[nfb-talk] A Comment On Braille

[Buddy Brannan]

Believe me, I don't think texting is really the downfall of literacy, but certainly laziness will surely make the journey towards illiteracy that much faster. Anyway, texting is the new morse. :-) Well, sort of, anyway. 
--
Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV - Erie, PA
Phone: (814) 860-3194 or 888-75-BUDDY



On Jun 20, 2012, at 10:44 PM, "Mike Freeman" <k7uij at panix.com> wrote:

> Amen.
> 
> However, the old saw about the harmfulness of texting to spelling is
> interesting. David Crystal (a linguist) in his book "A Little Book of
> Language", available from BARD, maintains that in order to text well, one
> has to know how to spell well first, else much of the humor of texting goes
> unrecognized.
> 
> That doesn't take away from Buddy's message, however.
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Chris Nusbaum
> Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 11:24 AM
> To: NFB Talk Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] A Comment On Braille
> 
> Very well stated. Thank you, Buddy, for a great defense of Braille!
> 
> Chris Nusbaum
> 
> Sent from my iPod
> 
> On Jun 20, 2012, at 1:50 PM, Buddy Brannan <buddy at brannan.name> wrote:
> 
>> Perkins just asked in an Email they sent out if braille is still relent in
> a high tech world. They said the answer was a resounding yes, as it should
> be, but here's my response, which i sent to perkins and posted to my blog:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> First, do I love my Perkins brailler? Of course I do.
>> 
>> I don't really want to talk about that, though. Rather, I want to address
> the question you ask: is braille still relevant in a technological world? Of
> course you got the answer, and, in my view, the correct one, but what
> disturbs me is that the question was even asked in thee first place. It is,
> I think, the wrong question. In short, what happens if you replace the word
> "Braille" with the word "Print"? Does the question change? Does the
> relevance of the medium change? Does the answer change? What about the
> perceptions of the question--do those change? 
>> 
>> A couple weeks ago, I was a fill-in host on the Serotek podcast, where we
> discussed an article about the decline in spelling skills among today's
> youth. However, I didn't take away what was probably the intended message of
> the article. I took away a double standard. Now that it's sighted children
> who use print and are losing the ability to spell, form proper sentences,
> and so on, we have a tragedy, and our electronics-centric lifestyle is to
> blame. Think of texting as the most often blamed culprit. Yet, where was
> this outcry for our blind kids 20 years ago, when, as now, we are told that
> talking computers and recorded textbooks are good enough? Double standard
> much? Why is it, do you suppose, that learning to read print and having
> access to print is essential to teach sighted children the fundamentals of
> grammar, spelling, and punctuation, but such skills are adequately taught to
> our blind kids with talking computers and recorded textbooks? Or, is it that
> our blind kids and
>  their skills and abilities in these areas just aren't important enough to
> give the same amount of attention or priority? Why is, pulling a number out
> of the air here, a 10% illiteracy rate among the sighted a national tragedy,
> yet a 10% literacy rate among the blind acceptable? 
>> 
>> If you get that I'm angry, you're right. I am absolutely livid. This is
> only one example of this double standard where blind and sighted people are
> concerned. The thing is, it's a huge example, and it doesn't even seem as
> though we ourselves always recognize it for what it is, because we ask
> things like, "Is braille still relevant". So long as literacy is relevant to
> gainful employment, career advancement, educational opportunities, and all
> the other things life has to offer, the answer should be obvious.
>> 
>> So, as I said, you're asking the wrong question. There are probably a lot
> of "right" questions, but the one that comes to my mind, putting aside the
> "Why is this double standard acceptable" question, is, "How do we get
> braille into the hands of more kids and get more of our kids learning it,
> and more of our teachers teaching it"? Let's start there; there's much, much
> more that we should be asking as follow-ups to that.
>> 
>> Parenthetically, I note that the word "brailler" was flagged by my spell
> checker. Moreover, it was autocorrected to "broiler". That speaks volumes.
>> --
>> Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV - Erie, PA
>> Phone: (814) 860-3194 or 888-75-BUDDY
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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