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This black and white photograph shows a view of the Indiana State School for the Blind, now known as the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. The institution was established in 1847. The building on North Street in Indianapolis was…

A little over 30 years ago, a doctor told Sharon Hauss to put her infant son in an institution. Sharon’s response, “He’s my son. I couldn’t do it.” Her son, Michael Ely, went on to be fully included in school. Using part of a script he wrote for the…

“You don’t have the right to deny them the opportunity to try this.” Mary Lou Melloy's daughter, Cindy, was born in 1958. Doctors told the family they should put Cindy in a residential facility. Mary Lou and her husband, Don, had other plans for…

John Dickerson, retired Executive Director of The Arc of Indiana, explains that after World War II, parents across the country began to think differently about the future of their children with disabilities. In 1951, there was a national meeting of…

"He slammed the paper on the principal's table and he says 'Don't tell me that this child is retarded - look at what she's done.'" As a child in Hammond, Indiana, Andrea Pepler-Murray had been placed in segregated special education classes. It took…

Byron (“Bikey”) Smith, age 8, on the lap of Vice President Richard Nixon during a trip to Washington D.C. in 1953. Byron, then a student at the Indiana School for the Blind, was in the capitol with his parents as the guest of a Chicago television…

“It was wonderful because he felt like he was going to school.” When Bonnie Smith’s family moved to Bloomington, Indiana in the 1960s, a minister from the First United Methodist Church knocked on her door one day informing Bonnie he had found a…

"She kept finding out that blind students were attending regular public schools in all of the surrounding states and she couldn't figure out why weren't doing that in Indiana," recalls Byron Smith of his mother. Having recently lost his vision due to…

"Lights Out!" at the Indiana State School for The Blind didn't deter Byron Smith from his love of reading. He entered the Indianapolis school as a seven-year-old in 1951. He had recently lost his vision due to due to congenital glaucoma. In this…

This 1961 photograph shows 16 year-old Byron Smith, a student at University High School in Bloomington, Indiana, surrounded by members of Indiana University's Delta Gamma sorority. Because of his visual impairment, Byron received help with his school…