[Ohio-talk] Fwd: [NFBT] Fwd: Rice University hosts innovative symposium on braille reading and writing

Tue Feb 6 17:43:51 UTC 2018

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeanine Lineback <jlineback at nfbtx.org>
Date: Tue, Feb 6, 2018 at 12:30 PM
Subject: [NFBT] Fwd: Rice University hosts innovative symposium on braille
reading and writing
To: NFB of Texas <member at nfbtx.org>, NFB Austin Chapter <
austinchapter at nfbtx.org>

The detailed announcement is below my signature.

Jeanine lineback
President National Federation of the blind of Texas Austin chapter
512-677-7512 <(512)%20677-7512> (Austin chapter phone)
Together with love, hope and determination we can turn dreams into reality!

Begin forwarded message:

*From:* "Katharine Shilcutt" <kshilcutt at rice.edu>
*Date:* February 6, 2018 at 11:25:43 AM CST
*To:* jlineback at nfbtx.org
*Subject:* *Rice University hosts innovative symposium on braille reading
and writing*

[image: Image]

Rice University

Office of Public Affairs / News & Media Relations

NEWS RELEASE

Katharine Shilcutt
713-348-6760 <(713)%20348-6760>
*kshilcutt at rice.edu* <kshilcutt at rice.edu>

*Rice hosts innovative symposium on braille reading and writing*

HOUSTON -- (Feb. 6, 2018) -- Braille, the writing system that allows people
who are blind or have other visual impairments to read by touch, was once
greatly understudied by the academic community. This began to change with
new research that emerged two decades ago showing that the brain’s visual
cortex lights up when people who are born blind read braille.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen, right? The visual cortex was for vision,”
said Rice University’s Robert Englebretson, department chair and associate
professor of linguistics. “I was talking with a neuroscience professor
about this in the late 1990s who said, ‘If that’s true, it’s really going
to change a lot of what we understand about the brain.’ Well, it turns out
that it is true and it did change a lot of what we understand about the
brain.”

Today Englebretson and research partner Simon Fischer-Baum, assistant
professor of psychology, are hoping to launch even greater investigations
into what braille can teach researchers about how the brain works with an
upcoming *Scientia Small Conference on Interdisciplinary Research
Perspectives on Braille Reading and Writing*
<http://rice.pr-optout.com/Tracking.aspx?Data=HHL%3d8%2f%3c%2f%408-%3eLCE59.%3a0%40%26SDG%3c90%3a.&RE=IN&RI=780264&Preview=False&DistributionActionID=169506&Action=Follow+Link>,
a series of lectures and workshops to be held March 8-10 in Rice Memorial
Center's Farnsworth Pavilion.

Other conferences on braille have been held in the past but have focused
primarily on advocacy and literacy rather than academics or research,
Englebretson said. The Scientia Small Conference has invited academics and
researchers from across a wide selection of fields and specialties,
including professors from Baylor College of Medicine, the University of
California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University and the University of
Michigan. An international cohort of scholars from New Zealand’s University
of Auckland, Ireland’s Maynooth University, England’s Royal Holloway
University of London, Canada’s University of Montreal and Estonia’s Tallinn
University will also be in attendance.

“We have people from the special education world who are speaking and we
have people from the cognitive and neuroscience and linguistics world,”
Englebretson said. “And what we hope to get out of this is some kind of new
synergy -- some kind of new collaborative research projects that many of
the people present might want to do together that they wouldn’t be able to
do independently.”

Seating for the conference is limited, so early registration is
recommended. The registration fee of $30 includes all talks and round-table
discussions as well as coffee and lunch breaks. Online registration ends
Feb. 21.

The conference agenda and registration information are available *here*
<http://rice.pr-optout.com/Tracking.aspx?Data=HHL%3d8%2f%3c%2f%408-%3eLCE59.%3a0%40%26SDG%3c90%3a.&RE=IN&RI=780264&Preview=False&DistributionActionID=169505&Action=Follow+Link>
.

Members of the news media interested in learning more can contact Katharine
Shilcutt, media relations specialist at Rice, at *kshilcutt at rice.edu*
<kshilcutt at rice.edu> or 713-348-6760 <(713)%20348-6760>.

-30-

This news release can be found online at *http://news.rice.edu*
<http://rice.pr-optout.com/Tracking.aspx?Data=HHL%3d8%2f%3c%2f%408-%3eLCE59.%3a0%40%26SDG%3c90%3a.&RE=IN&RI=780264&Preview=False&DistributionActionID=169504&Action=Follow+Link>.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations on Twitter *@RiceUNews*
<http://rice.pr-optout.com/Tracking.aspx?Data=HHL%3d8%2f%3c%2f%408-%3eLCE59.%3a0%40%26SDG%3c90%3a.&RE=IN&RI=780264&Preview=False&DistributionActionID=169503&Action=Follow+Link>
.

*Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is
consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News &
World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business,
Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and
Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With
3,970 undergraduates and 2,934 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate
student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college
system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one
reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for quality of life and for lots of
race/class interaction and No. 2 for happiest students by the Princeton
Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by
Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go
to **http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview*
<http://rice.pr-optout.com/Tracking.aspx?Data=HHL%3d8%2f%3c%2f%408-%3eLCE59.%3a0%40%26SDG%3c90%3a.&RE=IN&RI=780264&Preview=False&DistributionActionID=169502&Action=Follow+Link>
*.*

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