Founded in Boston in 1829, Perkins School for the Blind was the first
school of its kind in the United States. Perkins pioneered education for
people who are deafblind when seven-year-old Laura Bridgman became the
first deafblind person to learn language, in 1837. Fifty years later,
alumna Annie Sullivan used the same methods to teach Helen Keller, the
deafblind Perkins student who became one of the foremost humanitarians
of the twentieth century. The school also pioneered the first
kindergarten for the blind and the first training programs for teachers
of the blind and deafblind. Perkins School for the Blind pays tribute to
this groundbreaking institution and its legacy of establishing education
programs that bring hope and dignity to more than forty thousand people
with blindness and deafblindness worldwide.