[nabs-l] Washington Seminar

Thu Jan 7 00:40:00 UTC 2010

Hi all,

The Washington student seminar will be on Sunday, Jan. 31 from 10:00
a.m. to 5:00 p.m. We will also be having a mixer on Sunday evening
from 8:00 p.m.-midnight and a NABS student open house on Monday from
10:30-noon. I will announce this again in my bulletin which  will go
out on Monday.

This weekend a few of us are going to be having a small NABS
leadership seminar which I will also describe in my bulletin.

Arielle

On 1/7/10, Albert Yoo <albertyoo1 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sunday February 1
>
>> Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 17:18:42 -0500
>> From: aphelps at BISM.org
>> To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> Subject: [nabs-l] Washington Seminar
>>
>> When is the student seminar?
>>
>> Warm regards,
>> Amy C. Phelps
>> Amy C. Phelps, CRC, NOMC
>> Director of Rehabilitation Services
>>
>> Phone: 410-737-2642
>> Mobile: 410-274-1647
>> E-mail: aphelps at bism.org
>>
>> "A frog in a well, can only see its piece of the sky" ~Unknown
>>
>>
>>
>> Confidentiality Note:  The information contained in this message may be
>> privileged and confidential and protected from disclosure. If the reader
>> of this message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent
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>> hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this
>> communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this
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>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>> Behalf Of Dennis Clark
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 4:18 PM
>> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
>> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Braille Vs Technology: is there room for only
>> oneintown?
>>
>> It would be helpful for me and I think most readers if those discussing
>> Braille could talk a little about what they do for a living and how
>> Braille
>> is an integral part of their job. The woman discussed in the article is
>> the
>> head of a New York Stock Brokerage firm and as such is earning several
>> million dollars per year and therefore does not need my advice about
>> Braille
>> or anything else. Her accomplishments greatly exceed mine by quite a lot
>> and for me to advise or criticize her would require an almost unimaginable
>> level of arrogance. My advice to all those earning seven figure salaries
>> is
>> keep on doing what your doing because it is working great! For the rest of
>> us earning 4 or 5 digit salaries, it would be interesting to hear what you
>> do for a living and how you use Braille in your work, and what you would
>> not
>> be able to do in your job without Braille.
>> Warmest regards,
>> Dennis
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Darian Smith" <dsmithnfb at gmail.com>
>> To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list"
>> <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 10:07 AM
>> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Braille Vs Technology: is there room for only one
>> intown?
>>
>>
>> Joseph,
>>
>> With the advant of and advances in digital technologies would one
>> not argue that people are actually more likely to be employed because
>> access to information is better than it was even five years ago?
>> can it be said that the blind who knnow braille are superior to the
>> blind who arn't? if so, who makes this determination?
>> Respectfully,
>> Darian
>>
>>
>> On 1/6/10, T. Joseph Carter <carter.tjoseph at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Darian,
>> >
>> > What it makes them is statistically far less likely to be employed,
>> > for one thing. That alone should convince parents and teachers the
>> > importance of Braille education.
>> >
>> > Joseph
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jan 04, 2010 at 07:40:41PM -0800, Darian Smith wrote:
>> >>I hope individuals don't mind my playing devil's advocate focused
>> >>upon the statement "braille readers are leaders".
>> >> What does this make those who arn't very good braille readers,
>> >>don't want to know, or don't know braille?
>> >>
>> >> Do you feel the Organization (the nfb) frowns upon non-braille readers?
>> >> respectfullly,
>> >> Darian
>> >>
>> >>On 1/4/10, Kerri Kosten <kerrik2006 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>> Hi:
>> >>>
>> >>> Just thought I'd share my opinions for what it's worth.
>> >>>
>> >>> I was taught braille, and am very good at reading it.
>> >>> However, I admit with devices like the Victor Reader Stream, I really
>> >>> don't read in braille much. I have a Pacmate notetaker with a braille
>> >>> display, so I could and probably should download more books and read
>> >>> them digitally, but just listening to a book on the tiny stream is
>> >>> much easier than lugging around a note taker and reading on a braille
>> >>> display.
>> >>> So, I admit even as a great braille reader I don't use braille as much
>> >>> as I should.
>> >>>
>> >>> I do use it at my work though, for when I write previews I take my
>> >>> notes in braille and that helps tremendously...so it definitely has
>> >>> it's uses and children should definitely be taught it.
>> >>>
>> >>> Braille readers are leaders!
>> >>>
>> >>> Kerri+
>> >>>
>> >>> On 1/4/10, Beth <thebluesisloose at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>> Wow. I admit to having been taught Braille as a child and my vision
>> >>>> teacher was wonderful, but it doesn't surprise me that a lot of
>> >>>> today's children are not taught that way. Braille readers are
>> >>>> leaders, they say.
>> >>>> Beth
>> >>>>
>> >>>> On 1/4/10, Darian Smith <dsmithnfb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>>> This
>> >>>>> Listening to Braille
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> By RACHEL AVIV
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Published: December 30, 2009
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> AT 4 O'CLOCK each morning, Laura J. Sloate begins her daily reading.
>> >>>>> She calls a phone service that reads newspapers aloud in a synthetic
>> >>>>> voice, and she
>> >>>>> listens to The Wall Street Journal at 300 words a minute, which is
>> >>>>> nearly twice the average pace of speech. Later, an assistant reads
>> >>>>> The
>> >>>>> Financial Times
>> >>>>> to her while she uses her computer's text-to-speech system to play
>> >>>>> The
>> >>>>> Economist aloud. She devotes one ear to the paper and the other to
>> >>>>> the
>> >>>>> magazine.
>> >>>>> The managing director of a Wall Street investment management firm,
>> >>>>> Sloate has been blind since age 6, and although she reads
>> >>>>> constantly,
>> >>>>> poring over the
>> >>>>> news and the economic reports for several hours every morning, she
>> >>>>> does not use Braille. "Knowledge goes from my ears to my brain, not
>> >>>>> from my finger to
>> >>>>> my brain," she says. As a child she learned how the letters of the
>> >>>>> alphabet sounded, not how they appeared or felt on the page. She
>> >>>>> doesn't think of a
>> >>>>> comma in terms of its written form but rather as "a stop on the way
>> >>>>> before continuing." This, she says, is the future of reading for the
>> >>>>> blind. "Literacy
>> >>>>> evolves," she told me. "When Braille was invented, in the 19th
>> >>>>> century, we had nothing else. We didn't even have radio. At that
>> >>>>> time,
>> >>>>> blindness
>> >>>>> was a disability. Now it's just a minor, minor impairment."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> A few decades ago, commentators predicted that the electronic age
>> >>>>> would create a postliterate generation as new forms of media
>> >>>>> eclipsed
>> >>>>> the written word.
>> >>>>> Marshall McLuhan claimed that Western culture would return to the
>> >>>>> "tribal and oral pattern." But the decline of written language has
>> >>>>> become a reality for
>> >>>>> only the blind. Although Sloate does regret not spending more time
>> >>>>> learning to spell in her youth - she writes by dictation - she says
>> >>>>> she thinks that
>> >>>>> using Braille would have only isolated her from her sighted peers.
>> >>>>> "It's an arcane means of communication, which for the most part
>> >>>>> should
>> >>>>> be abolished,"
>> >>>>> she told me. "It's just not needed today."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Braille books are expensive and cumbersome, requiring reams of
>> >>>>> thick,
>> >>>>> oversize paper. The National Braille Press, an 83-year-old
>> >>>>> publishing
>> >>>>> house in Boston,
>> >>>>> printed the
>> >>>>> Harry Potter
>> >>>>> series on its Heidelberg cylinder; the final product was 56 volumes,
>> >>>>> each nearly a foot tall. Because a single textbook can cost more
>> >>>>> than
>> >>>>> $1,000 and there's
>> >>>>> a shortage of Braille teachers in public schools, visually impaired
>> >>>>> students often read using MP3 players, audiobooks and
>> >>>>> computer-screen-reading software.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> A report released last year by the National Federation of the Blind,
>> >>>>> an advocacy group with 50,000 members, said that less than 10
>> >>>>> percent
>> >>>>> of the 1.3 million
>> >>>>> legally blind Americans read Braille. Whereas roughly half of all
>> >>>>> blind children learned Braille in the 1950s, today that number is as
>> >>>>> low as 1 in 10,
>> >>>>> according to the report. The figures are controversial because there
>> >>>>> is debate about when a child with residual vision has "too much
>> >>>>> sight"
>> >>>>> for Braille
>> >>>>> and because the causes of blindness have changed over the decades -
>> >>>>> in
>> >>>>> recent years more blind children have multiple disabilities, because
>> >>>>> of premature
>> >>>>> births. It is clear, though, that Braille literacy has been waning
>> >>>>> for
>> >>>>> some time, even among the most intellectually capable, and the
>> >>>>> report
>> >>>>> has inspired
>> >>>>> a fervent movement to change the way blind people read. "What we're
>> >>>>> finding are students who are very smart, very verbally able - and
>> >>>>> illiterate," Jim
>> >>>>> Marks, a board member for the past five years of the Association on
>> >>>>> Higher Education and Disability, told me. "We stopped teaching our
>> >>>>> nation's blind children
>> >>>>> how to read and write. We put a tape player, then a computer, on
>> >>>>> their
>> >>>>> desks. Now their writing is phonetic and butchered. They never got
>> >>>>> to
>> >>>>> learn the
>> >>>>> beauty and shape and structure of language."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> For much of the past century, blind children attended residential
>> >>>>> institutions where they learned to read by touching the words.
>> >>>>> Today,
>> >>>>> visually impaired
>> >>>>> children can be well versed in literature without knowing how to
>> >>>>> read;
>> >>>>> computer-screen-reading software will even break down each word and
>> >>>>> read the individual
>> >>>>> letters aloud. Literacy has become much harder to define, even for
>> >>>>> educators.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> "If all you have in the world is what you hear people say, then your
>> >>>>> mind is limited," Darrell Shandrow, who runs a blog called Blind
>> >>>>> Access Journal, told
>> >>>>> me. "You need written symbols to organize your mind. If you can't
>> >>>>> feel
>> >>>>> or see the word, what does it mean? The substance is gone." Like
>> >>>>> many
>> >>>>> Braille readers,
>> >>>>> Shandrow says that new computers, which form a single line of
>> >>>>> Braille
>> >>>>> cells at a time, will revive the code of bumps, but these devices
>> >>>>> are
>> >>>>> still extremely
>> >>>>> costly and not yet widely used. Shandrow views the decline in
>> >>>>> Braille
>> >>>>> literacy as a sign of regression, not progress: "This is like going
>> >>>>> back to the 1400s,
>> >>>>> before Gutenberg's printing press came on the scene," he said. "Only
>> >>>>> the scholars and monks knew how to read and write. And then there
>> >>>>> were
>> >>>>> the illiterate
>> >>>>> masses, the peasants."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> UNTIL THE 19TH CENTURY, blind people were confined to an oral
>> >>>>> culture.
>> >>>>> Some tried to read letters carved in wood or wax, formed by wire or
>> >>>>> outlined in felt
>> >>>>> with pins. Dissatisfied with such makeshift methods, Louis Braille,
>> >>>>> a
>> >>>>> student at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, began
>> >>>>> studying a cipher
>> >>>>> language of bumps, called night writing, developed by a French Army
>> >>>>> officer so soldiers could send messages in the dark. Braille
>> >>>>> modified
>> >>>>> the code so that
>> >>>>> it could be read more efficiently - each letter or punctuation
>> >>>>> symbol
>> >>>>> is represented by a pattern of one to six dots on a matrix of three
>> >>>>> rows and two
>> >>>>> columns - and added abbreviations for commonly used words like
>> >>>>> "knowledge," "people" and "Lord." Endowed with a reliable method of
>> >>>>> written communication
>> >>>>> for the first time in history, blind people had a significant rise
>> >>>>> in
>> >>>>> social status, and Louis Braille was embraced as a kind of liberator
>> >>>>> and spiritual
>> >>>>> savior. With his "godlike courage," Helen Keller wrote, Braille
>> >>>>> built
>> >>>>> a "firm stairway for millions of sense-crippled human beings to
>> >>>>> climb
>> >>>>> from hopeless
>> >>>>> darkness to the Mind Eternal."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> At the time, blindness was viewed not just as the absence of sight
>> >>>>> but
>> >>>>> also as a condition that created a separate kind of species, more
>> >>>>> innocent and malleable,
>> >>>>> not fully formed. Some scholars said that blind people spoke a
>> >>>>> different sort of language, disconnected from visual experience. In
>> >>>>> his 1933 book, "The
>> >>>>> Blind in School and Society," the psychologist Thomas Cutsforth, who
>> >>>>> lost his sight at age 11, warned that students who were too rapidly
>> >>>>> assimilated into
>> >>>>> the sighted world would become lost in "verbal unreality." At some
>> >>>>> residential schools, teachers avoided words that referenced color or
>> >>>>> light because,
>> >>>>> they said, students might stretch the meanings beyond sense. These
>> >>>>> theories have since been discredited, and studies have shown that
>> >>>>> blind children as
>> >>>>> young as 4 understand the difference in meaning between words like
>> >>>>> "look," "touch" and "see." And yet Cutsforth was not entirely
>> >>>>> misguided in his argument
>> >>>>> that sensory deprivation restructures the mind. In the 1990s, a
>> >>>>> series
>> >>>>> of brain-imaging studies revealed that the visual cortices of the
>> >>>>> blind are not
>> >>>>> rendered useless, as previously assumed. When test subjects swept
>> >>>>> their fingers over a line of Braille, they showed intense activation
>> >>>>> in the parts of
>> >>>>> the brain that typically process visual input.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> These imaging studies have been cited by some educators as proof
>> >>>>> that
>> >>>>> Braille is essential for blind children's cognitive development, as
>> >>>>> the visual cortex
>> >>>>> takes more than 20 percent of the brain. Given the brain's
>> >>>>> plasticity,
>> >>>>> it is difficult to make the argument that one kind of reading -
>> >>>>> whether the information
>> >>>>> is absorbed by ear, finger or retina - is inherently better than
>> >>>>> another, at least with regard to cognitive function. The
>> >>>>> architecture
>> >>>>> of the brain is
>> >>>>> not fixed, and without images to process, the visual cortex can
>> >>>>> reorganize for new functions. A 2003 study in Nature Neuroscience
>> >>>>> found that blind subjects
>> >>>>> consistently surpassed sighted ones on tests of verbal
>> >>>>> memory
>> >>>>> , and their superior performance was caused, the authors suggested,
>> >>>>> by
>> >>>>> the extra processing that took place in the visual regions of their
>> >>>>> brains.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Learning to read is so entwined in the normal course of child
>> >>>>> development that it is easy to assume that our brains are naturally
>> >>>>> wired for print literacy.
>> >>>>> But humans have been reading for fewer than 6,000 years (and
>> >>>>> literacy
>> >>>>> has been widespread for no more than a century and a half). The
>> >>>>> activity of reading
>> >>>>> itself alters the anatomy of the brain. In a report released in 2009
>> >>>>> in the journal Nature, the neuroscientist Manuel Carreiras studies
>> >>>>> illiterate former
>> >>>>> guerrillas in Colombia who, after years of combat, had abandoned
>> >>>>> their
>> >>>>> weapons, left the jungle and rejoined civilization. Carreiras
>> >>>>> compares
>> >>>>> 20 adults
>> >>>>> who had recently completed a literacy program with 22 people who had
>> >>>>> not yet begun it. In
>> >>>>> M.R.I.
>> >>>>> scans of their brains, the newly literate subjects showed more gray
>> >>>>> matter in their angular gyri, an area crucial for language
>> >>>>> processing,
>> >>>>> and more white
>> >>>>> matter in part of the corpus callosum, which links the two
>> >>>>> hemispheres. Deficiencies in these regions were previously observed
>> >>>>> in
>> >>>>> dyslexics, and the study
>> >>>>> suggests that those brain patterns weren't the cause of their
>> >>>>> illiteracy, as had been hypothesized, but a result.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> There is no doubt that literacy changes brain circuitry, but how
>> >>>>> this
>> >>>>> reorganization affects our capacity for language is still a matter
>> >>>>> of
>> >>>>> debate. In moving
>> >>>>> from written to spoken language, the greatest consequences for blind
>> >>>>> people may not be cognitive but cultural - a loss much harder to
>> >>>>> avoid. In one of
>> >>>>> the few studies of blind people's prose, Doug Brent, a professor of
>> >>>>> communication at the University of Calgary, and his wife, Diana
>> >>>>> Brent,
>> >>>>> a teacher of
>> >>>>> visually impaired students, analyzed stories by students who didn't
>> >>>>> use Braille but rather composed on a regular keyboard and edited by
>> >>>>> listening to their
>> >>>>> words played aloud. One 16-year-old wrote a fictional story about a
>> >>>>> character named Mark who had "sleep bombs":
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> He looked in the house windo that was his da windo his dad was
>> >>>>> walking
>> >>>>> around with a mask on he took it off he opend the windo and fell on
>> >>>>> his bed sleeping
>> >>>>> mark took two bombs and tosed them in the windo the popt his dad
>> >>>>> lept
>> >>>>> up but before he could grab the mask it explodedhe fell down asleep.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> In describing this story and others like it, the Brents invoked the
>> >>>>> literary scholar Walter Ong, who argued that members of literate
>> >>>>> societies think differently
>> >>>>> than members of oral societies. The act of writing, Ong said - the
>> >>>>> ability to revisit your ideas and, in the process, refine them -
>> >>>>> transformed the shape
>> >>>>> of thought. The Brents characterized the writing of many audio-only
>> >>>>> readers as disorganized, "as if all of their ideas are crammed into
>> >>>>> a
>> >>>>> container, shaken
>> >>>>> and thrown randomly onto a sheet of paper like dice onto a table."
>> >>>>> The
>> >>>>> beginnings and endings of sentences seem arbitrary, one thought
>> >>>>> emerging in the
>> >>>>> midst of another with a kind of breathless energy. The authors
>> >>>>> concluded, "It just doesn't seem to reflect the qualities of
>> >>>>> organized
>> >>>>> sequence and complex
>> >>>>> thought that we value in a literate society."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> OUR DEFINITION of a literate society inevitably shifts as our tools
>> >>>>> for reading and writing evolve, but the brief history of literacy
>> >>>>> for
>> >>>>> blind people makes
>> >>>>> the prospect of change particularly fraught. Since the 1820s, when
>> >>>>> Louis Braille invented his writing system - so that blind people
>> >>>>> would
>> >>>>> no longer be
>> >>>>> "despised or patronized by condescending sighted people," as he put
>> >>>>> it
>> >>>>> - there has always been, among blind people, a political and even
>> >>>>> moral dimension
>> >>>>> to learning to read. Braille is viewed by many as a mark of
>> >>>>> independence, a sign that blind people have moved away from an oral
>> >>>>> culture seen as primitive
>> >>>>> and isolating. In recent years, however, this narrative has been
>> >>>>> complicated. Schoolchildren in developed countries, like the U.S.
>> >>>>> and
>> >>>>> Britain, are now
>> >>>>> thought to have lower Braille literacy than those in developing
>> >>>>> ones,
>> >>>>> like Indonesia and Botswana, where there are few alternatives to
>> >>>>> Braille. Tim Connell,
>> >>>>> the managing director of an assistive-technology company in
>> >>>>> Australia,
>> >>>>> told me that he has heard this described as "one of the advantages
>> >>>>> of
>> >>>>> being poor."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Braille readers do not deny that new reading technology has been
>> >>>>> transformative, but Braille looms so large in the mythology of
>> >>>>> blindness that it has assumed
>> >>>>> a kind of talismanic status. Those who have residual vision and
>> >>>>> still
>> >>>>> try to read print - very slowly or by holding the page an inch or
>> >>>>> two
>> >>>>> from their
>> >>>>> faces - are generally frowned upon by the National Federation of the
>> >>>>> Blind, which fashions itself as the leader of a civil rights
>> >>>>> movement
>> >>>>> for the blind.
>> >>>>> Its president, Marc Maurer, a voracious reader, compares Louis
>> >>>>> Braille
>> >>>>> to
>> >>>>> Abraham Lincoln
>> >>>>> . At the annual convention for the federation, held at a Detroit
>> >>>>> Marriott last July, I heard the mantra "listening is not literacy"
>> >>>>> repeated everywhere,
>> >>>>> from panels on the Braille crisis to conversations among
>> >>>>> middle-school
>> >>>>> girls. Horror stories circulating around the convention featured
>> >>>>> children who don't
>> >>>>> know what a paragraph is or why we capitalize letters or that
>> >>>>> "happily
>> >>>>> ever after" is made up of three separate words.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Declaring your own illiteracy seemed to be a rite of passage. A vice
>> >>>>> president of the federation, Fredric Schroeder, served as
>> >>>>> commissioner
>> >>>>> of the Rehabilitation
>> >>>>> Services Administration under President Clinton and relies primarily
>> >>>>> on audio technologies. He was openly repentant about his lack of
>> >>>>> reading skills. "I
>> >>>>> am now over 50 years old, and it wasn't until two months ago that I
>> >>>>> realized that 'dissent,' to disagree, is different than 'descent,'
>> >>>>> to
>> >>>>> lower something,"
>> >>>>> he told me. "I'm functionally illiterate. People say, 'Oh, no,
>> >>>>> you're
>> >>>>> not.' Yes, I am. I'm sorry about it, but I'm not embarrassed to
>> >>>>> admit
>> >>>>> it."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> While people like Laura Sloate or the governor of New York,
>> >>>>> David A. Paterson
>> >>>>> , who also reads by listening, may be able to achieve without the
>> >>>>> help
>> >>>>> of Braille, their success requires accommodations that many cannot
>> >>>>> afford. Like Sloate,
>> >>>>> Paterson dictates his memos, and his staff members select pertinent
>> >>>>> newspaper articles for him and read them aloud on his voice mail
>> >>>>> every
>> >>>>> morning. (He
>> >>>>> calls himself "overassimilated" and told me that as a child he was
>> >>>>> "mainstreamed so much that I psychologically got the message that
>> >>>>> I'm
>> >>>>> not really supposed
>> >>>>> to be blind.") Among people with fewer resources, Braille-readers
>> >>>>> tend
>> >>>>> to form the blind elite, in part because it is more plausible for a
>> >>>>> blind person
>> >>>>> to find work doing intellectual rather than manual labor.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> A 1996 study showed that of a sample of visually impaired adults,
>> >>>>> those who learned Braille as children were more than twice as likely
>> >>>>> to be employed as
>> >>>>> those who had not. At the convention this statistic was frequently
>> >>>>> cited with pride, so much so that those who didn't know Braille were
>> >>>>> sometimes made
>> >>>>> to feel like outsiders. "There is definitely a sense of peer
>> >>>>> pressure
>> >>>>> from the older guard," James Brown, a 35-year-old who reads using
>> >>>>> text-to-speech
>> >>>>> software, told me. "If we could live in our own little Braille
>> >>>>> world,
>> >>>>> then that'd be perfect," he added. "But we live in a visual world."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> When deaf people began getting
>> >>>>> cochlear implants
>> >>>>> in the late 1980s, many in the deaf community felt betrayed. The new
>> >>>>> technology pushed people to think of the disability in a new way -
>> >>>>> as
>> >>>>> an identity
>> >>>>> and a culture. Technology has changed the nature of many
>> >>>>> disabilities,
>> >>>>> lifting the burdens but also complicating people's sense of what is
>> >>>>> physically natural,
>> >>>>> because bodies can so often be tweaked until "fixed." Arielle
>> >>>>> Silverman, a graduate student at the convention who has been blind
>> >>>>> since birth, told me that
>> >>>>> if she had the choice to have vision, she was not sure she would
>> >>>>> take
>> >>>>> it. Recently she purchased a pocket-size reading machine that takes
>> >>>>> photographs of
>> >>>>> text and then reads the words aloud, and she said she thought of
>> >>>>> vision like that, as "just another piece of technology."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> The modern history of blind people is in many ways a history of
>> >>>>> reading, with the scope of the disability - the extent to which you
>> >>>>> are viewed as ignorant
>> >>>>> or civilized, helpless or independent - determined largely by your
>> >>>>> ability to access the printed word. For 150 years, Braille books
>> >>>>> were
>> >>>>> designed to function
>> >>>>> as much as possible like print books. But now the computer has
>> >>>>> essentially done away with the limits of form, because information,
>> >>>>> once it has been digitized,
>> >>>>> can be conveyed through sound or touch. For sighted people, the
>> >>>>> transition from print to digital text has been relatively subtle,
>> >>>>> but
>> >>>>> for many blind people
>> >>>>> the shift to computerized speech is an unwelcome and uncharted
>> >>>>> experiment. In grappling with what has been lost, several federation
>> >>>>> members recited to
>> >>>>> me various takes on the classic expression Scripta manent, verba
>> >>>>> volant: What is written remains, what is spoken vanishes into air.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Rachel Aviv is a Rosalynn Carter fellow for mental-health journalism
>> >>>>> with the Carter Center and writes frequently on education for The
>> >>>>> Times.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> --
>> >>>>> The National Federation of the Blind has launched a nationwide
>> >>>>> teacher
>> >>>>> recruitment campaign to help attract energetic and passionate
>> >>>>> individuals into the field of blindness education, and we need your
>> >>>>> help! To Get Involved go to:
>> >>>>> www.TeachBlindStudents.org
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> "And if you will join me in this improbable quest, if you feel
>> >>>>> destiny
>> >>>>> calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility
>> >>>>> stretching
>> >>>>> before us;
>> >>>>> if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our
>> >>>>> slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we owe
>> >>>>> past and future generations,
>> >>>>> then I'm ready to take up the cause, and march with you, and work
>> >>>>> with
>> >>>>> you. Together, starting today, let us finish the work that needs to
>> >>>>> be
>> >>>>> done, and
>> >>>>> usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth."- Baraq Obama
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> _______________________________________________
>> >>>>> nabs-l mailing list
>> >>>>> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> >>>>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>> >>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
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>> >>>>> nabs-l:
>> >>>>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/thebluesisloose%40gmail.com
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> _______________________________________________
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>> >>>>
>> >>>
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>> >>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> >>> nabs-l:
>> >>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/dsmithnfb%40gmail.com
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>--
>> >>The National Federation of the Blind has launched a nationwide teacher
>> >>recruitment campaign to help attract energetic and passionate
>> >>individuals into the field of blindness education, and we need your
>> >>help! To Get Involved go to:
>> >>www.TeachBlindStudents.org
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>"And if you will join me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny
>> >>calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility stretching
>> >>before us;
>> >>if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our
>> >>slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we owe
>> >>past and future generations,
>> >>then I'm ready to take up the cause, and march with you, and work with
>> >>you. Together, starting today, let us finish the work that needs to be
>> >>done, and
>> >>usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth."- Baraq Obama
>> >>
>> >>_______________________________________________
>> >>nabs-l mailing list
>> >>nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> >>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>> >>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> >> nabs-l:
>> >>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/carter.tjoseph%40gmail.com
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > nabs-l mailing list
>> > nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> > http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>> > To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> > nabs-l:
>> > http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/dsmithnfb%40gmail.com
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> The National Federation of the Blind has launched a nationwide teacher
>> recruitment campaign to help attract energetic and passionate
>> individuals into the field of blindness education, and we need your
>> help! To Get Involved go to:
>> www.TeachBlindStudents.org
>>
>>
>> "And if you will join me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny
>> calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility stretching
>> before us;
>> if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our
>> slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we owe
>> past and future generations,
>> then I'm ready to take up the cause, and march with you, and work with
>> you. Together, starting today, let us finish the work that needs to be
>> done, and
>> usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth."- Baraq Obama
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> nabs-l mailing list
>> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> nabs-l:
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/dennisgclark%40sbcglobal.net
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> nabs-l:
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/aphelps%40bism.org
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> nabs-l:
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-- 
Arielle Silverman
President, National Association of Blind Students
Phone:  602-502-2255
Email:
nabs.president at gmail.com
Website:
www.nabslink.org