Online Exhibits

Online Exhibits

Historic Braillewriters 

A better mousetrap.

Explore the largest public collection of mechanical braillewriters.

Braillewriter with a blue metal frame, a bright metal paper carriage , and seven wooden keys topped with white plastic keypads

Online Exhibits

Building a Future: U.S. Residential Schools 

The first schools for students who are blind or visually impaired.

The first American schools for kids that were blind opened in 1832. By 1929, there were forty-nine such schools scattered across the land. Most were large, state-funded institutions and this exhibit explores their identity as icons on the public landscape.

Closeup view of exhibit panel on the early schools

Online Exhibits

Mary Ingalls 

A writer’s gift.

Mary Ingalls, the older sister of the celebrated children’s author Laura Ingalls Wilder, lost her sight at the age of fourteen. Laura became her sister’s “eyes,” describing everything she saw around her. What happened to Mary after she and Laura grew up?

Portrait of Mary Ingalls, her hair pulled back, wearing a dark dress with large buttons down the front and a decorative ruffled collar. She looks slightly down and is not smiling.

Online Exhibits

Historic Printing Presses 

The machinery of accessible print.

The American Printing House for the Blind bought its first press from a Boston designer in 1863. Over the years the company used a variety of machines to emboss and print its books.

Detail of two metal gears on the side of a wire stitching machine

Online Exhibit

APH Narrator Jukebox 

Our Talking Book narrators have been well known and well loved by their readers since the American Printing House for the Blind recorded its first book in 1936. Press a button below to learn about some of our most recorded narrators and listen to a clip of their work.

Randy Atcher, a man with short white hair, wearing a white longsleeve shirt, sitting in a recording booth in front of a boom microphone with his hands on a book on a reading stand