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

Carrie Gilmer carrie.gilmer at gmail.com
Thu Jan 7 03:48:28 UTC 2010


Greetings,
A full year ago Rachel Aviv was recommended to come to me by a blind woman
who is also a parent who had convinced Ms. Aviv there was a literacy crisis
for blind children in America and a bigger story than the blind kids
competing at how fast they could bang out or read dots at the Braille
Challenge she was attending. I spent a fair amount of time with her and
directed her to, and supplied her with, many resources, data and studies.
How her final theme evolved is beyond me to fathom. 

I am surprised to say the least that you all have focused solely thus far on
the pure message of sound verses Braille. For she said much else in her
article and also of relevance, I believe, is what she failed to say. 

I am a professional reader. I work for a federal investigator (who is
totally blind and has always been essentially) within a federal agency. She
however can read, and read well. The medium for her for text is Braille. For
me it is print; I am sighted if you had not guessed it. I read all the case
files and though I must do some analysis I am directed by her. Sometimes my
skill in analysis and attention to detail are crucial because if I miss it
she very well might. She knows more about what the details mean, sometimes I
read something just because it is there and I have no knowledge of its
relevance but as soon as she hears it she knows how it fits with her
investigation. That is, she is the skilled interpreter. Sometimes she asks
me to read or look for something specific that she is looking for or to
change how it is formatted or ordered (say a spread sheet) to bring out a
different perspective on the evidence. She also listens to computerized
speech and screen readers much or her day. As part of her job she must write
letters and notices and subpoenas. She must take notes in live interviews of
witnesses, respondents and charging parties. She must write out questions
for interviews and sometimes they are on location away from her office. Much
of the data on cases that comes to her still comes in handwritten ink on
forms that are not well scanned. In the end though, she would not be able to
do her job if she could not read and write. Not many employers would pay for
a fulltime assistant just for the blind person, and that might be a
legitimate question on what are reasonable accommodations. I work 12 hours a
week reading.

It is true that a shocking amount of the sighted people who write in to the
agency with their "side" do so with horrific spelling, formatting, and
grammar. Even their thoughts are not well presented on paper, meaning they
are often terribly out of order. And while it is true that the agency does
everything possible to decipher barley intelligible texts and to negate its
influence by getting oral testimony and depositions it is the bottom line
that their cases are more difficult because they can not articulate as well.
Illiteracy is a factor in inhibiting their due process to some extent. It is
also true that the worse the writing nearly every time it correlates the
lower the job classification in prestige, power, income and working
environment and the more vulnerable they are to abuses and scams.

You want data? Get on Google and start searching literacy and levels of
education and their correlation to "success". The world is full of data on
it. Look at the educations and literacy rates globally and look at the
standard and quality of life in the respective countries. We have an
employment study by Dr. Ruby Ryles, you can search for it on the NFB site.
I can tell you right now there are many careers you can write off if you can
not read and write. All teaching positions, any journalism, any legal,
secretary, politics, medicine, and heck even a farmer needs an ag/business
degree these days. Unless of course you are filthy rich already and can
afford full-time live readers and transcribers for your dictation. Hey Bill
Gates dropped out of college! He did alright! Yeah go ahead and quit if you
are in it, it is not necessary to be successful.

Bottom line, if you are blind, Braille is the most efficient means of
reading and writing for the vast majority. Leaders are Readers. Braille or
Print. That is a fact. Reading and writing changed the world and still does.
Reading and writing are knowledge and power. As far as Ms. Sloate goes, I
find it ridiculous that someone who has no experience with Braille or
reading at all apparently can dismiss it for everyone else. I find it
shocking and offensive that the NY Times gave her the lead paragraph to say
so in her personal opinion of one with something she has no knowledge of.
She does not have any idea how different her day or life might be if she
could read; independently read and write. It would be ludicrous for the
Times to give such feature and credence to a sighted person who never
learned to read print to dismiss is as passé for the rest of the sighted
public. Why is Sloate's opinion on this even taken seriously? Apparently she
has no children...or does she hire a reader to read bedtime stories to them
too?

And dear Marc, I am quite sure a large factor in your not using Braille much
is that you don't use it much. 104 year old people have learned it. Children
can learn it. Jerry Whittle quote, "Read until you bleed." That is what it
takes. It takes an athletic or "Biggest Loser" type discipline and focus. If
you really tried and got good at it you don't know how much you might enjoy
being able to own what you read again and to hear it in your brain from your
own voice. Is your value as a human less if you don't? No. Are you more
likely to be happier than me? Maybe, maybe not. Successful? Maybe, maybe
not. But in all likelihood and by real overwhelming experience I can tell
you I am much more likely to have things and have a convenience at least and
you will not because I can read and write. If I had been born in Bangladesh
I might have a greater chance of being poor, but it is not guaranteed. One
could go round and round about it. Then there is some common sense and the
probabilities of majority experience.

Poor Mr. Brown felt that we pushed a Braille world on him at convention? Hey
Mr. Brown it is a text world. Me thinks you doth protest too much and are
pricked by your own feelings of inadequacy. I have been severely criticized
at times by parents who heard a seminar full of information for the first
time and saturated with guilt of their own making, they blamed ME for making
them feel bad because I had not said enough to "help them" and make them
feel good about not knowing the stuff before! Give me a break. I said I had
said NOT ENOUGH...when someone feels bad and carries a chip on the old
shoulder you can never give them enough to knock the chip off their
shoulder. I always say something, but for some it is never enough. Me thinks
Mr. Brown falls there. Are we to apologize or make qualification for those
who "don’t" every time we take the mic in defense of literacy and Braille or
white canes in case we might hurt someone's feelings? Really?

I take issue with Aviv's statement "Braille looms large in the mythology of
blindness" what the heck does that mean? Talismanic status? I imagine her in
the sixties going to a NAACP rally or a Freedom Rider training and perhaps
she would have surmised there as well, "Voting looms large in the mythology
of blackness to a near talismanic status." We don't frown upon people,
people! We frown upon illiteracy and ridiculous notions that "reading"
at 20 or 30 or 40 wpm for a child with eye and neck and back strain doubling
and quadrupling their time at homework, sitting and feeling stupid while
everyone else races ahead is anything less than abuse and robbery of their
right to an equal opportunity in education. Of course it is different for
the newly blind as adults and of course it is different for those who were
robbed so as children, good grief, we say that all the time. We hold hands
and pass out kleenexes, and offer training, and support, and encouragement,
and meanwhile also offer friendship and understanding and cheerleading and
scholarships (you don't HAVE to know Braille to get one! Ask the latest
winner)and help to find employment. 
 
Now how do you feel about his statement of hers? ..."because it is more
plausible for a blind person to find work doing intellectual rather than
manual labor" Now is that progress? Because in the olden days it was more
plausible that the blind could do manual labor than be educated, like in the
sheltered work shops and etc. etc.

Just a mean mom and please forgive the length, I really need to be done with
this now. Smile.
 
Carrie Gilmer, President
Minnesota Organization of Parents of Blind Children







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