[Nd-talk] Technology seeks to preserve Braille literacy.

[Milton Ota]

This story appeared in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Wednesday, November
1, 2017, in the Business Breaking section.

 

Technology seeks to preserve Braille literacy.

BOSTON > For nearly a century, the National Braille Press has churned out
millions of pages of Braille books and magazines a year, providing a window
on the world for generations of blind people. 

BOSTON > For nearly a century, the National Braille Press has churned out
millions of pages of Braille books and magazines a year, providing a window
on the world for generations of blind people. 

But as it turns 90 this year, the Boston-based printing press and other
advocates of the tactile writing system are wrestling with how to address
record low Braille literacy. 

Roughly 13 percent of U.S. blind students were considered Braille readers in
a 2016 survey by the American Printing House for the Blind, another major
Braille publisher, located in Louisville, Kentucky. That number has steadily
dropped from around 30 percent in 1974, the first year the organization
started asking the question. 

Brian Mac Donald, president of the National Braille Press, says the modern
blind community needs easier and more affordable ways to access the writing
system developed in the 1800s by French teacher Louis Braille. 

For the National Braille Press and its 1960-era Heidelberg presses, that has
meant developing and launching its own electronic Braille reader last year -
the B2G . 

"Think Kindle for the blind," Mac Donald said as he showed off the portable
machine - which has an eight-button keyboard for typing in Braille as well
as a refreshable, tactile display for reading along in Braille - during a
recent tour of the press' headquarters near Northeastern University. 

The venerable press, which started as a Boston newspaper for the blind in
1927, has also looked beyond printing Braille versions of popular books and
magazine titles. 

Educational materials like school textbooks and standardized tests, as well
as business-related publications like restaurant menus, instruction manuals
and business cards, comprise an increasingly larger share of revenues, Mac
Donald said. 

"Braille isn't dead by any means," he said. "But it needs technology to
adapt and evolve. 

Waning interest in Braille has been a challenge since the 1970s, when school
districts started de-emphasizing it in favor of audio learning and other
teaching methods, said Chris Danielsen, spokesman for the National
Federation of the Blind in Baltimore. 

New technology has allowed people with visual impairments to live more
independently than ever, but they're also playing a role in eroding
Braille's prominence, said Cory Kadlik, a 26-year-old Massachusetts native
who lost his sight as an infant. 

Kadlik said he is "not the strongest Braille reader," in large part because
of what technology allows him to accomplish. 

Computer software reads aloud emails and other digital documents for him,
and his smartphone helps him complete everyday tasks like sorting the mail. 

"I have an application that can read the print on the envelope to me," said
Kadlik, a technology specialist at the Braille & Talking Book Library in
Watertown, part of the Perkins School for the Blind, the nation's oldest
such school, where Helen Keller was educated. "That's crazy. That's unheard
of. 

But while technology has opened up a new world not dependent on Braille, it
also presents its best chance at survival, said Kim Charlson, the library's
director. 

Electronic Braille computers allow users to digitally store hundreds of
Braille materials that would otherwise be large and unwieldy in print, not
to mention access the internet and complete other computer-based tasks in
Braille. 

Such machines have been around for years, but their average cost of $4,000
to $5,000 has so far kept them out of reach for most, says Charlson. 

That is starting to change. The Perkins Library, for example, will soon
start loaning out 200 devices that normally retail for about $475, and the
National Braille Press' Braille computer costs $2,495. 

"Technology is the key to making Braille more relevant by getting it into
the hands of more people," said Charlson, who began losing her vision as a
child and is now totally blind. 

Another key is overcoming perceptions that Braille is hard to learn and
inefficient to use, said Joseph Quintanilla, the vice president of
development at the National Braille Press. 

Quintanilla, who has been legally blind since age five, said he regrets
shunning Braille growing up. He started to appreciate its role in imparting
crucial grammar and communication skills only when he entered the working
world and had to play catch up. 

"I don't think we would ask sighted people to go through life without
reading," Quintanilla said. "So we shouldn't do that for blind people. 

 

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