walk treacherous mountain trails unaided to cataract-stricken children who have not seen their mothers' faces for years. With the dexterity of a master storyteller, Relin shows the profound emotional and practical impact that these operations have had on patients' lives.
Second Suns is the moving, unforgettable story of how two men with a shared dream are changing the world, one pair of eyes at a time.
As The Twig Is Bent
by Kenneth Jernigan"Table of Contents To Park Or Not To Park What Lynden Has To Hear How Different It Might Have Been How Different It Is Do You Want To Go To The Store, Ted? Partially Sighted, Really Blind Advice From A Seven-Year-Old A Matter Of Attitude A Purchasing Alliance They Didn't Want Me To Go To School Ladies And Gentlemen Of The Jury Sight Unseen To Light A Candle With Mathematics Supremacy." Other books in this series are available from Bookshare.
When The Blizzard Blows
by Kenneth JerniganThis is the seventh book in the Kernel Book Series. In these books, people who are blind share incidents from their lives and tell how they coped with them. Some are serious; some are humorous; all are thought-provoking. Other books in this series are available from Bookshare.
Beginnings and Blueprints
by Kenneth JerniganThis is a motivational book showing that blind individuals can live productive lives doing the things that sighted people do and even succeed at it!
Gray Pancakes and Gold Horses
by Kenneth JerniganHow do blind children learn the details of the hundreds of small daily acts that sighted children pick up without ever even knowing they have done it? A blind boy sits in a farm house on a summer night and wonders which way to shake his head to mean yes and no. He guesses and loses, and his mother's feelings are hurt. I know, for I was that boy.
Tapping the Charcoal
by Kenneth JerniganVarious individuals tell their story of overcoming blindness and becoming productive employed members of society. Their experiences are an encouragement to all of us who must overcome challenges.
Standing on One Foot
by Kenneth JerniganThis is book six of the Kernel Series. The ways of overcoming challenges that face individuals who want a normal life in spite of blindness is revealed in these short true-to-life stories.
Wall-To-Wall Thanksgiving
by Kenneth JerniganThis is the thirteenth book in the Kernel Series. Its chapters are: Don't Throw the Nickel Boy Was I Bamboozled Lessons from the Charcoal Pit Concerning Books, Lawn Mowers, and Bus Rides Children, Fruitcake, and Rectangles The Wall-to-Wall Thanksgiving Meeting the Challenge Daddy Read Me Walking the Balance Beam Big Enough to Ride the Bike and, of course, Dr. Jernigan's introduction, which ties together the featured vignettes. Other books in this series are available from Bookshare.
Toothpaste and Railroad Tracks
by Kenneth JerniganThis is the eighth book in the Kernel Books Series--a series of books in which people who are blind tell about life situations and how they coped with them. "What do toothpaste and railroad tracks have in common? Just about the same that axes and law books do--nothing and everything. They are the building blocks of the routine of daily existence. In a very real sense they are the essence of humanity itself. When I was younger (maybe 40 years ago), there was a popular song called "Little Things Mean a Lot." It dealt with what the title implies, but its message was much more than that. It was that each little incident (relatively unimportant in and of itself) combines with all of the other trivial events that are constantly happening to us to form the pattern of our lives. It is not the major events but the recurring details that make us what we are--that determine whether we will succeed or fail, be happy and productive or sad and miserable. Other books in this series are available from Bookshare."
Old Dogs and New Tricks
by Kenneth JerniganThe tenth book in the Kernel Book Series contains these vignettes: Editor's Introduction Old Dogs and New Tricks The Sliding Board Tending to My Knitting Roller Coasters Serving Communion and Loving Elizabeth. Other books in this series are available from Bookshare.
Do You Remember the Color Blue?
by Sally Hobart AlexanderChildren ask questions of an author who lost her vision at the age of twenty-six, including "How did you become blind?" "How can you read?" and "Was it hard to be a parent when you couldn't see your kids?"
They Shall See His Face
by Robert Banks and Linda BanksAmy Oxley Wilkinson was arguably the most widely known female Australian missionary in China and the West in the early 20th century. She was the great granddaughter of colonial chaplain Samuel Marsden and granddaughter of celebrated explorer John Oxley. After rescuing an abandoned blind boy, she founded an innovative Blind Boys School in Fuzhou which is now a major institution in Fujian Province. Her husband Dr George Wilkinson set up the city’s first hospital and introduced a program to address the pervasive curse of opium addiction.
Amy’s holistic and vocational approach to disability education brought her national and later international recognition. In 1920, the president of the new Chinese republic awarded her the Order of the Golden Grain, the highest honour a foreigner could receive. Two years later, Amy and the School’s brass band were presented to Queen Mary in England.
Amy’s story highlights the significance of Australia’s contribution to the development of early modern China and is a challenge to anyone committed to making their life count for others.
What Color is the Sun
by Kenneth JerniganA Kernel Book, this has life stories from 14 blind people.
The World Through Blunted Sight
by Patrick Trevor-RoperA British ophthalmologist discusses his impressions of visually-impaired artists, including a number of the Impressionists.
A Sense of the World
by Jason RobertsA biography of James Holman (1786-1857). James Holman was a 19th-century British naval officer who became blind at 25, but nevertheless became the greatest traveler of his time. With little money, and long before motorized conveyances made travel easy or popular, James Holman independently traveled over a quarter of a million miles, visiting more than 200 distinct cultures. Be forewarned, this book also contains some rather graphic and disturbing descriptions of the treatment of the Blind in the 19th century.
The Blind In Industry
by Ben PurseA brief outline of the issues facing the organizations and individuals interested in employment of the blind, sheltered shops, industry, women workers, education, college certifications, teachers.
The Ugly Laws
by Susan M. SchweikThe murky history behind municipal laws criminalizing disabilityIn the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, municipal laws targeting "unsightly beggars" sprang up in cities across America. Seeming to criminalize disability and thus offering a visceral example of discrimination, these “ugly laws” have become a sort of shorthand for oppression in disability studies, law, and the arts.In this watershed study of the ugly laws, Susan M. Schweik uncovers the murky history behind the laws, situating the varied legislation in its historical context and exploring in detail what the laws meant. Illustrating how the laws join the history of the disabled and the poor, Schweik not only gives the reader a deeper understanding of the ugly laws and the cities where they were generated, she locates the laws at a crucial intersection of evolving and unstable concepts of race, nation, sex, class, and gender. Moreover, she explores the history of resistance to the ordinances, using the often harrowing life stories of those most affected by their passage. Moving to the laws’ more recent history, Schweik analyzes the shifting cultural memory of the ugly laws, examining how they have been used—and misused—by academics, activists, artists, lawyers, and legislators.
Reflections
by Therese-Adèle HussonIn the 1820s, several years before Braille was invented, Therese-Adele Husson, a young blind woman from provincial France, wrote an audacious manifesto about her life, French society, and her hopes for the future. Through extensive research and scholarly detective work, authors Catherine Kudlick and Zina Weygand have rescued this intriguing woman and the remarkable story of her life and tragic death from obscurity, giving readers a rare look into a world recorded by an unlikely historical figure. Reflections is one of the earliest recorded manifestations of group solidarity among people with the same disability, advocating self-sufficiency and independence on the part of blind people, encouraging education for all blind children, and exploring gender roles for both men and women. Resolutely defying the sense of "otherness" which pervades discourse about the disabled, Husson instead convinces us that that blindness offers a fresh and important perspective on both history and ourselves. In rescuing this important historical account and recreating the life of an obscure but potent figure, Weygand and Kudlick have awakened a perspective that transcends time and which, ultimately, remaps our inherent ideas of physical sensibility
Mindsight
by Kenneth Ring and Sharon CooperRing and Cooper explore evidence that even those blind from birth can "see" during near-death experiences. Their evidence reveals a unique type of perception. More than just "seeing", it involves a deep awareness and profound ability to know that the authors have called "Mindsight".
This volume is a ground-breaking work in the field of near-death studies. It investigates the astonishing claim that blind persons, including those blind from birth, can actually "see" during near-death or out-of-body episodes. The authors present their findings in scrupulous detail, investigating case histories of blind persons who have actually reported visual experiences under these conditions.