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

这个项目将通过分析信件的媒介来改变我们对19世纪英国盲人社区的理解。在1840年推出便士邮政后，社会越来越依赖书面信件的背景下，它将探讨促进盲人识字的举措在多大程度上适得其反，将盲人排除在这种文化转变之外。在世纪，多种触觉书写系统的发明使得盲人群体中的书面交流相互之间无法理解，因此失明在这一时期变得更加文化残疾。

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.