Working with the American Foundation for the Blind and Hudson Archival, Veridian software has helped to make Helen Keller’s Archive accessible to the world.

This fascinating collection is the largest ever repository of materials about and by Helen Keller who was a deaf and blind American author and political activist. The archive includes correspondence, speeches, press clippings, scrapbooks, photographs, audio recordings and much more, spanning 80+ years (1880-1968).

What’s special about this project is that the digital collection is accessible to visitors who are blind, deaf, hard-of-hearing and deafblind. To enable this, the Veridian team developed a range of accessibility functions for the platform including text zoom, color conversion, keyboard commands and braille convertibility.

We were thrilled to see this video of students at the New York Institute for Special Education discovering the the new Helen Keller Archive this week.

This blog written by French Deafblind scholar Soline Vennetier describes the creation of this accessible digital archive as "pioneering".