Braille Institute of America in Los Angeles Archive of 26 Photos Documenting Classes, Activities, and Disability Services for the Visually Impaired, ca. 1960s

Braille Institute of America

Photograph

[Disability Rights][Disability Activism] Braille Institute of America photo archive documenting blind and low-vision adults at the Institute’s Los Angeles facility, recording the everyday work of disability education before the Americans with Disabilities Act made access and public accommodation a national civil-rights mandate. J. Robert Atkinson founded the Universal Braille Press in Los Angeles in 1919 after losing his sight in 1912; the organization later became the Braille Institute of America, moved to Vermont Avenue in 1939, and expanded into a new William Pereira designed facility that opened in 1974. The Institute’s early work also helped shape national access to reading: Atkinson’s lobbying preceded the 1931 Pratt-Smoot Act, which placed federal funds under the Library of Congress to provide books for blind adult readers. The activities shown here matter because literacy, handwork, movement, performance, and social gathering were not secondary amenities; they were the practical means by which blind and low-vision people gained public presence, skill, confidence, and community in a city built overwhelmingly for sighted people.
Photo archive of 26 total images printed across 11 silver gelatin prints, Los Angeles, California, circa 1960s to 1970s. Images show the outside of the building with the sign “Braille Institute of America Inc.” while a man stands with a guide dog and later walks toward the entrance under the covered walkway. Interior scenes include adults reading braille at tables, visitors talking together around tables, and a smiling man sculpting clay at a worktable. Weaving instruction appears at a tabletop loom; other scenes show clay or tactile craft work, and participants gathered around tables with guide dogs resting beside their handlers. Several images show black and white participants on a dance floor One sheet is a print of 12 enlarged film strip cells, and four sheets contain two images printed on a single sheet.
The archive belongs to a longer twentieth-century history in which blind Americans fought for access not only to books, but to streets, schools, workrooms, libraries, and ordinary public life. White cane laws, including early municipal ordinances in the 1930s and later state protections, made the cane and guide dog public signals of mobility and right of way, while federal braille and talking-book programs made reading a public responsibility rather than a private burden. The Braille Institute provided adults in the Los Angeles area a resource to read by touch, shape clay, work at looms, dance with partners, move with guide dogs, and participate in many other activities where disability was not an obstacle for culture, learning, or socializing. All sheets complete, with light handling wear only; overall in very good condition.

Item #23402

Price: $580.00