[blparent] FW: Fewer than 10 Percent of Blind Americans Read Braille

Tue Apr 7 20:07:15 UTC 2009

I think a big part of the problem is that many of the vision teachers coming 
out of college these days aren't well educated in braille.  I see this 
circumstance often as a proofreader, and a person can't teach what he or she 
doesn't know well.

Jo Elizabeth

"Don't throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds 
water."--Swedish proverb
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eric Calhoun" <eric at pmpmail.com>
To: <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 4:20 AM
Subject: [blparent] FW: Fewer than 10 Percent of Blind Americans Read 
Braille

> How can you as parents change this stat?  What are your thoughts about 
> this
> article?
>
> Eric
>
>
> Original Message:
> From: "bkmabma at yahoo.com" <bkmabma at yahoo.com>
> To: Eric Calhoun <eric at pmpmail.com>
> Subject: Fewer than 10 Percent of Blind Americans Read Braille
> Date:
> Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:32:00 -0400
>
> Fewer Than 10 Percent Of Blind Americans Read Braille
> By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 26, 2009
>
> BALTIMORE (AP) -- Jordan Gilmer has a degenerative condition that
> eventually will leave him completely blind. But as a child, his teachers
> did not
> emphasize Braille, the system of reading in which a series of raised dots
> signify letters of the alphabet.
>
> Instead, they insisted he use what little vision he had to read print. By
> the third grade, he was falling behind in his schoolwork.
>
> ''They gave him Braille instruction, but they didn't tell us how to get
> Braille books, and they didn't want him using it during the day,'' said
> Jordan's mother, Carrie Gilmer of Minneapolis. Teachers said Braille would
> be ''a thing he uses way off in the far distant future, and don't worry
> about it.''
>
> That experience is common: Fewer than 10 percent of the 1.3 million
> legally blind people in the United States read Braille, and just 10
> percent of
> blind children are learning it, according to a report to be released
> Thursday
> by the National Federation of the Blind.
>
> By comparison, at the height of its use in the 1950s, more than half the
> nation's blind children were learning Braille. Today Braille is considered
> by many to be too difficult, too outdated, a last resort.
>
> Instead, teachers ask students to rely on audio texts, voice-recognition
> software or other technology. And teachers who know Braille often must
> shuttle between schools, resulting in haphazard instruction, the report
> says.
>
> "You can find good teachers of the blind in America, but you can't find
> good programs,'' said Marc Maurer, the group's president. "There is not a
> commitment to this population that is at all significant almost
> anywhere."
>
> Using technology as a substitute for Braille leaves blind people
> illiterate,
> the federation said, citing studies that show blind people who know
> Braille
> are more likely to earn advanced degrees, find good jobs and live
> independently.
>
> "It's really sad that so many kids are being shortchanged," said Debby
> Brackett of Stuart, Fla., who pressured schools to provide capable Braille
> teachers for her 12-year-old daughter, Winona.
>
> One study found that 44 percent of participants who grew up reading
> Braille were unemployed, compared with 77 percent for those who relied on
> print.
> Overall, blind adults face 70 percent unemployment.
>
> The federation's report pulled together existing research on Braille
> literacy, and its authors acknowledge that not enough research has been
> done. The 10 percent figure comes from federal statistics gathered by the
> American Printing House for the Blind, a company that develops products
> for the visually impaired.
>
> The federation also did some original research, including a survey of 500
> people that found the ability to read Braille correlated with higher
> levels of education, a higher likelihood of employment and higher income.
>
> The report coincides with the 200th birthday of Louis Braille, the
> Frenchman who invented the Braille code as a teenager. Resistance to his
> system was
> immediate; at one point, the director of Braille's school burned the
> books
> he and his classmates had transcribed. The school did not want its blind
> students becoming too independent; it made money by selling crafts they
> produced.
>
> The system caught on, but began declining in the 1960s along with the
> widespread integration of blind children into public schools. It has
> continued with the advent of technology that some believe makes Braille
> obsolete.
>
> "Back in about 1970 or so, I was heading to college, and somebody said
> to me, 'Now that you've got the tape recorder, everything will be all
> right.
> In the early 1980s, somebody else said, 'Now that you've got a talking
> computer, everything will be all right,' " said Marc Maurer, president of
> the federation.
>
> "They were both wrong. And the current technology isn't going to make
> everything all right unless I know how to put my hands on a page that has
> words on it and read them."
>
> Audio books are no substitute, said Carlton Walker, an attorney and the
> mother of a legally blind girl from McConnellsburg, Pa. Walker once met a
> blind teenager who had only listened to audio books; the teen was shocked
> to discover that "Once upon a time'' was four separate words.
>
> Walker also had to lobby teachers to provide Braille for her 8-year-old
> daughter, Anna, instead of just large-print books.
>
> "At 3 years old, Anna could compete with very large letters. When you
> getolder, you can't compete," Walker said. She once asked a teacher,
> "What are you going to do when she's reading Dickens?' She said, 'Well,
> we'll
> just go to audio then.'
>
> ''If that were good enough for everybody, why do we spend millions of
> dollars teaching people to read?''
>
> Gilmer, now an 18-year-old aspiring lawyer, worked on his Braille in a
> summer program when he was in middle school and can now read 125 words a
> minute, up from his previously rate, an excruciatingly slow 20 words a
> minute.
>
> ''Just try it,'' Carrie Gilmer said. ''Go get a paragraph, get a
> stopwatch
> and try to read 20 words a minute. Try and read that slow and see how
> frustrating it is.''
>
> Fluent Braille readers can read 200 words a minute or more, the
> federation
> says.
>
> Carrie Gilmer is president of a parents' group within the federation for
> the
> blind. She believes poor or haphazard instruction is largely responsible
> for
> the decline in Braille literacy, but she says sometimes teachers push
> Braille only to meet resistance from parents.
>
> ''They're afraid of their child looking blind, not fitting in,'' Gilmer
> said.
>
> The report outlines ambitious goals for reversing the trend, including
> lobbying all 50 states to require teachers of blind children to be
> certified
> in Braille instruction by 2015. But its immediate goal is to simply make
> people aware that there's no substitute for Braille. It's not just a tool
> to
> help people function -- it can bring joy, Maurer said.
>
> ''The concept of reading Braille for fun is a thing that lots of people
> don't know,'' Maurer said. ''And yet I do this every day. I love the
> beautiful, orderly lines of words that convey a different idea that can
> stimulate me or make me excited or sad. ... This is what we're trying to
> convey.''
>
>
>
>
>
>

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