About the archive

This resource provides several digitized archives of the world-renowned educators of deaf-blind people -- Ivan Sokolyansky and Alexander Meshcheryakov, as well as materials from the so-called “Zagorsk experiment.” During the experiment, four deaf-blind foster children of Zagorsky boarding school (now Sergiev-posad’s orphanage) enrolled at the Moscow State University and graduated with the MS Psychology degree using special learning techniques developed by Sokolyansky and Meshcheryakov. Digitization and online publishing of the archives is supported by Alisher Usmanov’s The Art, Science and Sport Charity Foundation.

Sokolyansky and Meshcheryakov are well known to specialists throughout the world, their works were translated to all European languages, as well as Chinese and Japanese.The two scholars developed an effective teaching methodology for deaf-blind children which involves step-by-step training in certain skills. Such methodologies are becoming more important today due to the increased occurrence of children with complex disabilities. "A chain of consecutive actions" can become a key teaching methodology for children with multiple disabilities who struggle to learn basic skills of self-service.

Development of literacy and language teaching system became one of Sokolyansky’s major achievements. The system is described in a number of research diaries and archival materials which are now available online. Today such educational techniques are growing in importance for a society facing the loss of reading and writing culture. This area is of growing interest for linguists, speech pathology and other specialists, as well as parents.

Meshcheryakov contributed to the development of a cooperative approach between a teacher and a student which formed the basis of special education for deaf-blind. Meshcheryakov’s leadership in creation of an educational infrastructure for deaf-blind is also highly regarded by the expert community: Research Laboratory - Experimental group - Zagorsky orphanage – Work studio for deaf-blind graduates in Zagorsk - Deaf-blind group at the university (“Zagorsk Four”). This system successfully worked during the 1970s and 80s. Some components of this infrastructure continue to exist today. It is being reformulated in accordance with the new realities and challenges of modern time.

In the 1990s, the research field of deaf-blindness became less active than during the Soviet era. As result, these important collections became less visible and known by research community. Since the beginning of its operation, the Deaf-blind Support Fund So-edinenie set the task of digitizing and online publishing of important resources to help the work of Russian and international specialists dealing with special education, speech pathology, learning and interacting with deaf-blind people.