Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind
AIDB has regional centers in Birmingham, Decatur, Dothan, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, Opelika, Shoals, Talladega, and Tuscaloosa.[5][6] The institution was formed at the suggestion of Joseph Henry Johnson, a former instructor at the Georgia School for the Deaf in Cave Spring.[3] In April 1867 Johnson's brother-in-law, Reuben Rogers Asbury, who had suffered an eye injury during the American Civil War, lobbied the state's Reconstruction legislature for funds to add a school for the blind, with himself as teacher.Eugene A. McBride took over as president in 1955 and opened the Helen Keller school (which educated the first deaf and blind student to receive a General Equivalency Diploma).He oversaw the construction of much of the present campus and expanded the institute's outreach to adults, culminating in the vocational center named for his successor, Euel H.