[Colorado-talk] Organization for blind holds demonstration with a latent point

[Chris Foster]

Hello list members, 


 


The below article appeared as a result of our NFB of colorado's local
Pueblo chapter putting on a Braille Literacy Event on January 4.  The
article was published on the front page of the Pueblo Chieftain on
Monday, January 5.  Great job guys!


Chris Foster 


 


 


 


Organization for blind holds demonstration with a latent point.


By NICK BONHAM 
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

Rick Holcomb wrote a letter to Alyce Bouy on Sunday.

No stamp or postal service were needed. He just slid the note across the
table.

"He's telling me Happy New Year and Happy Valentine's Day," Bouy beamed
after reading the message.

It was a sweet card and gesture that drew smiles to Holcomb, Bouy and
friends Michael Massey and Debra Ziolkowski, who were sitting at their
table inside Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 4300 Freeway.

The card had no ink, however, no words or hand writing to be seen. It
looked blank, in fact. Only after touching the neon pink index card and
feeling its surface did letters and words appear in a code few inside
the bookstore could interpret: Braille.

"We're just trying to teach people, educate people on the importance of
reading and writing in Braille," said Holcomb, president of the local
chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, which sponsored
Sunday's free afternoon demonstration.

Sunday also marked what would have been the 200th birthday of Louis
Braille, the blind Frenchman who invented the written language for the
visionless.

"The public school system isn't teaching Braille at all now," Bouy said,
her disappointment evident. According to the NFB's Web site, only 10
percent of today's blind children learn Braille.

The four chapter members demonstrated how to read and write the dots,
explained the alphabet and numerous of the 150 symbols used in their
written communication.

"The Braille system is based off a combination of six dots, and you
punch the

six dots in what we call a cell (or three rows of two dots). How you
punch the

different dots in the cell stands for something like a letter or a
symbol," Holcomb said. "In Braille you have to write backward, and each
dot is poked one at a time."

Said Massey, who was demonstrating on the Braille writer, a typewriter
only with with seven keys: "There's three grades of Braille, but most
blind children learn to read at Grade 2. I don't know why, they just do.
And there's different symbols for math and music and now computers."

This spring, thanks to conversation with the NFB and Congress, a
commemorative coin will be printed in honor of Braille, who accidentally
lost his sight at age 3 and developed the code system when he was 12.

"We want to acknowledge on a national basis the importance of Louis
Braille," Holcomb said.


  _____  




ON THE NET 






National Federation of the Blind: www.nfb.org <http://www.nfb.org/>