James Morrison Heady was an American deaf and blind author. Heady authored numerous volumes of children's books and poetry and was known as the "Blind Bard of Kentucky" in the contemporaneous press. He was one of the first to campaign for books for the blind in the United States, and he designed various technologies to help deaf and blind people communicate and live more comfortably. James Morrison Heady was born on July 19, 1829, in Elk Creek, Kentucky. He was blinded in one eye, as a child by a chip from a woodcutter's axe, and at sixteen, he lost sight in the other, while, playing with a classmate. Heady lost his sight at the age of sixteen and spent a year at the Kentucky School for the Blind, before moving on to the Ohio State School for the Blind for an additional fourteen months. He learned to read embossed text and created a "talking glove," a cotton glove with the letters of the alphabet written in numerous locations on the hand, allowing him to communicate with pals through tactile spelling.