12 Blind Leaders You Should Know (Who Aren’t Helen Keller)

It’s hard to imagine someone who hasn’t heard of Helen Keller. Blind and deaf after an illness at 19 months of age, Keller is a standard-setter for a life lived with no limits. She left her mark on the world as a leader in political and social change—and worked at the American Foundation for the Blind for more than 40 years. If for some reason you’re not familiar with Keller, or would like to learn more, AFB has the world’s largest collection of materials relating to her life and work, which you can access through the fully accessible digital Helen Keller Archive. But there are countless other leaders who are blind or visually impaired who you might not be as familiar with. They are exceptional not only in their individual achievements, but also in the ways they have shaped the world for others who are visually impaired.

Tilly Aston

State Library of Queensland / Via Wikimedia commons / commons.wikimedia.org

An advocate for change, Australia’s first blind teacher, and an eloquent writer with a pioneering spirit, Aston dedicated much of her life to helping her “sightless brethren” in their mutual pursuit of equality. Aston successfully created the first library of braille books in Melbourne, recruiting sighted stenographers and teaching them braille so they could convert printed text into braille books. Her advocacy included achieving the right to vote and free public transportation for people who are blind, and securing government approval for a pension for all legally blind people. Aston also successfully lobbied for the world's first free postal system for braille—and, later—talking books.

(Photo description: Black and white portrait of Tilly Aston)

Dale Chihuly

Many people are familiar with Chihuly’s awe-inspiring, intricate, large-scale glass forms, but may not realize that he is blind in one eye due to a car accident, leaving him without depth perception. He no longer felt it was safe to work with molten glass, so Chihuly used his creativity to find a new way to achieve his artistic vision. He now directs a team of glassblowers and installation artists—up to 90 people per project—to execute his drawings. Chihuly has said in interviews that his lack of depth perception has made him see things differently, and he has gained a new appreciation for the collaborative way he works today, sharing two-way artistic inspiration with his team.

Martha Louise Morrow Foxx

American Foundation for the Blind / Via AFB / afb.org

A black woman born in North Carolina in 1902, she lost the majority of her sight in infancy. After earning her Bachelor of Science degree in education from Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia, Foxx helped open Mississippi’s first-ever school for black students who are blind—the Department for the Blind on the campus of the Piney Woods Country Life School—serving as teacher and housemistress for all of the students, and later becoming its first principal. An innovative educator, she believed in hands-on teaching and learning, community-based lessons, independent living, braille, music, the arts, work experience, and vocational opportunities—many of the principles of education still used today in teaching students who are visually impaired.

(Photo description: group photo from a Helen Keller visit to the Piney Woods School in 1945. Ms. Foxx is seated in the first row, far right.)

Haben Girma

Haben Girma / Via AFB / afb.org

The first deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School in 2013, Girma advocates for equal opportunities for people with disabilities, including accessible products and services. Girma believes disability is an opportunity for innovation, and travels the world teaching the benefits of choosing inclusion—she has consulted with leading companies worldwide. Before becoming a consultant, she practiced litigation with the nonprofit Disability Rights Advocates. Named a White House Champion of Change by former President Obama, she has also been honored by former President Bill Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Girma is the author of the best-selling book Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law.

(Photo description: Haben Girma, standing against a blue backdrop.)

Christine Ha

Christine Ha / Via AFB / afb.org

The first-ever blind contestant and season 3 winner of the competitive amateur cooking TV show MasterChef with Gordon Ramsay, Ha defeated more than 30,000 competitors to earn the coveted MasterChef title. Ha, who gradually lost her sight between 1999 and 2007 due to an autoimmune disease called Neuromyelitis optica, earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the acclaimed Creative Writing Program at University of Houston and a Bachelor of Business Administration from The University of Texas at Austin. Her first cookbook—Recipes From My Home Kitchen: Asian and American Comfort Food—was a New York Times best-seller, and Ha is currently working on her memoir and second cookbook. She recently opened her first restaurant, The Blind Goat, in Houston, and takes advantage of every opportunity to advocate for people who are visually impaired.

(Photo description: Christine Ha, holding her white cane and smiling at the camera.)

Ted Henter

American Foundation for the Blind / Via AFB / afb.org

Henter, who lost his sight in 1978 after a car accident, has transformed learning and working for people who are blind or visually impaired. He received some initial training in using a talking terminal from Maryland Computer Services, which later hired him to represent that product. In 1987, he joined forces with Bill Joyce to found Henter-Joyce and developed the speech software package JAWS (Job Access With Speech), which enables personal computers and note-taking devices to "talk" so people who are blind or visually impaired can use these devices in school, home, and work. JAWS remains one of the most widely distributed and best-known synthetic speech software packages on the market. In 2002, Henter started a new company called Henter Math whose product, Virtual Pencil, is a software application specifically designed for students who are blind, visually impaired, learning disabled, or motor-skill impaired. A sports enthusiast before losing his sight, Henter continued participating in snow skiing, water skiing, and canoe racing. He won the 1991 World Championship for Disabled Skiers, and won six times as the U.S. champion.

(Photo description: Ted Henter, smiling and holding his Migel Medal.)

Robert Irwin

American Foundation for the Blind / Via AFB / afb.org

A pivotal figure in the early days of AFB, Irwin—who became blind at age 5 due to an eye infection—began his work there in 1923 as the Director of Research and Education, creating an efficient braille printing machine that reduced the bulk and cost of braille books by about 40 percent. The first executive director of AFB, early in his tenure Irwin recognized the potential of long-playing records for blind people, which became the earliest form of talking books. In 1932, he also led the American delegation in London that successfully brought about the establishment of a standard English braille code for all English-speaking countries. He later chronicled the challenges that led up to that achievement in the book The War of the Dots.

(Photo description: Helen Keller, standing to the left, and Robert B. Irwin, seated to the right, using a Talking Book Machine.)

Takeo Iwahashi

American Foundation for the Blind / Via AFB / afb.org

Born in Osaka, Japan, Iwahashi became blind as a university student. He began printing braille books at home, and then opened his house to loan his books to other blind people free of charge. He founded the Nippon Lighthouse in Osaka in 1935, and in 1937 and 1948 he invited Helen Keller to visit. Together they conducted a nationwide campaign covering Korea and Manchuria to promote the enactment of the Law for the Disabled Persons and the Compulsory Education System of the Blind Children, and their trip became the beginning of a long friendship. Iwahashi’s legacy lives on in the Nippon Lighthouse’s services, which include a center devoted to rehabilitation, vocational training, and guide dog training, as well as a center that publishes braille text books and large-print books, and provides other educational services.

(Photo description: Seated left to right: Takeo Iwahashi, M. Robert Barnett, Helen Keller and Polly Thomson. January 11, 1950)

Sally Mangold, Ph.D.

San Francisco State University / Via viprogram.sfsu.edu

A teacher, researcher, author, and the creator of several braille courses for adults through the Hadley School for the Blind, Dr. Mangold was a leader in providing instructional strategies and materials for braille reading and writing. Blind herself, Dr. Mangold developed an innovative model for preparing teachers of the visually impaired by pioneering the Distance Education Program while working as a professor at San Francisco State University. Her lifelong passion for braille literacy led her to create the "Mangold Developmental Program of Tactile Perception and Braille Letter Recognition," a tool widely used to teach tracking and beginning braille. She and her husband, Phil, who was also blind, founded Exceptional Teaching, a company that provides hundreds of products for visually impaired students and their teachers. In 1997, Dr. Mangold was awarded a National Science Foundation grant that she used to develop the Speech Assisted Learning (SAL) System, a portable, interactive, computer-based braille tutor that empowered many blind teens and adults to teach themselves braille—yet another example of the countless ways she promoted and facilitated braille literacy.

(Photo description: Sally Mangold, Phil Mangold, Phil Hatlen, and Fred Sinclair when they were in the first group of students in the Program in Visual Impairments at San Francisco State University, circa 1955)

Abraham Nemeth, Ph.D.

Blind since infancy, Dr. Nemeth became a professor of mathematics, a Hebrew scholar, a musician—and the inventor of the braille mathematics code that now bears his name. The Nemeth Code is a form of braille that transformed the ability of people who are visually impaired to study complex mathematics, and opened up new opportunities for blind students to become physicists, engineers, math teachers, and software engineers. Dr. Nemeth’s inspiration for developing the Nemeth Code was born of his challenges in pursuing an academic career in math, something he was told was impossible for someone who was blind. After sharing his private code with another exceptional blind employee at AFB, where Dr. Nemeth began working in 1943, he presented his code for braille mathematics notation to the Joint Uniform Braille Committee (the 1950s equivalent of the Braille Authority of North America), which unanimously adopted the Nemeth Code. Dr. Nemeth went on to earn his Ph.D. in mathematics and taught mathematics at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he later created the computer science department.

Britt Raubenheimer, Ph.D.

A senior scientist in applied ocean physics and engineering at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., Dr. Raubenheimer lost her sight suddenly in 2003 due to optic nerve atrophy. Although she admits to fearing at first that she would have to give up her work and many of her activities, that fear was unfounded. Dr. Raubenheimer works with a team of other scientists, students, and engineers, collecting and analyzing measurements to understand interactions among coastal waves and surge, beach and dune evolution, groundwater, and winds and precipitation during extreme storms. While many are evacuating an area when a hurricane is approaching, she can often be found on her way to the beach. Using the instruments needed to study the ocean requires SCUBA, and Dr. Raubenheimer is the only legally blind, certified, university research diver. She has maintained her passion for skiing and hiking, among other activities, and is often accompanied by her guide dog, Hugger.

Stevie Wonder

American Foundation for the Blind / Via AFB / afb.org

The multiple Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who has been blind since birth is a household name worldwide, but many people may not realize how passionately he advocates for people with disabilities. As a presenter at the 2016 Grammy Awards, he used his platform to note, "We need to make every single thing accessible to every single person with a disability.” At a 2013 meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, Wonder advocated for greater inclusion of children with disabilities in every nation. In his role as a UN Messenger of Peace, Wonder has been an advocate for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, an international treaty modeled on the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2010, he called on the UN World Intellectual Property Organization to adjust international copyright laws to make books and other written material more available to people who are blind.

(Carl Augusto, former president and CEO of AFB with Stevie Wonder, who received the Helen Keller Achievement Award in 1996.)

This list — only a tiny sampling of the many blind people who have been leading the way — shows what creative, capable problem-solvers they are. We need even more blind and visually impaired Americans in top levels of leadership in the workforce. There, they can catalyze the kind of systemic change that will help us work together to create an accessible, inclusive world for the millions of Americans with vision loss.