At a time when organized work for the blind had not begun to assume its present dimensions, the Ziegler Magazine was in contact with more blind people of all ages and classes than any other entity. It came to serve as an advice bureau to which readers and their families could turn for all manner of information and help.

Howard Liechty, who succeeded Holmes as editor, once summed up the incidental functions of the Ziegler as "a bulletin board, an information bureau, a buyer's guide, a mutual assistance club, a commodity exchange, an advertising medium, a rehabilitation and vocational guidance and placement agent, a self-improvement association, a soap-box platform and, unwittingly, sometimes even a marriage bureau."