The history of the International Council for Education of Visually Impaired People (ICEVI) reflects the major changes that have occurred in the education of blind people during the past fifty years and the part this organization has played – and continues to play – in bringing them about. As expected, the history of the education of blind people is one of innovation as well as adherence to tradition, of brilliant successes as well as false starts. But one thing is clear: in this history there have never occurred such fundamental and profound changes in such a short space of time as we have seen in the second half of the 20th Century. When ICEVI was founded in 1952, approximately 90 percent of blind children in the world who were granted an education were placed in schools for the blind. Today this is not so, as increasingly more and more children are integrated into regular schools. In some countries – Norway and Sweden, for example – nearly all blind children are educated in regular schools. In most developing countries and in Eastern Europe and Russia there is a steadily growing movement from segregated schools and programs to inclusive education and community-based programs.

Time changes everything.