[NFBWATLK] World Braille Day

[Marci Carpenter]

Today is World Braille Day so I thought I would share my #braille story. I invite you to share yours.There is a link at the bottom to the official United Nations announcement.

My #WorldBrailleDay story: Like many blind people with some vision I didn’t learn braille as a child. As I was finishing high school my parents and I realized I would need braille in order to succeed in college. I took time off after high school to go to a blindness training center. I learned braille and many other valuable non-visual skills. I took all of my college class notes in braille with a board slate and stylus (no laptops then). It became a source of pride that I wrote fast enough and took enough notes to wear out a stylus at least once a year! I have read braille books for pleasure, read books to children, written and read constitutions and resolutions at meetings, kept a braille appointment calendar, written and read recipes as well as notes for talks I have given. I have taught braille to blind college students and blind seniors. I would not be where I am today if I had not learned to use this valuable literacy tool.

My braille teacher was a blind woman who had taught math in public schools. She was my first blind female role model. Like me, she had some residual vision. She taught me, as she had learned form the National Federation of the Blind, that it is respectable to be blind and that people like me could be a part of the blind community. Now, unlike when I was a child, there is the National Association of Parents of Blind Children to help parents understand the importance of braille literacy and advocate for its teaching.

If people have told you (or your child) that you have too much vision to need braille or that braille is obsolete they are wrong. Braille is alive and well and it is a vital tool for literacy for all blind people.Learn braille, use braille, celebrate braille! 

Happy #WorldBrailleDay!

Marci Carpenter


Link to UN statement: hips://news.un.org/en/story/2019/01/1029742