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

[trishs]

When my girls go out into the world, they will have the skill of 
knowing braille.  It will open job opportunities for them in a 
great way!

> ----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jo Elizabeth Pinto" <jopinto at pcdesk.net
>To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org
>Date sent: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 14:07:15 -0600
>Subject: Re: [blparent] FW: Fewer than 10 Percent of Blind 
Americans ReadBraille

>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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