[nfb-talk] FYI Are Braille's days as the great equalizer over?

[John Heim]

ÎWell, I didn't say braille has no advantages so you are kind of  
disputing a point I never made.


On the other hand, I don't really believe the particular advantages  
you claim for braille are real. I find it hard to believe that  
learning braille is an efficient way to become a better speller. I  
have little doubt that a lot of blind kids are poor spellers but there  
are probably easier ways to fix that than teaching them braille.

Don't get me wrong. When I went blind, I went out and learned braille.  
I signed up for the Hadley School braille courses and learned it. But  
if I wasn't already a braille advocate, I would not be convinced by  
your arguments. I think if you go up to some kid who spends half his  
day on a computer spelling words and tell him he has to take braille  
in order to learn how to spell he'd think you were crazy.




On Nov 26, 2010, at 5:28 PM, Michael Hingson wrote:

> I respectfully disagree a bit.  I find that blind youth and "visually
> impaired" youth do find that they are at an advantage if they learn  
> Braille.
> The proof is in part found in all those who have gone before who are  
> young
> enough to have had access to at least some technology and who did  
> not learn
> Braille for a variety of reasons including educators who prevented  
> them from
> having the opportunity.  Also, I find  many youth today who haven't  
> learned
> Braille who cannot appreciate formatting, who do not spell well, and  
> who
> cannot write well formed sentences, something which the workplace  
> zrequires
> more and more of employees.
>
> The ansilary benefits of Braille are the same as those benefits  
> sighted
> people gain from learning print.  reading silently to yourself, for  
> example,
> is different even for a blind person than from one reading via audio  
> means.
> No matter what silent personal non verbal reading permits different  
> thought
> processes and contemplations than reading via someone's or something's
> voice.  Without Braille we lose that opportunity.
>
> Finally, , remember that although Harry Potter may take up several  
> volumes
> in Braille it takes up only a few hundred KB in a computer file.   
> Reading
> Braille from paper or a refreshable display offers  all the benefits  
> of
> Braille and modern technology gives us a way to keep down the space  
> problem.
>
> "Modern Society and its educators" forget these concepts.  Braille  
> must be
> encouraged and all blind persons, not just totally blind people,  
> should
> learn it to be on an equal reading footing with our sighted  
> counterparts.
>
>
> Best,
>
>
> Michael Hingson
>
>
> Mike Hingson
>
> The Michael Hingson Group, INC.
> “Speaking with Vision”
> Michael Hingson, President
> (415) 827-4084
> info at michaelhingson.com
> To learn more about my upcoming book, speaking topics and speaking
> availability please visit www.michaelhingson.com
> Thunder Dog is now available for early ordering on Amazon!!!
> http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Dog-Blind-Triumph-Ground/dp/140020304X/ref=sr_
> 1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289090352&sr=1-3
>
>
> for info on the new KNFB Reader Mobile, visit:
> http://knfbreader.michaelhingson.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfb-talk- 
> bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of John Heim
> Sent: Friday, November 26, 2010 3:01 PM
> To: NFB Talk Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] FYI Are Braille's days as the great  
> equalizer over?
>
> Well, I basically agree with you but I don't think we should totally
> dismiss the other point of view. I think the need to learn braille is
> becoming a tougher and tougher sell as young blind people get more and
> more into technology.
>
> Learning braille is really hard and for the few times you need it, its
> hard to say it's worth the effort. But in my opinion, it's like not
> having enough lifeboats on the titanic. Its like not getting your flu
> shot. Its like not buying insurance. Yeah, maybe you'll never need it.
> but if you do, you are going to be darn glad you took the time to
> learn it.
>
> this is probably the most valuable thing about the NFB philosophy.
> don't try to just slide by. Attack being blind
> Go after it. Learn how to use a computer, learn how to cross a street,
> and by all means, learn braille.
>
> This is how I approach my young friends who have lost their sight. get
> out there and get it done. Approach it like any other problem. Its
> going to take hard work. But to be the best blind guy you can be, you
> need braille.
>
>
> On Nov 26, 2010, at 2:48 PM, Ray Foret Jr wrote:
>
>> Seems to me we've all heard this same sorry song and dance before.
>> Are the days of Print through as the great equalizer?  No?  If not,
>> why not?  I suspect I can guess how most fluent Braille readers will
>> come down on this one.  I don't read Braille as fluently as I really
>> should, but, seems to me that Braille is necessary to daily life.
>> this tired old song and dance of "Braile is being replaced by
>> technology" is the most stupid thing I think I've ever come across.
>>
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> The Constantly Barefooted Ray!!!
>>
>> Now A Very Proud and very happy Mac user!!!
>>
>> Skype Name:
>> barefootedray
>>
>> On Nov 26, 2010, at 2:36 PM, Michael Hingson wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Are Braille's days as the great equalizer over?
>>>
>>>
>>> Keith Gillard taps away on his computer's Microsoft Egronomic
>>> keyboard at
>>> his home in Edmonton, Aug. 4, 2010. "Braille is not necessary to
>>> have a full
>>> and complete life as a blind Canadian," he says.
>>>
>>> Walter Tychnowicz for National Post
>>>
>>> Keith Gillard taps away on his computer's Microsoft Egronomic
>>> keyboard at
>>> his home in Edmonton, Aug. 4, 2010. "Braille is not necessary to
>>> have a full
>>> and complete life as a blind Canadian," he says.
>>>
>>> *	Comments <http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/#Comments>
>>> *	Twitter
>>>
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>>>
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>>> e%2bdays%2bgreat%2bequalizer%2bover/3369651/story.html>
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>>> +equalizer+over%3
>>> f>
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>>> *	Buzz
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>>> html&id=3369651&title=National+Post+Story%3a++Are+Braille%27s+days
>>> +as+the+gr
>>> eat+equalizer+over%3f>
>>> *	
>>>
>>> Kenyon Wallace, National Post . Friday, Aug. 6, 2010
>>>
>>> The publication in 1829 of a small booklet explaining how a series
>>> of raised
>>> dots arranged in a line could teach the world's blind to read is
>>> one of
>>> modern history's great, if often overlooked, turning points.
>>>
>>> Once hailed as the great intellectual equalizer, Louis Braille's
>>> development
>>> of a new alphabet that could be read with the fingers is now at
>>> risk of
>>> being consigned to history, overtaken by the rapid pace of changing
>>> technology.
>>>
>>> Only 10% of blind school-aged children are taught Braille today;
>>> compared to
>>> about 50% in the 1960s, according to the U.S. National Federation
>>> of the
>>> Blind. The statistic is roughly the same for Canada.
>>>
>>> The prospect of Braille becoming obsolete has sparked a polarizing
>>> debate
>>> between advocates, educators and individuals over the causes of the
>>> code's
>>> decline and what to do about it.
>>>
>>> Advocates blame funding shortages, not enough qualified teachers,  
>>> and
>>> decisions by administrators to deny Braille instruction to children
>>> with low
>>> vision because of an emphasis on encouraging these students to read
>>> print.
>>> Educators say this assessment couldn't be further from the truth
>>> and argue
>>> that today's diagnostic tools have honed the art of identifying
>>> those who
>>> truly require Braille instruction and those who don't.
>>>
>>> Others still - including many blind people - say advances in
>>> assistive
>>> technology, such as audiobooks, voice recognition software and
>>> computer
>>> screen-readers, have rendered Braille unnecessary in daily life.
>>> They say
>>> its cumbersome nature - a single Harry Potter book printed on
>>> Braille paper
>>> will fill a moving box - makes it impractical and unaffordable.
>>>
>>> "Braille is not necessary to have a full and complete life as a  
>>> blind
>>> Canadian," said Edmonton resident Keith Gillard, who was born with
>>> retinitis
>>> pigmentosa, a degenerative eye condition that rendered him legally,
>>> but not
>>> completely, blind at birth. As a child, he was encouraged to use
>>> what vision
>>> he had to learn print, but not Braille. "They taught me how to
>>> touch type
>>> rather than learn Braille."
>>>
>>> By his mid-20s, the blurry fog obscuring his peripheral vision
>>> began to
>>> creep toward the centre of his eyes as his condition worsened. Mr.
>>> Gillard
>>> gauged the severity of his increasing blindness by his ability to
>>> see the
>>> lines on the ice at his local hockey rink each winter while playing
>>> on a
>>> blind hockey team.
>>>
>>> Now 49 and completely blind, he says he has contemplated learning
>>> Braille,
>>> but probably never will given the plethora of technological aids he
>>> uses at
>>> work as a federal civil servant and at home.
>>>
>>> "Adaptive technology has opened up the world of education and
>>> employment for
>>> blind Canadians. Braille hasn't done that," he said.
>>>
>>> "I recognize the benefits. Would I be better off as a blind
>>> Canadian if I
>>> was a proficient Braille reader? I think I would be. Is it
>>> necessary for me
>>> to be successful? No."
>>>
>>> Up until nine years ago, Sarah Empey, 35, had full eyesight. When
>>> she was
>>> 26, the Type 1 diabetic suffered complications due to high blood
>>> pressure
>>> and started to go blind. Despite several operations, she now has
>>> only 15%
>>> vision in her right eye.
>>>
>>> She intends to learn Braille one day, but hasn't found the need for
>>> it yet,
>>> and has learned only numbers.
>>>
>>> "It's not something I would use at this point," says Ms. Empey, a
>>> Calgary
>>> resident and short film director.
>>>
>>> She uses a program on her computer called ZoomText, which magnifies
>>> text and
>>> uses an audio device called a VictorReader to listen to books.
>>>
>>> "Some people are fine with technology doing everything for them. I
>>> do see
>>> Braille as slightly dying off, but for me, Braille still means more
>>> independence [in the future]."
>>>
>>> Twenty years ago, the predominant philosophy governing education of
>>> the
>>> blind was to maximize the efficiency of whatever vision students
>>> had in a
>>> regular classroom with their sighted peers. This required partially
>>> blind
>>> children to use a myriad of tools such as monocular telescopes to
>>> see the
>>> blackboard, magnifying glasses, bold markers and large-print books.
>>> These
>>> tools evolved through the 1980s to include small cameras students
>>> could roll
>>> over text that would be blown up on a closed circuit television.
>>>
>>> "Braille was never given to them as an option because if you had
>>> vision, you
>>> were supposed to use vision," said Dr. Carol Farrenkopf,
>>> coordinator of the
>>> Toronto District School Board's Vision Program.
>>>
>>> It wasn't until the mid-1990s that teachers began using a tool
>>> called a
>>> "learning media assessment," using observations and timed-readings  
>>> to
>>> determine if Braille should be introduced.
>>>
>>> Another factor driving down the rate of Braille use is the fact
>>> that those
>>> who go blind later in life due to medical conditions, such as
>>> diabetes and
>>> macular degeneration, already have literacy skills and are
>>> therefore less
>>> likely to be inclined to learn a new writing system.
>>>
>>> "A 60-year-old woman working who already knows how to read and
>>> write and
>>> then loses her vision, why does she need to learn Braille when she
>>> can keep
>>> going with technology?" said Ms. Farrenkopf.
>>>
>>> She stresses that not all blind children need to be taught Braille.
>>>
>>> "Legal blindness is not the same thing as being totally blind,"
>>> said Ms.
>>> Farrenkopf, noting that 20/200 vision - legal blindness - is still
>>> functional vision. (Someone with 20/200 can see a letter at 20 feet
>>> while a
>>> person with normal vision can see the same letter from 200 feet.)
>>>
>>> "Kids with 20/200 vision don't need to be reading Braille."
>>>
>>> That opinion is not shared by all Braille advocates, who wonder at
>>> the logic
>>> of not teaching the system to children when many eye conditions are
>>> degenerative.
>>>
>>> "They're in the school system where people are being encouraged to
>>> use the
>>> technology and their remaining vision at the expense of learning
>>> Braille
>>> that will prepare them for vision loss as they get older," said CNIB
>>> spokeswoman Ellie Shuster.
>>>
>>> Advocates also say the integration of blind children within the
>>> regular
>>> school system means less one-on-one time between teachers and
>>> students and
>>> therefore less consistent Braille instruction. The result, they
>>> say, is that
>>> many students end up being functionally illiterate.
>>>
>>> "School districts across the country, in general, don't adequately
>>> support
>>> Braille instruction," said Betty Nobel, president of the Canadian
>>> Braille
>>> Authority. "In the primary grades, kids should have daily Braille
>>> instruction, but they're not getting that."
>>>
>>> Forty years ago, Canada was home to several residential schools for
>>> the
>>> blind, where all students were expected to learn Braille. There is
>>> only one
>>> such school remaining today: W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind
>>> and
>>> Deafblind in Brantford, Ont.
>>>
>>> The Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority, which provides
>>> educational services to students from birth to 21 years of age with
>>> sensory
>>> impairments, has also established several successful short-term,
>>> intensive
>>> Braille courses that can be taken during the regular school year.
>>>
>>> But it's not enough, says Ms. Nobel, who is also department head of
>>> the
>>> Program for the Visually Impaired at Vancouver Community College
>>> and a CNIB
>>> library board member. She says teachers in the regular school
>>> system may not
>>> have blind children in their classes every year, meaning they lack
>>> the
>>> opportunity to stay proficient in Braille.
>>>
>>> "If this means lowering the workloads for teachers that have blind
>>> students,
>>> that's what we need," she said.
>>>
>>> The implications for an illiterate blind population are profound.
>>>
>>> A study by Dr. Ruby Ryles, a blindness researcher at Louisiana Tech
>>> University, found that visually impaired people who learned Braille
>>> at a
>>> young age were more likely to be employed, financially independent
>>> and
>>> better educated than those who relied primarily on print -- this in
>>> a world
>>> where blind adults already face an unemployment rate of over 70%.
>>>
>>> Diana Brent, a teacher of visually impaired students, and her
>>> husband, Doug
>>> Brent, a University of Calgary communications professor, are the
>>> authors of
>>> one of the only studies comparing the writings of blind people who
>>> learned
>>> Braille at a young age and those who didn't. Non-Braille users were
>>> asked to
>>> type stories on a keyboard using audio software.
>>>
>>> Their findings were alarming. The Brents described the prose of the
>>> non-Braille group as "jumbled and confused."
>>>
>>> "It's 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
>>> authors
>>> concluded. "The process of making connections, linking one idea to
>>> another
>>> is tenuous at best."
>>>
>>> While preliminary, the results suggest that blind children relying
>>> solely on
>>> an oral education have virtually no means of literacy in the sense
>>> that
>>> society has come to understand it.
>>>
>>> "It's still well worth teaching children Braille, even if they
>>> choose later
>>> to drift away from it," said Mr. Brent. "To not have access to a
>>> way of
>>> organizing thought that depends on a system of written record, to
>>> not be
>>> formed by that arguably makes people think differently and puts
>>> them at a
>>> significant disadvantage."
>>>
>>> kewallace at nationalpost.com
>>>
>>> - - -
>>>
>>> Who was Louis Braille?
>>>
>>> Louis Braille was born fully sighted on Jan. 4, 1809 in a small
>>> town near
>>> Paris, France.
>>>
>>> He lost his sight as a small boy after accidentally stabbing
>>> himself in the
>>> eye with a stitching awl his his father's shoemaking workshop. An
>>> infection
>>> in one eye spread to the other, rendering him completely blind.
>>>
>>> A creative and intelligent boy, Braille earned a scholarship to the
>>> Royal
>>> Institution for Blind Youth in Paris when he was 10.
>>>
>>> While there, he learned to read using a system of raised letters by
>>> pressing
>>> shaped copper wire onto paper. But this cumbersome system made it
>>> impossible
>>> for blind people to write by themselves.
>>>
>>> In 1821, French army captain Charles Barbier de la Serre visited
>>> the school
>>> to share his invention, which he called "Night Writing." The
>>> invention was a
>>> series of 12 raised dots combined to form words that soldiers could
>>> use to
>>> communicate in the night without talking.
>>>
>>> The code proved too difficult to understand, so Braille modified
>>> the system
>>> to a series of six raised dots, with characters representing each
>>> letter of
>>> the alphabet. In 1829 he published his system in the booklet, "The
>>> Method of
>>> Writing Words, Music and Plain Song by Means of Dots, for Use by
>>> the Blind
>>> and Arranged by Them."
>>>
>>> This new system of reading and writing - Braille - did not catch on
>>> immediately. Braille, who eventually became a teacher at the
>>> Institute, died
>>> of tuberculosis on Jan. 6, 1852, before even his own school adopted
>>> his
>>> code.
>>>
>>> The French government officially recognized the Braille system two
>>> years
>>> later, and it eventually became the world standard for written
>>> communication
>>> for the blind.
>>>
>>> In 1952, Braille's body was disinterred and reburied in the
>>> Pantheon in
>>> Paris to lie with the remains of other distinguished French  
>>> citizens.
>>>
>>> Kenyon Wallace, National Post
>>>
>>> - - -
>>>
>>> Blindness By The Numbers
>>>
>>> 10 Percentage of legally blind North Americans who can read Braille
>>>
>>> 836,000 Number of Canadians living with significant vision loss
>>> that cannot
>>> be corrected with ordinary lenses
>>>
>>> 70 Percentage of blind North Americans who are unemployed
>>>
>>> 1,000,000 number of Canadians with some form of macular
>>> degeneration, the
>>> leading cause of vision loss in North Americans over the age of 50
>>>
>>> 90 Percentage of blind children in the United States not learning
>>> Braille
>>> today
>>>
>>> 50 Percentage of blind American high school students who drop out
>>>
>>> 75,000 Number of people who lose all or part of their vision every
>>> year
>>>
>>> Source: NFB and CNIB
>>>
>>>
>>> Tools
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>> More On This Story
>>>
>>>
>>> .
>>>
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>>> ferent+study/2958847/story.html> Blind person's sense of smell not
>>> better,
>>> but different: study
>>>
>>>
>>> .
>>>
> <http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/Artist+creates+book+nudes+blind/290
>>> 3068/story.html> Artist creates book of nudes for the blind
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The Michael Hingson Group, INC.
>>>
>>> "Speaking with Vision"
>>>
>>> Michael Hingson, President
>>>
>>> (415) 827-4084
>>>
>>> <mailto:info at michaelhingson.com> info at michaelhingson.com
>>>
>>> To learn more about my upcoming book, speaking topics and speaking
>>> availability please visit  <http://www.michaelhingson.com>
>>> www.michaelhingson.com
>>>
>>> Thunder Dog is now available for early ordering on Amazon!!!
>>>
> <http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Dog-Blind-Triumph-Ground/dp/140020304X/ref=sr
>>> _1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289090352&sr=1-3>
>>>
> http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Dog-Blind-Triumph-Ground/dp/140020304X/ref=sr_
>>> 1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289090352&sr=1-3
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> for info on the new KNFB Reader Mobile, visit:
>>>
>>> <http://knfbreader.michaelhingson.com>
> http://knfbreader.michaelhingson.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
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