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NAVH is a pioneering national health organization whose resources focus exclusively on the needs of the visually impaired, their friends, family members and caregivers. Our mission is to ensure that impaired vision does not result in impaired life. We provide training and aids to maximize remaining vision, and we educate the public about vision and vision loss.

Description:
The National Association for Visually Handicapped (NAVH) was created in 1954 by Dr. Lorraine Marchi to enable the partially seeing to learn to use their residual vision. Today NAVH provides encouragement, training in using remaining vision, visual aids and large print educational materials to hard of seeing people throughout the world. In addition, NAVH works to educate the general public and professionals about vision, eye disease and living with low vision. NAVH also educates eye care specialists about the unique needs of the partially seeing.

All of our services are designed to encourage and train those with some usable vision to use their remaining vision to its fullest potential. We work to ensure that those with low vision can remain active and independent. Seeking to build personal relationships with patients whenever possible, we enable a new beginning.

History:
As a young mother in San Francisco, Dr. Lorraine Marchi was informed that her toddler son had a severe visual impairment. She was advised to place him in a school for the blind, but she recognized that such an experience would prove devastating for him and for the hundreds of other children who retained partial vision. She wanted her child and others like him to learn how to use the vision they had in order to read and obtain a complete education.

In the early 1950s, she was shocked to learn from her son’s special education teacher that no large print educational materials were available in the public schools. Determined to remedy the situation, she devised a plan to enlighten the country about the need for services for partially seeing children. In 1954, she convened a meeting of health officials, educators, civic leaders, ophthalmologists and members of social organizations. Out of that meeting emerged the Committee to Aid Visually Handicapped Children, which eventually became today’s NAVH. For the next 17 years, Dr. Marchi volunteered her services to a cause she describes as her “life’s calling”.

It was at the San Francisco Board of Education that Dr. Marchi began her work in the development and design of large print reading materials. With sheer determination, unmitigated energy and advice from special educators and a representative of the American Printing House for the Blind, she developed standards for the preparation of large type books, which eventually came to be used throughout the world.

After more than two years of working nights and weekends on a borrowed press at a local hospital, she became pregnant with her fourth child and sought an alternative procedure. The San Francisco Section of the National Council of Jewish Women, of which she was a board member, offered her the gift of an offset printing press, which Dr. Marchi placed in the basement of her home. There she continued the work, enlisting the help of a cadre of volunteers. During these early years, NAVH produced over 250,000 copies of more than 550 titles for school-age children. The first books distributed to children would not be considered high quality by today’s publishing standards, but they were well received by partially seeing children who at last had a book they could read.

Since 1954, NAVH has grown from an organization devoted to producing large print books to an organization helping the hard of seeing worldwide with all aspects of their lives.

Contact people:

Theresa Lanigan, Administrative Asst, (212) 889-3141, (email) Janet Handy, Development Director, (email)

Address:

22 West 21st Street New York, NY 10010 (See a map)

Directions:

Our location is between 5th Avenue & 6th Avenue.   Nearest Metro/Subway Stop: 23rd Street & 6th or 23 Street & 5th,   Walk distance (in minutes): 3   Nearest Bus Stop: 23rd and 6th or 5th, 3 minute walk