[Pibe-division] Article: A New Perspective on Literacy for Students with Low Vision

[Allison Hilliker]

Hi Sylvia,

You’re welcome, I’m glad you liked the article and that you’ll find it useful. I hope it helps out your student and his family. Hearing that it might just help some actually made my day so thanks for sharing.

I read large print first as a kid and then later transitioned to Braille. I too hated it at first so I can understand your student. I’m thankful every day though now that I stuck with it.

Feel free to share my email address with the parents if that would be helpful – hillikera at gmail.com<mailto:hillikera at gmail.com>.

I’ve considered the idea of reworking a version of this article for a parent audience rather than a mostly educator one, but I haven’t decided just how to best do that. Parents’ views on this topic can be so filled with complex emotions, I’m not sure how to give them info while still being sensitive to that. I’d be interested in others’ perspective on that though.

Thanks for the nice email and good luck with your student and his family.

Best,
Allison










From: PIBE-Division [mailto:pibe-division-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Sylvia Ekdahl via PIBE-Division
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 11:51 AM
To: Professionals in Blindness Education Division List
Cc: Sylvia Ekdahl
Subject: Re: [Pibe-division] Article: A NewPerspective on Literacy for Students with Low Vision

Thanks Allison for this article. It is so very timely as I am having disagreement with a parent about braille. She has a negative attitude about it and doesn't want to give up the print just in case he has a surgery that makes his vision come back-this is unlikely. I say we need to push the braille and since he does know his ABC's (48 pt font), he could transition back to print if his eyesight improves. After all, r-e-d spells red in both print and braille. I plan to print this article and send it home to her before we have a team meeting last week. I think she is about to severely reduce or discontinue the braille because the student doesn't like it and refuses to do it.
Thanks again and happy Thanksgiving!
Sylvia Woodard Ekdahl, M.Ed, COMS, CTVI

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 25, 2015, at 12:29 PM, Allison Hilliker via PIBE-Division <pibe-division at nfbnet.org<mailto:pibe-division at nfbnet.org>> wrote:
Hi Everyone,

Thought some of you might like to read the article I posted yesterday. While it's on the Bookshare blog, its main focus isn't actually Bookshare. I wrote a post aimed at educators that tried to encourage the use of Braille for partially sighted students.

Here's the link: http://bookshareblog.wpengine.com/2015/11/a-new-perspective-on-literacy-for-students-with-low-vision/.

I work doing technical support for Benetech/Bookshare. I've noticed that many of the TVIs who contact me through Bookshare are heavily encouraging large print and magnification for their low vision students. While that's great if it works, I couldn't help but wonder whether at least some of these kids might have an easier time reading if they were to try Braille. While a Bookshare support call is not the appropriate place for a conversation about media choice for low vision students, I thought I could try to present the idea through a blog post just to get people thinking.

It's titled a New Perspective on Literacy, but many of us in the NFB won't consider it a new perspective at all. In fact it's a perspective that existed long before I was born. But I titled it in this way in hopes that it may catch the interest of educators who are not in the NFB or who don't know many compitant Braille readers. I don't know if it'll actually get anyone to consider Braille for their students, but I'm hopeful.

I would love feedback from anyone on this list. Also, please feel free to forward to colleagues who you think may find the article interesting.

Best,
Allison
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