ABSTRACT
As historiography has demonstrated, world wars constituted a significant moment for the construction of the identity of disability. This applies to the ‘cieco di guerra’ (war blind), who after the Great War emancipated themselves from their status as objects of public charity and became active subjects in Italian society. Blind people continued to be assisted by the public, but there was an important cultural development, as they became active subjects of this assistance. The path of emancipation continued after the Second World War, and when the war blind established in 1979, the Associazione Nazionale Ciechi di Guerra (Italian National Association of the War Blind) aimed at obtaining greater recognition of the disability deriving from the loss of sight. If it is true that the number of blind people from birth has decreased, vision pathologies are linked to advancing age. Even the UIC has added ‘Visually Impaired’ to its name, precisely to underline the transformation of blindness during the twentieth century. In this way, blind people became more and more a part of society. School had a great role in this process: there are two laws (n. 517/1977 and the ‘legge-quadro’ n. 104/1992) that establish that disabled people may have the opportunity to attend ‘normal’ schools; thus closing ‘scuole differenziali’, special schools such as those created within institutions for the blind. This was a passage that indicated in the school one of the areas of integration if not inclusion of the blind in Italian society.
