Background

Robert Benjamin was born on June 2, 1883 in Rockford, Iowa, United States, the son of Robert Payne Irwin, a pharmacist, and Hattie Edith Chappell Irwin. Not long after his birth, the family moved to Vaughn, Washington.

When Irwin was five years old, an attack of inflammatory rheumatism that infected his eyes left him totally blind.

Education

Sent to the Washington State School for the Blind in 1890, Irwin became the first graduate of the school in 1901. He then entered the University of Washington, from which he received the B. A. in 1906; he paid most of his expenses with the earnings from various summer and part-time jobs. With assistance from a scholarship, Irwin earned the M. A. in government and politics at Harvard, where he remained until 1909 to study methods of educating and caring for the blind. His experience at the Washington State School for the Blind, where he had spent eleven academic years, and his study had convinced him that blind children should be helped in their home setting. Thus he sought to provide opportunities for public school education of blind children.

Career

In 1909 Irwin became superintendent of public school classes for the blind in Cleveland, Ohio, where he organized classes in Braille and developed other approaches to educating the blind. He differentiated between the totally blind, those who could distinguish between light and dark and recognize shapes and forms, and those whose vision was merely impaired. By 1913 he was organizing classes throughout Ohio that taught children with impaired vision to read books printed in large type; the classes met in specially lighted rooms.

To produce educational materials for his purposes, Irwin helped set up the Howe Publishing Company, which printed Braille books, and the Clear Type Publishing Committee, which printed books in twenty-four-point type. He remained president of the latter organization until his death.

Irwin published his research on blindness and its problems in Blind Relief Laws, Their Theory and Practice (1919) and Sight-Saving Classes in the Public Schools (1920).

In 1923 he was elected president of the American Association of Workers for the Blind, a post he held until 1927. In the same year he was appointed director of research and education for the newly established American Foundation for the Blind. In 1929 he was named executive director of the foundation, a post he retained until his retirement.

He was chairman of the subcommittee on the visually handicapped at the 1930 White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, and he organized the 1931 World Conference on Work for the Blind.

In 1938 he became executive vice-president of National Industries for the Blind, an affiliate of his foundation that developed tools and appliances for use by the blind and sought to find jobs for the visually impaired. World War II resulted in an enormous increase in the number of blind persons throughout the world, and Irwin devoted some of his attention to their problems. In 1946 he became executive director of the American Foundation for Overseas Blind. In 1949 he was chairman of the European Conference on the Welfare of the Blind. Irwin also served as chairman of advisory committees on war blind to the surgeon general of the United States and to the Veterans Administration.

At the time of his death in Port Orchard, Washington, Irwin was preparing a history of work for the blind in the United States. His autobiography, As I Saw It, was published posthumously.

Achievements

• Robert Benjamin Irwin's contributions were crucial in improving the quality of life for the blind and visually impaired. His work with schoolchildren led him to adapt the Binet intelligence scale for use with blind youngsters, and he was influential in the development of "Talking Books" (long-playing spoken records) and in passage of the Pratt-Smoot Act, which appropriated $100, 000 a year for the Library of Congress to produce books in Braille and Talking Books. Irwin also had great success in securing passage of legislative measures for blind relief. Largely through his efforts, Congress amended interstate commerce laws so that a blind person and a guide could travel on trains and buses for a single fare. He also was instrumental in gaining blind persons an additional $500 federal income tax exemption, as well as in the passage of legislation giving them priority in obtaining vending concessions in federal buildings and governing the sale to federal institutions of products manufactured by the blind. In 1947 the French government made him a member of the Legion of Honor for his aid to blinded members of the Resistance.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Sight-saving classes in the public schools

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • As I saw it

    (First edition. Irwin was Director of Research and Educati...)

  • Stories of children in other lands (Clear type series)

Views

At the heart of Irwin's activity was the belief that the blind must be helped to achieve economic self-sufficiency.

Connections

On June 19, 1917, Irwin married Mary Janet Blanchard, a social worker and visiting teacher of the blind in Cleveland schools; they had one son.

Father:

Robert Payne Irwin

Mother:

Hattie Edith Chappell Irwin

Spouse:

Mary Janet Blanchard

References

• Journey into light,: The story of the education of the blind