[nabs-l] is there any place for schools for the blind?

[Carly Mihalakis]

Good evening,

  Despite all this new fangled tech stuff, think about it, has either 
our relative position within the social system, or to exceptional 
opportunity really underwent all that much of a transformation? I 
mean, for you to queery if blind schools even have a relevance within 
I think you said today's society? Hell yes they do! Don't you agree 
that if an institution say, succeeds in helping a single student, 
then yes, it does have a place! Schools for the blind do in fact 
serve people. As many have said, blind people with other problems. 
Are you gonna deny such people access to education for a simple fact 
of it's not squeezing into your model of educating blind people?
Don't mean to be overly harsh but, remember not to assume ALL blind 
people are made of the same stuff!
for today, Car


.
>So, today I was thinking about a rather interesting question which
>came to my mind, and which I've thought about numerous times before,
>that being, the place for schools for the blind in today's society.
>A few years ago, there was a huge news story that broke in New York
>about protesters going to Lavel and NYISE (New York Institute for
>Special Ed) to speak out in support of the 2 schools, which then
>Governor Quomo I believe it was wanted to cut from the state budget
>and close.
>And that left me wondering,
>as someone who spent most of his elementary years at the NYISE, and
>the rest of my term in regular public school, finishing 4th and 5th
>grade at a local school and going on to do my entire post-secondary
>education in public schools, what exactly did I think?
>And to be honest, I don't quite have an answer myself.
>I started 4th grade with the Braille Lite and APH's Braille & Speak,
>so obviously this is quite a while back.
>But I remember in those early years I was shocked at all this tech
>that I just was not allowed to use in the school for the blind.
>Yet the lite had its problems, as anyone who's used one probably
>knows. For one thing, mine kept crashing every 4 to 7 weeks on a
>constant schedule and promptly deleting my entire file system. Not
>good, to say the least.
>But technology has obviously progressed a lot since then, wih the
>Braille Note Apex being extremely stable and solid. I've never had a
>Braille Note crash, at least never as badly as what used to happen
>with the braille lites.
>And now with the advance of technology some argue, and I share this
>point, that within a few years all we'll really need are braille
>displays.
>I mean we have JAWS, System Access, Window Eyes, NVDA, Dolfin, and
>Super Nova for Windows--Winow Eyes and NVDA are both now free, System
>Access now extremely affordable, for about $250 with a package that
>gives you way more then just a screenreader, and most if not all have
>braille display support built in.
>And with VoiceOver on the Mac and accessible versions of other
>platforms such as Linux there is no system that is not accessible, and
>if there is such a system, there are now ways which are widely known
>to make them accessible.
>Granted we still have the applications within those systems (Google
>apps for example) which can still present challenges but that's just a
>piece of what has become a mostly accessible digital ecosystem.
>So, where do you think, if anywhere, do schools for the blind fit?
>Note that this isn't a chriticism of schools for the blind--I studied
>at one, like I said, and they did have their advantages at the time
>and perhaps still have in certain circumstances,
>but given that they were chiefly in existence to provide an education
>to the blind, an education that is now for the most part accessible to
>us outside of those limits, do we need schools for the blind anymore?
>I myself don't have a position one way or another, so I'm very
>interested in hearing your thoughts on this topic.
>
>
>
>--
>Jorge A. Paez
>
>LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jorgeapaez11994
>
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