[nfbwatlk] Fw: Personal context for braille literacy

[Mike Freeman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Antonio Guimaraes" <aguimaraes at nbp.org>
To: <napub at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 10:25 AM
Subject: [napub] Personal context for braille literacy


Hello all,

Here is one person's personal perspective on Braille Literacy,

what is yours?

Antonio M. Guimaraes Jr.


http://www.healthnews.com/blogs/nicki/natural-health/a-personal-context-braille-literacy-3003.html

A Personal Context for Braille Literacy
By: Nicki
Published: Friday, 24 April 2009

Over the last few months, as the NFB's efforts to increase awareness 
concerning the necessity of greater Braille literacy rates, I have given 
you a number of statistics about Braille literacy. I have told you, in a 
very factual and analytical manner, that 80 percent of the blind who are 
employed know Braille; I have also stated that Braille is crucial, 
because proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation cannot be learned 
through audio. However, I have never given you a personal context for 
literacy: in other words, why is this cause so crucial to me, aside from 
the fact that I am a blind person.

I opened a book on the first day of kindergarten, and sank into its 
pages.  I remember the story very clearly: Pam and Pat went out into 
Pam's backyard and made mud pies. Then, they made Pam's little brother 
taste the mud pies to ensure that they were just right, perfect for 
feeding their dolls at teatime.  Unfortunately, Pam's brother got sick 
from eating all the mud, and Pam and Pat were sent to their rooms 
without being able to play. From this simplistic story, I devoured the 
school library. By the time I was in fourth grade, my school had to 
order books from the library for the blind that were for eighth graders.

Another event occurred in fourth grade that is noteworthy in the context 
of this discussion. Each semester, we would be given a Star Test to 
determine our writing and reading levels. By my first semester of fourth 
grade, I was exempt from the Star Test because my spelling, 
comprehension, and grammar were on the level of a college freshman. I 
did not acquire those skills through audio books; I acquired them 
through the two precious Braille books I was allowed to pick from my 
personal stacks at the library each week. I can't even describe the 
feeling of opening a book cover, carefully scanning the book jacket to 
see if this would pique my interest (I only got to remove two every week 
after all, so I had to select carefully to avoid being bored) and 
feeling that first flutter of excitement as my fingers made out the 
first word and I wondered what sort of new world I would be exploring.

Now, instead of being bound, these books come in a digital format. 
However, they have still been translated into Braille so I can read them 
with a Braille device. The device I use called a Book Port does utilize 
speech.  However, unlike an audio book, there are functions through 
which I can move from letter to letter or paragraph by paragraph. 
Through these functions, I not only learn how to spell a new word almost 
every day; I learn narrative structure, crucial things like when to end 
a paragraph or sentence.

It is truly sad to me when I see a blind person who has learned 
primarily from audio; they have no context for separating paragraphs, no 
understanding that ideas must be segregated. By the first sentence of 
the paragraph, the prospective reader will know what to expect from that 
paragraph. However, because audio books do not delineate paragraphs, if 
you are taught solely through audio, many times your writing becomes a 
run-on paragraph. How should you know any better; since there are no 
pauses after paragraphs, the entirety of the book is read like one long 
paragraph.

The shortcomings of audio came home to me yet again as I was writing a 
letter. In the letter, I needed to include my phone number. As almost 
everyone knows, a phone number, when written, especially in a 
professional capacity is represented as: (area code) first three 
digit-last four digits.  However, without seeing this representation, 
based on an audio book, this is its seeming representation: 
areacodefirstthreedigitslastfourdigits. In none of the audio books I 
have utilized is its proper representation stated. I learned its proper 
representation in fourth grade when I was given the number for the 
Library for the Blind in Braille and first allowed (with supervision) to 
order my own books using a card catalogue we had been sent the week 
before.

So, if you sometimes wonder why I write numerous articles about this 
subject and why it is a cause I so avidly support, I hope this article 
gives you a better understanding of it. Audio is a wonderful tool, but 
there are so many small things, like the proper way to write a phone 
number, which sighted children learn at a young age that can only be 
learned through Braille. A person on an audio book, for instance, even a 
textbook, is not going to stop and explain that cough is spelled with a 
gh instead of two ffs at the end, and it is small things, things that 
seem almost inconsequential at first, that will keep us from competing 
on a level playing field with the sighted if we allow them too.





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