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At head of title: The Canadian Institute for the Blind.
Louis Braille: A Touch of Genius is the first ever, full-color biography to include thirty-one of his extant letters, some written by his own hand, and translated into English for the first time.Three great men were born in the early weeks of January 1809: Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, and Louis Braille. Only one has remained virtually unknown ? the man who invented a means of reading and writing still used today in almost every country in the world, adapted to almost every known language from Albanian to Zulu.Born sighted, Louis Braille accidentally blinded himself at the age of 3. He was lucky enough to be sent to a school for blind children in Paris, one of the first in the world. There, at the age of sixteen, he worked tirelessly on a revolutionary system of finger reading that became braille. He was a talented musician, astute businessman, and genius inventor ? collaborating with another Frenchman to invent the first dot-matrix printer around 1840.
History has told us something about our war dead but very little about our war wounded. Veterans with a Vision provides a vibrant, poignant, and very human history of Canada’s war-blinded veterans, whose courage and the organization they created reshaped the way Canadians and successive governments perceived war disability and, in particular, blindness. Serge Durflinger illuminates the lives of the war blinded by detailing the veterans' process of civil re-establishment, physical and psychological rehabilitation, and social and personal coping. He describes how, in 1922, a group of veterans formed the Sir Arthur Pearson Association of War Blinded (SAPA), closely linked to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). This organization effectively advocated for government pension entitlements, job retraining, and other social programs that allowed veterans to regain a strong measure of independence. Veterans with a Vision captures the spirit of perseverance that permeated the veterans’ community and highlights the impacts made by the war blinded as advocates for all Canadian veterans and all blind citizens.
Colonising Disability explores the construction and treatment of disability across Britain and its empire from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Esme Cleall explores how disability increasingly became associated with 'difference' and argues that it did so through intersecting with other categories of otherness such as race. Philanthropic, legal, literary, religious, medical, educational, eugenistic and parliamentary texts are examined to unpick representations of disability that, overtime, became pervasive with significant ramifications for disabled people. Cleall also uses multiple examples to show how disabled people navigated a wide range of experiences from 'freak shows' in Britain, to missions in India, to immigration systems in Australia, including exploring how they mobilised to resist discrimination and constitute their own identities. By assessing the intersection between disability and race, Dr Cleall opens up questions about 'normalcy' and the making of the imperial self.
The purpose of this book is to provide concise biographical information about 400 notable blind persons. The people in this volume are but a small sample of many thousands of notable blind persons in history. Most of the information about their lives comes from secondary sources. Where feasible, some of the subject's own words were used.
Ambassadors of Social Progress examines the ways in which blind activists from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe entered the postwar international disability movement and shaped its content and its course. Maria Cristina Galmarini shows that the international work of socialist blind activists was defined by the larger politics of the Cold War and, in many respects, represented a field of competition with the West in which the East could shine. Yet, her study also reveals that socialist blind politics went beyond propaganda. When socialist activists joined the international blind movement, they initiated an exchange of experiences that profoundly impacted everyone involved. Not only did the...
Journey to Ithaca is an extraordinary memoir about an extraordinary life. Of its author it may well be said, in Shakespeare’s words (from Henry VI, part I, aptly quoted in the prelims): “Who would e’er suppose [he] had such courage and audacity?” From the outset, William Rowland invites his readers to accompany him along his personal journey to Ithaca. It was at Ithaca Mansions in Sea Point, Cape Town, that, at the age of five, a happy little boy lost his vision in consequence of a gunshot through his temple, severing his optic nerves. That was, definitively, the day the light went out. With enormous courage and determination William approached life head-on, achieving what many other...
"Accessible versions of Vision Changing Charity by Ian Bruce are available on request from RNIB. Please contact us through our Helpline: Call 0303 123 9999, email helpline@rnib.org.uk or say: ""Alexa, call RNIB Helpline"" to an Alexa-enabled device. The late twentieth century saw charities grow from timid service deliverers into major providers with campaigning teeth. What caused this? How did they gain confidence and strength? In this fascinating history, examined through the eyes of RNIB from 1970 to 2010, Ian Bruce examines the internal drivers and the external socio-political environment that allowed and encouraged this explosion. Bruce's experience of leading a charity at the forefront ...
In this panoramic study, Freeman Henry chronicles the rise to prominence of French language and culture. He meticulously analyzes the protracted government-sponsored efforts to foster and maintain that status and--ultimately--the latter-day challenges to France's national linguistic identity posed by Anglocentric globalization and a multicentric European Union. The internal history of the language is closely intertwined with its external history: phonology, morphology, lexicography, and orthography come alive against a backdrop of political, cultural, and institutional manifestations. A felicitous blend of documentary evidence and critical analysis serves to elucidate crucial stages, events,...