Tactile alphabets and cultures of correspondence within the British blind community: writing letters before the standardisation of Braille, 1840-1905

This project will transform our understanding of the blind community in nineteenth-century Britain through analysing the medium of letters. Against the backdrop of a society increasingly reliant on written correspondence after the introduction of the Penny Post in 1840, it will explore the extent to which initiatives to promote blind literacy were counterproductive, excluding blind people from this cultural shift. The invention of multiple tactile writing systems over the century made written communication within the blind community mutually unintelligible, and consequently blindness became more culturally disabling in this period.