[nfbcs] Literacy

[Joe Orozco]

	Everett,

I respectfully disagree.  Literacy statistics account for the large
numbers of people who can communicate just fine but who cannot read
text.  Sighted people perceive printed symbols.  It then holds true that
blind people should be evaluated on their ability to process Braille
symbols, and maybe deaf people should be evaluated on their capacity to
understand signs.  By your definition, the literacy rate would be 100
percent because everyone, barring certain disabilities, can communicate
without symbols.  More to the point raised by Liz, engaging keystrokes
to generate communication is not literacy.  It is memorization.  I would
try to see the question from both sides, but the number of people who
cannot spell or string sentences together, I think, is a result of a
lack of sufficient exposure to manually having to perceive Braille
characters firsthand.

Joe Orozco