[Nfbv-announce] FW: Geerat Vermeij to Serve as National Ambassador for Braille Literacy

[Fredric Schroeder]

  _____  

From: Freeh, Jessica [mailto:JFreeh at nfb.org] 
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 2:01 PM
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Subject: Geerat Vermeij to Serve as National Ambassador for Braille Literacy


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

CONTACT:

Chris Danielsen

Public Relations Specialist

National Federation of the Blind

(410) 659-9314, extension 2330

(410) 262-1281 (Cell)

cdanielsen at nfb.org


Geerat Vermeij to Serve as National Ambassador for Braille Literacy


 

Baltimore, Maryland (November 17, 2008): The National Federation of the
Blind (NFB), the nation's leading advocate for Braille literacy, announced
today that Dr. Geerat Vermeij, professor of geology at the University of
California at Davis and MacArthur Fellowship Award recipient, will serve as
a National Ambassador for Braille literacy.  As an ambassador, Dr. Vermeij
will help advance the NFB's Braille Readers are Leaders campaign, a national
initiative to promote the importance of reading and writing Braille for
blind children and adults.  The Braille Readers are Leaders campaign kicked
off in July of 2008 with the unveiling of the design of a commemorative coin
to be minted in 2009 in recognition of the two-hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Louis Braille (1809-1852), the inventor of the reading and writing
code for the blind that bears his name.

 

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said:
"The National Federation of the Blind is pleased to have Dr. Vermeij as part
of this historic initiative to bring Braille literacy to all of the blind
children and adults in America who need it.  Dr. Vermeij is a professor, an
evolutionary biologist and paleontologist, and an accomplished author----and
he uses Braille to effectively do this work.  His success as a blind
individual is surely an inspiration to blind children and adults learning
Braille throughout the United States and the world.  There can be no doubt
that the ability to read and write Braille competently and efficiently is
the key to education, employment, and success for the blind.  Despite the
undisputed value of Braille, however, only about 10 percent of blind
children in the United States are currently learning it.  Society would
never accept a 10 percent literacy rate among sighted children; it should
not accept such an outrageously low literacy rate among the blind.  The
Braille Readers are Leaders campaign, with the support of influential
scholars like Geerat Vermeij, will reverse the downward trend in Braille
literacy and ensure that equal opportunities in education and employment are
available to all of the nation's blind." 

 

Geerat Vermeij said: "I am honored and pleased to serve as a National
Ambassador for the Braille Readers are Leaders campaign.  I can emphatically
say that Braille literacy is critical and that the lack of Braille
instruction in classrooms today is outrageous.  Without the use of Braille,
I simply would not be able to do my job--I use it every day while collecting
and analyzing data, maintaining an enormous Braille library of scientific
material, and writing manuscripts.  Braille literacy has helped me to
achieve my goals, and I hope to help other blind children and adults do the
same."

 

For more information about the Braille Readers are Leaders campaign and the
Louis Braille commemorative coin, please visit www.braille.org
<http://www.braille.org/> .

 

 

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