[nabs-l] Braille Vs Technology: is there room for only one intown?

[Marc Workman]

Briley,

I think what matters most is getting the job done.  If a sighted person
unable to read print (e.g., a person with a severe learning disability) used
alternative techniques to do his or her job effectively, then I absolutely
think he or she should be hired by the employer.  We should be held to the
same standard, but the standard should be a matter of whether we can do the
job efficiently and effectively, not a matter of how exactly the job is
done.

As I said before, it would be wrong if children were not taught to read
either print or Braille, and it would be wrong if a child that wanted to
learn Braille were denied that opportunity, but I think some here have come
close to suggesting that Braille is essential if you want to get a job, if
you want to get an education, and if you want to write clearly and
articulately.  This simply isn't true.  Being able to read Braille helps
with all of these things I'm sure, but it definitely isn't essential, and I
just wonder exactly how much it helps.

Marc

-----Original Message-----
From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org]On
Behalf Of Briley Pollard
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 7:04 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Braille Vs Technology: is there room for only one
intown?


My answer to this is simple. I agree that more studies need to be done
specifically on the employment of braille readers. However, the answer is
the same. Do you think and employer would higher a sighted person who
couldn't read print? No, I think not, (of course some jobs don't really
require it, so this isn't true for ALL jobs). Why should the blind community
be held to a different standard? If we expect to be treated equally,
shouldn't we be held to the same standards?
On Jan 6, 2010, at 6:30 PM, Marc Workman wrote:

> I find this topic very interesting.
>
> I suppose I am someone who advocates the learning and use of Braille, who
thinks it is an important skill, but who almost never uses it.
>
> I think at least two things are missing in this discussion.  First, there
isn't much distinction being made between people who have never read print
or Braille and those who have read print before going blind but haven't
learned Braille.  Second, there are a lot of anecdotal claims being made
without any concrete evidence.
>
> As I said, I almost never use Braille.  In fact, I would barely classify
myself as able to read Braille, but I did read print, all be it with some
difficulty, up until the age of 20.  Am I illiterate since I can read
neither print nor Braille? Did I lose my literacy as I lost my sight, or am
I literate even though I can't read print anymore? I think my case and the
many others that are similar suggest that the question of literacy is a
little more complicated than some of the comments made thus far imply.
>
> I agree that children need to be taught to read either using print or
Braille.  If this isn't happening, it's a serious problem, but I'm not sure
that Braille is as essential for someone who grew up reading print.  It's
certainly a tremendous skill to possess, much like being capable of speaking
three different languages, but it isn't essential for success.  I think this
distinction between former print users and people who never read print is
important and worth getting on the table.
>
> Second, it's fine to speculate and relate your own experiences, but it
would really help the discussion if there were some varified facts out
there.  We can talk about the employment rate of Braille users, but does
anyone have access to the actual studies that show that knowing Braille
increases your employment prospects? Do these studies control for things
like socio-economic status, age of onset of blindness, post-secondary
education, and the myriad of other factors that affect employment prospects?
I have no idea.  Maybe they do, but perhaps they don't.
>
> Again, you can point to this list as evidence of a decline in the writing
skills of the blind, but I've graded dozens of essays in my role as a
teaching assistant, and I don't think I could discern a definite difference
between sighted and blind students.  If you want to see some pretty terrible
writing, just read the comments posted to the average news story on any
major news website.  Some will be written well; others will not.  This is
all entirely anecdotal, and it means very little unless there are some
studies to back it up.
>
> It's an interesting discussion for sure, and it's typical of the
thoughtful and important discussions that take place on this list.
>
> Regards,
>
> Marc
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org]On
> Behalf Of T. Joseph Carter
> Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 2:53 PM
> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Braille Vs Technology: is there room for only one
> in town?
>
>
> Darian,
>
> You can argue the maybes and possible futures.  TODAY, Braille is the
> difference between high employment and extremely low.
>
> I'm going to be more harsh than even Jedi was and say that this list
> often demonstrates just how completely pathetic the language skills
> of those who communicate using primarily speech alone actually are.
> There are people on this list who cannot spell words at even the
> second grade level.  Some have no concept of even a sentence, let
> alone a paragraph.  As far as the world is concerned, they are
> illiterate.
>
> Few indeed are the jobs for which complete illiteracy is not a
> factor.  Not only that, if you demonstrate the level of literacy
> sometimes evidenced on this list, you could be an absolute genius and
> the average ignorant sighted person is going to assume you're at the
> very least cognitively deficient.
>
> At this time, we have a whole generation of blind people who have in
> large part grown up functionally illiterate.  They are suffering the
> consequences in that most are unemployed and beginning to come to the
> conclusion that they may in fact be unemployable.  The education
> system has completely failed these people, and it ought to inspire
> nothing short of rage at the notion that it should be allowed to
> continue.
>
> Joseph
>
> On Wed, Jan 06, 2010 at 10:07:31AM -0800, Darian Smith wrote:
>> 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
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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for
>>>>>>> nabs-l:
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>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> nabs-l:
>>>>
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il.com
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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%40gma
il.com
>
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