Walking Alone: Aiding the War and Civilian Blind in the Inter-war Period

This article explores changing attitudes towards types of aids for blind people in the interwar period. The authors focus particularly on the dispute over the relative value of the guide dog, as an aid to blind ex-servicemen and civilians. Historians of disability have neglected the history of assistive technologies and the ways in which ‘norms’ and divisions can be enacted or undone through these aids. The controversy over the choice of aids is positioned as a dispute over what constituted normality and difference in the interwar period.