PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: special education

Samuel Gridley Howe American physician, educator, and abolitionist as well as the founding director of the New-England Institution for the Education of the Blind (later known as the Perkins School for...

Helen Keller American author and educator who was blind and deaf. Her education and training represent an extraordinary accomplishment in the education of persons with these disabilities. Keller was afflicted...

Laura Dewey Bridgman was the first blind and deaf person in the English-speaking world to learn to communicate using finger spelling and the written word. Predating Helen Keller by nearly two generations,...

Anne Sullivan American teacher of Helen Keller, widely recognized for her achievement in educating to a high level a person without sight, hearing, or normal speech. Joanna Sullivan, known throughout her...

Edouard Séguin French-born American psychiatrist who pioneered modern educational methods for teaching the severely intellectually disabled. Born into a family of prominent physicians in Burgundy, Séguin...

Samuel Heinicke was a German advocate for and teacher of oralism (one of many early communication methods devised for use by hearing-impaired individuals) in the education of the deaf. After receiving...

Louis Braille was a French educator who developed a system of printing and writing, called Braille, that is extensively used by the blind. Braille was himself blinded at the age of three in an accident...

Caroline Yale American educator of the deaf and longtime principal of the Clarke School for the Deaf. Yale attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (later Mount Holyoke College; 1866–68). She taught briefly...

Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard French physician noted for his work with the deaf and with the “wild boy of Aveyron.” Itard was originally marked for the banking profession, but, when the French Revolution intervened,...

Harriet Burbank Rogers educator and pioneer in the oral method of instruction of the deaf in the United States. After graduating from Massachusetts State Normal School (now Framingham State College) in...

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was an educational philanthropist and founder of the first American school for the deaf. After graduating from Yale College in 1805, Gallaudet studied theology at Andover. His...

Ovide Decroly was a Belgian pioneer in the education of children, including those with physical disabilities. Through his work as a physician, Decroly became involved in a school for disabled children...

Juan Pablo Bonet Spanish cleric and educator who pioneered in the education of the deaf. Bonet helped develop one of the earliest and most successful methods for educating the deaf and improving their...

Roch-Ambroise Cucurron, Abbé Sicard French educator who was a pioneer in the teaching of the deaf. From 1786 to 1789, Sicard, an abbé, was principal of a Bordeaux school for the deaf. He then succeeded...

Pedro Ponce de León Spanish Benedictine monk believed to have been the first person to develop a method for teaching the deaf. Ponce achieved his first success with Gaspard Burgos, a deaf man who, because...

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born American inventor, scientist, and teacher of the deaf whose foremost accomplishments were the invention of the telephone (1876) and the refinement of the phonograph...