This talk traces how blind and visually-impaired people in the Victorian era became increasingly vocal in seeking control and ownership over the social and political issues that directly affected them, and introduces some of the era's most prominent and influential blind campaigners.Heather Tilley is a British Academy postdoctoral research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. She has recently curated an exhibition at Birkbeck on the history of assistive reading technologies for blind people and a display of prominent blind and visually-impaired people for the National Portrait Gallery's collection.