[stylist] Sending this again: Article showingwhatparentsofblind kids are facing

[Donna Hill]

The NFB Jernigan Institute put out a report containing this info. I'm going
to copy it below and attach a .doc of it.
Donna
***
www.nfb.org/images/nfb/documents/word/The_Braille_Literacy_Crisis_In_America
.doc -  
Cover:  
The Braille Literacy Crisis in America
Facing the Truth, Reversing the Trend, Empowering the Blind

A Report to the Nation by the National Federation of the Blind
Jernigan Institute

March 26, 2009

***
The Braille Literacy Crisis in America
Facing the Truth, Reversing the Trend, Empowering the Blind

Executive Summary

A good education is the key to success, and every American deserves an equal
opportunity to receive a good education. Inherent to being educated is being
literate. The ability to read and write means access to information that, in
turn, leads to understanding and knowledge. And knowledge is power-the power
to achieve, function in the family, thrive in the community, succeed in a
job, and contribute to society. 

Nearly 90 percent of America's blind children are not learning to read and
write because they are not being taught Braille or given access to it. There
is a Braille literacy crisis in America. 

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the largest and most influential
membership organization of blind people in the United States, is taking
swift action to reverse this trend. This year, 2009, marks the 200th
anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, inventor of the system that
allows blind people to read and write independently. Coinciding with this
anniversary, the NFB has announced specific action to address the education
of America's blind children so that every blind child who has a need for
Braille will have the opportunity to learn it. 

In this report to the nation on the state of Braille literacy in America,
the NFB examines the history and decline of Braille education, addresses the
crisis facing the blind today and key factors driving it, and proposes a
number of action steps to double the Braille literacy rate by 2015 and
eventually reverse it altogether. 
 

Key Report Findings:

I. Facing the Truth

.	Fewer than 10 percent of the 1.3 million people who are legally
blind in the United States are Braille readers. Further, a mere 10 percent
of blind children are learning it. 
.	Each year as many as 75,000 people lose all or part of their vision.
As the baby-boom generation moves into retirement age and as diabetes (the
nation's leading cause of blindness) approaches epidemic proportions, the
NFB expects this number to increase dramatically and, if nothing is done,
the Braille illiteracy rate as well.
.	The current effects of this crisis are dire. Over 70 percent of
blind adults are unemployed, and as many as 50 percent of blind high school
students drop out of high school. 
.	Factors contributing to this low literacy among the blind include:

o	The Teacher Crisis. There is a shortage of teachers who are
qualified to teach Braille. In 2003 there were approximately 6,700 fulltime
teachers of blind students serving about 93,600 students. In that same year
the number of new professionals graduating from university programs to work
with blind or low-vision students fluctuated between 375 and 416 per year.
In addition there is no national consensus on what it means to be certified
to teach Braille, and states have a patchwork of requirements for
certification. 
o	The Spiral of Misunderstanding. There are many misconceptions about
the Braille system. For example, "Braille isolates and stigmatizes students
from peers who read print," or "Braille is always slower than reading print
and difficult to learn." Yet studies have found that Braille is an efficient
and effective reading medium with students demonstrating a reading speed
exceeding 200 words per minute.
o	Blind Children with Low Vision Are Deprived of Braille Instruction.
Parents often find themselves battling with school administrators to get
Braille instruction for their children with low vision because of the
historical emphasis on teaching these children to read print. Many students
with residual vision cannot read print efficiently even with magnification.
Children with some residual vision account for around 85 percent of the
total population of blind children.
o	The Paradox of Technology. Eighty-nine percent of teachers of blind
students agree that technology should be used as a supplement to Braille
rather than as a replacement. Advances in technology have made Braille more
available than ever before. Computer software can translate any document
into literary, contracted Braille quickly and accurately. Further, hundreds
of thousands of Braille books are available from Internet-based services. 

II. Reversing the Trend

Undoubtedly the ability to read and write Braille competently and
efficiently is the key to success for the blind. The National Federation of
the Blind Jernigan Institute is committed to reversing this downward trend
in Braille literacy in order to ensure that equal opportunities in education
and employment are available to all of the nation's blind. 

Braille literacy can be accomplished by: 

.	Increasing access to Braille instruction and reading materials in
every community nationwide.
.	Expanding Braille mentoring, reading-readiness, and outreach
programs.
.	Requiring national certification in literary Braille among all
special education teachers. By 2015 all fifty states must enact legislation
requiring special education teachers of blind children to obtain and
maintain the National Certification in Literary Braille. 
.	Requiring all Braille teachers to pass the National Certification in
Literary Braille (NCLB) in order to assure their competency and fluency in
the literary code. 
.	Advancing the use of Braille in current and emerging technologies.
.	Researching new methods of teaching and learning Braille.
.	Making Braille resources more available through online sharing of
materials, enhanced production methods, and improved distribution. 
.	Educating the American public that blind people have a right to
Braille literacy so they can compete and assume a productive role in
society.

III. Empowering the Blind

Blind people who know Braille and use it find success, independence, and
productivity. A recent survey of 500 respondents by the National Federation
of the Blind Jernigan Institute revealed a correlation between the ability
to read Braille and a higher educational level, a higher likelihood of
employment, and a higher income. 

Hundreds of thousands of blind people have found Braille to be an
indispensable tool in their education, their work, and their daily lives. In
the hearts and minds of blind people, no alternative system or new
technology has ever replaced Braille. For this reason the National
Federation of the Blind is launching a national Braille literacy campaign to
enhance the future prospects for blind children and adults in this country
and to help make Braille literacy a reality for the 90 percent of blind
children for whom reading is a struggle, if not an impossibility. 

The future of sighted children depends on a proper education; the future of
America's blind children is no different.

****
The Braille Literacy Crisis in America
Facing the Truth, Reversing the Trend, Empowering the Blind 

A Report to the Nation by the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan
Institute

Introduction

Unquestionably a good education is the key to success. In national polls
Americans routinely identified this issue as an important national priority
(Blackorby, 2004). Education is generally understood to encompass literacy,
defined as "the ability to read and write" (Concise Oxford Dictionary,
2009). According to the National Institute for Literacy, literacy is "an
individual's ability to read, write, speak in English, compute and solve
problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the
family of the individual, and in society" (http://www.nifl.gov/). Schools
not doing a good job of teaching children to read and write are correctly
seen as failing schools. Yet, for thousands of children across the United
States, it is considered acceptable to fail to teach them to read and write.
These children are blind, and they are not learning to read and write
because they are not being taught Braille. 

Despite its versatility and elegance, and notwithstanding the fact that it
is the official system of reading and writing for the blind in the United
States, Braille is not being taught to most blind children or to adults who
lose their vision. This has led to a literacy crisis among blind people.
Many commentators on the Braille literacy crisis agree that one of the most
significant contributing factors is a negative societal attitude toward
Braille (Riccobono, 2006; Hehir, 2002). The bias against Braille is further
evidenced by hundreds of published accounts from blind people themselves.
The archives of the monthly publication of the National Federation of the
Blind, the Braille Monitor, are full of personal stories detailing the
problems blind people experience when they are not taught Braille at an
early age. When educators and parents insist that children who are blind or
have low vision read print to the exclusion of reading Braille, the ultimate
result is that many of them are functionally illiterate.

Braille has been controversial since its invention. At the time Louis
Braille developed the system, most of those who were attempting to educate
the blind were not blind themselves but sighted people with altruistic
impulses (Lorimer, 2000; Mellor, 2006). They believed that the blind should
be taught to read print rather than using a separate system. Many educators
still believe this today, arguing that Braille is slow and hard to learn and
that it isolates blind children from their peers. These arguments and their
mistaken assumptions will be addressed in detail in the following pages.

Beliefs among educators about Braille are only one reason, albeit a very
significant one, that Braille literacy has declined in the United States to
the point where it is estimated that only 10 percent of blind children are
learning it. Other factors include a shortage of teachers qualified to give
Braille instruction, the need for improved methods of producing and
distributing Braille, and not enough certified Braille transcribers
(Spungin, 1989, 2003). All of these issues must be addressed if the downward
trend in literacy among the blind is to be reversed. And it must be
reversed, for to fail to reverse it is to condemn blind children and adults
to illiteracy and to a permanent struggle to keep up with their sighted
peers in getting an education. By contrast, reversing the downward trend in
Braille literacy will ensure that current and future generations of blind
children, as well as adults who lose their vision, have access to knowledge
and the power and opportunity that it represents. 

This report discusses Braille's history and effectiveness, the reasons for
the crisis in Braille literacy, and what the National Federation of the
Blind is doing to address this crisis. It is a call to action for all who
are concerned about the welfare of America's blind children to join with the
National Federation of the Blind in our effort to ensure that every blind
child and adult who has a need for Braille will have the opportunity to
learn it.

A Brief History of Braille

Braille is a system of raised dots that allows blind people to read and
write tactilely. Named for its inventor, Louis Jean-Philippe Braille
(1809-1852), the Braille code is the universally accepted method of reading
and writing for the blind. It is the only system that allows blind people to
read and write independently and to do both interactively. Because of its
effectiveness, Braille has been adapted for almost every written language.
Other Braille codes represent mathematical and scientific notation and
music. Even blind computer programmers have a Braille code, computer
Braille. All of these codes are based on Louis Braille's original system, a
cell consisting of six dots in parallel vertical columns of three each. The
Braille code was first introduced into the United States in 1869 but was not
adopted until 1932 as the Standard English Grade Two Braille code.

Graphic: Braille cell

Graphic: Braille alphabet 

For most of human history no method existed allowing blind people to read
and write independently. Some blind people did learn to read print in a
tactile form, but usually they had no way to write tactilely; even if they
learned to reproduce print characters accurately, they could not read what
they had written. In addition, the difficulty and expense of producing books
with embossed print lettering made such books rare. As a result most blind
people were condemned to illiteracy, along with the poverty and deprivation
accompanying it. If they earned a living at all, they did so as storytellers
or musicians or through certain kinds of manual labor, including basketry
and massage. 

This was the state of affairs when Louis Jean-Philippe Braille was born in
the small village of Coupvray, France, just outside Paris, in 1809. At the
age of three Braille was blinded in an accident, probably resulting from
playing with tools in his father's harness-making shop (Lorimer, 1996, 2000;
Mellor, 2006). Braille's family was not wealthy, but his parents were
literate and determined that their son would obtain an education. When it
became clear that the local school could no longer meet Braille's needs
(though he had progressed astonishingly far given that he could not read and
write), a local nobleman put up the funds for him to attend the Royal
Institute for the Young Blind in Paris, the world's first school for blind
children (Mellor, 2006; Lorimer, 1996). At this school Braille found a
limited number of books with embossed print letters and quickly read all of
them. 

In 1821 a French army captain, Charles Barbier de la Serre, came to the
school to show the students an invention that he thought might be of use to
them. Barbier had developed a system called "night writing" consisting of
raised dots punched into cardboard with a stylus. A metal frame, or slate,
was used to guide the stylus in the proper placement of the dots. This
system was invented as a way for soldiers to transmit messages in the dark
without striking a match, which would give away their position to enemy
gunners. While Braille recognized the system's potential, he believed that
it could be improved. In particular he thought that the dot formations
should represent alphanumeric characters instead of sounds (Barbier's system
was also called sonography because the symbols represented the sounds of
speech rather than letters). He also thought that the number of dots making
up each character should be reduced so that they could be read with a
fingertip rather than having to be traced. Braille worked on improving the
system for several years. By the age of twenty he had developed the six-dot
Braille cell that is used today and had published a booklet on the method.

Braille's fellow students adopted his new system immediately. Not only could
they now read books, which were hand transcribed by Braille and his friends,
but they could take their own notes in class and read them back later rather
than learning exclusively by listening and memorizing. The instructors at
the school were skeptical, however, and some of the administrators were
actually hostile. The school was a political showpiece and made money from
selling crafts produced by its blind students; if the blind became too
independent, its prestige and revenue might be reduced (Mellor, 2006). At
one point the school's director burned all of the books that Louis Braille
and his friends had transcribed by hand and confiscated the students' slates
and styluses. The result was an open rebellion among students, who began to
steal forks from the dining room to replace their lost writing implements.
This early struggle for the acceptance of the Braille system would be only
the first of many battles pitting blind people against those who professed
to know what was best for them. These struggles continue to this day.

Despite these setbacks the Braille system was eventually adopted by the
Royal Institute for the Young Blind, and two years after Braille's death it
became the official system of reading and writing for the blind in France.
To this day Louis Braille is considered a national hero in his native
country; his body is interred in the Pantheon in Paris. The Braille code was
later adopted in England because of advocacy by the founders of what is now
the Royal National Institute of Blind People, and other blind people and
educational institutions for the blind began to use it. Helen Keller
reported using the system. Rosalind Perlman (2007), in her book The Blind
Doctor: The Jacob Bolotin Story, reports that the first physician to have
been born blind, practicing in Chicago during the early part of the
twentieth century, learned Braille at the Illinois School for the Blind and
used it for notes in medical school and throughout his subsequent career.
Braille was adopted as the exclusive means of teaching blind people to read
and write in the United States in 1932. At the height of its use in the
United States, it is estimated that 50 to 60 percent of blind children
learned to read and write in Braille. 

Attention Box on page 7:  Only about 10 percent of blind children in the
United States are currently learning Braille. 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 Decline of Braille Literacy

The decline in the number of Braille readers since 1963 (Miller, 2002) has
been widely discussed by professionals and censured by consumer groups (Rex,
1989; Schroeder, 1989; Stephens, 1989). Although there is no consensus on
the causes of this decline, a number of factors have been cited. Among them
are disputes on the utility of the Braille code (Thurlow, 1988), the decline
in teachers' knowledge of Braille and methods for teaching it (Schroeder,
1989; Stephens, 1989), negative attitudes toward Braille (Holbrook and
Koenig, 1992; Rex, 1989), greater reliance on speech output and
print-magnification technology, and a rise in the number of blind children
with additional disabilities who are nonreaders (Rex, 1989). The greatest
controversy over whether to teach a child Braille arises when a child has
some residual vision; such children account for around 85 percent of the
total population of blind children (Holbrook and Koenig, 1992).

Pressure from consumers and advocacy groups has led thirty-three states to
pass legislation mandating that children who are legally blind be given the
opportunity to learn Braille. The Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act also mandates that the teams who help to write educational plans for
students with disabilities presume that all blind children should be taught
Braille unless it is determined to be inappropriate. But these laws have not
ended the controversy. Whereas professional groups have called for a renewed
emphasis on teaching Braille (Mullen, 1990), others have opined that Braille
is only one educational option. Braille should be viewed as one tool among
many, a tool that allows blind people to operate at a high degree of
proficiency when performing a multitude of functional tasks (Eldridge, 1979,
Waechtler, 1999). But rather than seeing Braille as a tool that every blind
child should have in his or her toolkit for dealing effectively with vision
loss, to be used in conjunction with and not to the exclusion of techniques
that rely on the child's remaining vision, some educators insist that a
choice must be made between print and Braille and that only one reading
medium must be used (Federman, 2005). These disagreements translate in the
field into disputes among professionals in planning meetings researching how
to deal with individual children. Parents caught in the middle of these
disputes and often themselves confused about the best course of action find
that they and their children become the real victims in these academic
battles.

The Crisis Facing the Blind Today 

The American Foundation for the Blind (1996) has estimated that fewer than
10 percent of people who are legally blind in the United States and fewer
than 40 percent of the estimated number who are functionally blind are
Braille readers. The American Printing House for the Blind estimates the
Braille literacy rate among children to be around 10 percent. Experts
estimate 1.3 million blind people live in the United States, and
approximately 75,000 people lose all or part of their vision each year.
These numbers may increase dramatically as the baby-boom generation reaches
retirement age. Macular degeneration, the most common form of blindness in
older Americans, is likely to increase as this population increases,
particularly since Americans are living longer. The nation's leading cause
of blindness, diabetes, has reached epidemic proportions in this country, so
a higher incidence of blindness can be expected.

The Teacher Crisis 

U.S. education faces a chronic shortage of teachers qualified to teach
Braille. In 2003 there were approximately 6,700 fulltime teachers of blind
students serving approximately 93,600 students (Spungin, 2003). Far too few
teachers of blind children have graduated from accredited programs; a 2000
report observed that the total number of new professionals graduating from
university programs to work with students who are blind or have low vision
fluctuated between 375 and 416 per year during the previous seven years
(Mason, et al., 2000). Not all of these teachers are qualified to teach
Braille. Many teachers who are considered qualified to teach Braille have
not necessarily learned it themselves. There is no national consensus on
what it means to be certified to teach Braille, and states have a patchwork
of requirements for certification. Local school districts depend upon state
education agencies to set the certification standards for teachers. All
states have specific certification standards for those who teach children
who are blind or have low vision; however, these standards vary across the
country (Vaughn, 1997).

States license or certify candidates who want to teach children who are
blind or have low vision in three ways: requiring the candidate to graduate
from an approved bachelor's or master's program from an approved college or
university, requiring the candidate to have a generic degree in special
education, or requiring the candidate to have an endorsement to an existing
certificate in early childhood, elementary, secondary, or special education,
with certain courses needed to gain that endorsement (Frieman, 2004). In
order to approve a program, the National Council for the Accreditation of
Teacher Education requires performance-based criteria. The Council for
Exceptional Children has developed performance-based standards for programs
to train teachers of students who have a visual impairment. If a candidate
graduates from an approved program that follows the Council for Exceptional
Children's standards, an administrator can predict that the teaching
candidate will have the necessary background to teach Braille. However, only
nineteen states require candidates to have graduated from an approved
program. Seven states require that candidates have only a generic degree in
special education with no specific mention of Braille. Twenty-four states
require candidates to have taken courses in order to earn an endorsement.
These standards specify that the teacher has taken at least one course in
Braille, but give no guarantee that the individual is actually competent in
Braille or is able to teach it (Frieman, 2004). Teachers who are
uncomfortable with Braille are likely to be reluctant to teach it,
especially when they can get by without doing so for students who have low
vision but can read some print. 

To act in the best interests of blind children and adults, schools must
require that every child who is blind will have the right to be taught
Braille and that Braille be taught by someone who is competent in its use.
This is not what is currently happening in schools (Vaughn, 1997). Today
there is no guarantee that a teacher, even one with formal credentials, will
be fluent in Braille. In order to assure Braille fluency, teachers of blind
children must be tested on their actual Braille skills by way of a
comprehensive and validated test. States should require Braille teachers to
pass the National Certification in Literary Braille (NCLB) in order to
assure competency and fluency in the literary code. Passing the NCLB
examination will not in itself ensure effective Braille teaching, but it
will provide a measure of how well a person knows and uses Braille.

Even assuming a teacher is competent in Braille, the size of the teacher's
case load will often influence how well his or her students learn Braille.
An itinerant teacher is essentially a consultant who is responsible for
meeting the needs of several students. Teachers of blind students often must
travel within or even between school districts each week to help a number of
students. They are typically expected to teach sixteen or more students who
are widely spread over large geographic areas (Caton, 1991). As a result
many students are trained in Braille for only two to three hours a week, and
some even less than that. 

Attention Box page 9:  There is a chronic shortage of teachers who are
qualified to teach Braille. It was reported in 2003 that there were
approximately 6,700 fulltime teachers of blind students serving
approximately 93,600 students.

Teachers of blind students must often teach a number of skills, including
cane travel and the use of technology such as a computer with text-to-speech
screen access software, and there is evidence that Braille instruction is
not prioritized. According to one survey respondents spent an average of 35
percent of their instructional time using assistive technology with students
in grades 7-10 (Thurlow, et al., 2001). The primary goals most often cited
for instructional time were "become a proficient user of assistive
technology" (42 percent) and "read using a combination of approaches" (30
percent), with "become fluent Braille reader" (18 percent) selected less
often. Respondents spent an average of 27 percent of reading instruction
time on direct instruction of how to use assistive technologies to assist in
reading, 19 percent of time in supported reading aloud, and only 9 percent
of time in direct instruction of phonemic strategies (Braille or print).
Furthermore, anecdotal evidence suggests that a teacher of blind students
spends more time tutoring than teaching blindness skills (Amato, 2002). 

The Spiral of Misunderstanding

Attitudes about Braille, which are often based on myths and misconceptions
about the system, are also a barrier to proper Braille instruction. One of
the major reasons for the increasing illiteracy of the blind and those with
low vision is the historical emphasis on teaching children with residual
vision to read print (Spungin, 1996). Most blind children have some residual
vision; they are legally blind but not totally blind. But many students who
have residual vision cannot read print efficiently even with magnification;
attempting to read print results in eye strain, headaches, and other
problems. Furthermore, many degenerative eye conditions are progressive,
meaning that the student's vision will continue to decrease over time,
making print harder and harder to read. Students with low vision are
particularly at risk for not receiving appropriate instruction in Braille.
These students tend to receive less direct service from teachers of blind
students and are surrounded with more emphasis on "vision" over nonvisual
skills and learning techniques. Additionally, if Braille is not introduced
early, student motivation to accept Braille will greatly decrease due to
frustration in learning Braille, emotional issues with looking and acting
different from one's peers, and issues involving emotional acceptance of
additional vision loss. It is important for educators to give these students
appropriate instruction based on their needs in the long term rather than
simply considering only their most immediate needs. 

Parents often find themselves battling with school administrators to get
Braille instruction for their children with low vision. The Colton family of
Park City, Utah, took out a second mortgage on their home in order to hire
lawyers for litigation against the school district to get Braille
instruction for their daughter Katie, who has a progressive eye disease
(Lyon, 2009). "We'd had to argue a wait-to-fail model is not appropriate for
a progressive disorder," her mother was quoted as saying in the Salt Lake
Tribune. 

The Jacobs family was told that their blind daughter could read print if the
font was 72 point or higher, so there was no need for Braille (Jacobs,
2009). Needless to say, the child will never have access to print that large
in the real world, except perhaps on billboards. The school system justified
having the child read print by claiming that she was "resistant to Braille."
But a school district would never refuse to teach a sighted child to read
because he or she was "resistant" to reading. Furthermore, resistance to
Braille is often a product of the way it is taught; if Braille is presented
to a blind child as different and hard, rather than the positive way in
which reading is presented to sighted children, then the child will
naturally absorb the expectations of the adults doing the teaching (Craig,
1996; Stratton, 1999). 

Attention box page 10:  Experts estimate that 1.3 million blind people live
in the United States, and approximately 75,000 people lose all or part of
their vision each year. 


The experiences of the Colton and Jacobs families are not uncommon; they are
merely examples of the experiences of hundreds of families across the United
States. On the other hand, the experiences of parents of blind children who
have successfully introduced their young readers to Braille and fought for
inclusion of the system in the child's education suggest that, when Braille
is simply presented as reading and reading becomes fun for the family,
children readily absorb the system.

Others argue that Braille isolates and stigmatizes students from peers who
read print. This has never been backed by any kind of research; it is
without foundation. Blind children will always have to use alternative
technologies or methods to read, ranging from holding a book close to their
face to using a magnification device or putting on headphones to listen to
recorded text. Their peers notice these differences as surely as they notice
that the child reads Braille instead of print, but they do not necessarily
treat the child differently because of reading differences.

Ultimately, all of these mistaken beliefs about Braille come down to low
expectations of blind students. Whether they will admit it or not, many of
the sighted educators and administrators charged with providing instruction
to blind students do not believe in the capacity of their students or in the
effectiveness of Braille and other alternative techniques used by blind
people to live successful, productive lives. As one commentator has put it:
"A little honest reflection about this situation (decline in Braille
literacy) suggests that the real culprit here is the inadequate and
inappropriate education of the special education teachers who are not
competent or confident themselves in using Braille and who also believe that
their students should not be expected to compete successfully in school or
in life" (Ianuzzi, 1999).

Blind students who are not properly taught Braille and other blindness
skills and who therefore struggle with literacy ultimately experience low
self-confidence and a lack of belief in their own ability to live happy,
productive lives. By contrast, those who do receive effective Braille
instruction and use the code effectively gain a sense of hope and
empowerment. Dr. Fredric Schroeder (1996) commented that Braille literacy
"should be viewed more expansively than simply as a literacy issue."
Schroeder's analysis of interviews with legally blind adults "found that
issues of self-esteem, self-identity, and the 'stigma' of being a person
with a disability were integrally intertwined with the subjects' reported
feelings about using Braille.For some, Braille seems to represent
competence, independence, and equality, so the mastery and use of Braille
played a central role in the development of their self-identities as persons
who are capable, competent, independent, and equal." 

Schroeder's work connects to other valuable work in self-efficacy and
demonstrates that blind people who learn to value and use Braille generally
have a higher degree of confidence and do not spend energy attempting to
reshape themselves as "normal" individuals. Schroeder's work is reinforced
by more recent investigations by Wells-Jensen (2003) and through the
published first-hand experiences of hundreds of blind individuals-some who
did and others who did not receive appropriate instruction in Braille in
childhood.

Another misconception about Braille that has contributed to the decline in
Braille literacy is the idea that reading Braille is always slower than
reading print and that Braille is difficult to learn. While some studies
suggest that Braille is slower than print and difficult to learn because of
its 189 English contractions-symbols and letter combinations that reduce the
size of Braille books by making it possible to put more Braille on a page
instead of spelling each word out letter-by-letter-research in this area is
unreliable since studies tend to be anecdotal. Other studies have found that
Braille is an efficient and effective reading medium (Foulke, 1979;
Wormsley, 1996). Furthermore, the experience of Braille instructors shows
that reading speed exceeding 200 words per minute is possible when students
have learned Braille at an early age (Danielsen, 2006). 

The Paradox of Technology

It is often said that technology obviates the need for Braille. The
availability of text-to-speech technology and audio texts, for example, is
advanced as an argument against the use of Braille. But literacy is the
ability to read and write. While using speech output and recorded books is a
way for students to gain information, it does not teach them reading and
writing skills. Students who rely solely on listening as a means of learning
find themselves deficient in areas like spelling and composition. Most
teachers of blind students (89.4 percent [Wittenstein and Pardee, 1996])
agree that technology should be used as a supplement to Braille rather than
as a replacement, even though as cited above, many of them spend more
instructional time working with technology than teaching Braille. No one
would seriously suggest that alternate sources of information, like
television and radio, replace the need for a sighted child to learn to read;
the same should be true for Braille.

For the sighted technology has not replaced print; it has in fact simplified
and enhanced access to the printed word. The same is true with respect to
Braille; advances in technology have made Braille more available than it
ever was in the past. Computer software can translate any document into
literary, contracted Braille quickly and accurately, although work still
needs to be done to make other Braille codes machine-translatable. Braille
displays and embossers can be attached to computers to generate Braille
documents on the fly. Thousands of Braille books are available from
Internet-based services like the Web-Braille service offered by the National
Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of
Congress (NLS) and the online community Bookshare.org. While scarcity of
Braille is still a problem, it is not nearly as bad as it has been in the
past. Certainly improvements can still be made in Braille production methods
and technology so that more Braille will be available, and this is one of
the goals of the Braille Readers are Leaders campaign of the National
Federation of the Blind. Assuming a commitment to Braille instruction and
Braille literacy is renewed in America and proper steps are taken to ensure
the production and distribution of more Braille materials, there will be no
need to avoid teaching Braille because of a shortage of books.

The Truth about Braille

The crisis in Braille literacy is real. Thousands of blind children and
adults who need adjustment to blindness training are being denied access to
the most effective means of reading and writing for the blind ever invented.
The effects of this crisis can be seen in the high unemployment rate (over
70 percent) among blind adults, the high dropout rate (40 to 50 percent)
among blind high school students, and the lives of dependence and minimal
subsistence that many blind people lead. By contrast, blind people who know
the Braille code and use it regularly find success, independence, and
productivity. 

A recent survey of five hundred respondents by the National Federation of
the Blind Jernigan Institute, conducted on a national random sample selected
from a list of 10,000 people who had had contact with the NFB within the
last two years, demonstrated that contact with the NFB increases the
likelihood of knowing Braille. Unlike the general sample of blind
individuals, where the AFB estimates that only 10 percent read Braille, more
than half (59 percent) of those interviewed in the NFB Jernigan Institute
study are Braille literate. This is probably due to the Federation's
emphasis on Braille literacy; those who have had contact with the National
Federation of the Blind tend to believe strongly in the efficacy of Braille
and to be committed to learning and reading it. In this sample the ability
to read Braille was also correlated with a higher educational level, a
higher likelihood of employment, and a higher income level. These
relationships were statistically significant.

Attention box page 12:  Many teachers who are considered qualified to teach
Braille have not learned it themselves. 

Most disciplines accept that the primary indicators of socioeconomic status
in this society are employment and education leading to self-sufficiency. A
study by Dr. Ruby Ryles, now the director of the orientation and mobility
master's program at the Professional Development and Research Institute on
Blindness at Louisiana Tech University, began to provide the objective
information needed on the question of Braille versus print. In a comparison
between two groups of blind people, one consisting of Braille readers and
the other of print readers, the study revealed that those who were taught
Braille from the beginning had higher employment rates, were better educated
and more financially self-sufficient, and spent more time engaged in leisure
and other reading than the print users (Ryles, 1996). 

Dr. Ryles's work showed a striking difference between those who had grown up
learning Braille and those who had relied primarily on print. She found that
44 percent of the Braille-reading group, as compared to 77 percent of the
print-reading group, were unemployed. In other words the unemployment rate
for the print group was actually higher than the generally reported
unemployment rate among the blind as a whole (70 percent) (Riccobono, et
al.), while the unemployment rate among Braille readers was much lower. The
Braille-reading sample had significantly stronger reading habits than the
print group, including more hours in a week spent on reading activities,
reading more books, and subscribing to more magazines. While the overall
educational rate between the two groups was not statistically significant, a
dramatic difference was observed at the advanced degree level. Thirty
percent of the Braille group had an advanced degree compared to only 13
percent for the print group, with only the Braille group having any
individuals with doctoral degrees. 

Last, the Braille group was over-represented in the higher income level and
under-represented in the lowest income level, while the print group was
under-represented at the high income level and over-represented at the low
income level (the two groups were comparable at a medium income level). The
print group contained significantly more people receiving
non-employment-related funding from the government (such as Social Security
Disability Income) as compared to the Braille group.

Dr. Ryles's research on the education and employment outcomes for Braille
readers, combined with the difference in confidence, self-efficacy, and
reported independence of Braille readers, suggests that Braille is extremely
valuable for those blind people who learn and use Braille in their lives.
The results of this study suggest that teaching Braille as an original
primary reading medium to children with low vision may encourage them to
develop the positive lifelong habit of reading as adults, enhance their
later employment opportunities, and increase the possibility of financial
independence.

The Future Is in Our Hands

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 National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute is
committed to the reversal of this downward trend in Braille literacy in
order to ensure that equal opportunities in education and employment are
available to all of the nation's blind. 

The overall goals of this effort are that:

.	The number of school-age children reading Braille will double by
2015. 
.	All fifty states will enact legislation requiring special education
teachers of blind children to obtain and maintain the National Certification
in Literary Braille by 2015. 
.	Braille resources will be made more available through online sharing
of materials, enhanced production methods, and improved distribution. 
.	Courses in Braille instruction will be added to the curricula in
high schools and colleges and offered to all students to ensure that this
reading medium becomes an established, recognized method of achieving
literacy in our nation.
.	The American public will learn that blind people have a right to
Braille literacy so they can compete and assume a productive role in
society. 

For over 150 years Braille has been recognized as the most effective means
of reading and writing for the blind. Hundreds of thousands of blind people
have found Braille an indispensable tool in their education, their work, and
their daily lives, even as professionals in the field of blindness continued
to debate the merits of the system. Certainly more empirical research is
needed to break down the wall of misunderstanding that still stands between
all too many blind people and proper Braille instruction. The Braille codes
and the technology to reproduce them can and will continue to improve. But
the lives of successful blind people testify to the usefulness of Braille,
and in the face of that testimony the only truly professional and moral
course of action is to ensure that all blind people have access to competent
Braille instruction. In the hearts and minds of blind people, no alternative
system or new technology has ever replaced Braille where the rubber meets
the road-in the living of happy, successful, productive lives. That is why
the National Federation of the Blind is asking all who are concerned about
the future prospects for blind children and adults in this country to help
us make Braille literacy a reality for the 90 percent of blind children for
whom reading is a struggle, if not an impossibility. The future of sighted
children depends on a proper education, and the future of blind children is
no different. Let us make the commitment that no blind child or adult who
needs Braille as a tool in his or her arsenal of blindness techniques will
be left without it.


References:

Amato, Sheila. "Standards for Competence in Braille Literacy Skills in
Teacher Preparation Programs." Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness 96,
no. 3 (2002): 143-153. 

American Foundation for the Blind. "Estimated Number of Adult Braille
Readers in the United States." Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness 90,
no. 3 (May/June 1996): 287. 

Blackorby, Jose, et al. "SEELS: Wave 1 Wave 2 Over view." A report prepared
for the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education. (SRI
Project P10656), August 2004. 

Caton, Hilda, ed. Print and Braille Literacy: Selecting Appropriate Learning
Media. Louisville: American Printing House for the Blind, 1991. 

Council for Exceptional Children. "Accreditation & Licensure." Professional
Development. http://www.cec.sped.org/Content/
NavigationMenu/ProfessionalDevelopment/ CareerCenter/AccreditationLicensure/
default.htm?from=tlcHome. (accessed March 13, 2009). 

Concise Oxford Dictionary Online, s.v. "Literacy." http://www.askoxford.com
(accessed February 3, 2009). 

Craig, C. J. "Family Support of the Emergent Literacy of Children with
Visual Impairments." Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness 90, no. 3
(1996): 194-200. 

Danielsen, Chris. "Who Says You Can't Go Home Again?: Reflections on the
Twentieth Anniversary of the Louisiana Center for the Blind." Braille
Monitor 49, no. 7 (July 2006): 459-464. 

Eldridge, Carlton. "Braille Literacy: The Best Route to Equal Education."
Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness 73, no. 8 (Oct 1979): 331-333. 

Federman, Mark. "Why Johnny and Janey Can't Read, and Why Mr. and Ms. Smith
Can't Teach: The Challenge of Multiple Media Literacies in a Tumultuous
Time." Talk delivered, University of Toronto Senior Alumni Association,
Toronto, Canada, November 2005. 

"Freedom to Learn: Basic Skills for Learners with Learning Difficulties
and/or Disabilities." A report addressing the basic needs of adults with
learning disabilities, May 2000. 

Frieman, Barry B. "State Braille Standards for Teachers of Students Who Are
Blind or Visually Impaired: A National Survey." Braille Monitor 47, no. 1
(January 2004): 12-16.

Foulke, Emerson. "Increasing the Braille Reading Rate." Journal of Visual
Impairment & Blindness 73, no. 8 (Oct 1979): 318-323. 

Hehir, Thomas. "Eliminating Ableism in Education." Harvard Educational
Review 72, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 1-32.

Holbrook, M. C. and A. J. Koenig. "Teaching Braille Reading to Students with
Low Vision." Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness 86, no. 1 (Jan 1992):
44-48. 

Ianuzzi, Jody. W. "Braille Literacy in America: A Student's View."
TravelVision. http://www. travelvision.org/ov/ov0599.htm. (accessed March
11, 2009). 

Jacobs, William (parent of blind child) interview by Chris Danielsen,
January 15, 2009, National Federation of the Blind, Baltimore, MD. 

Lorimer, Pamela. "A Critical Evaluation of the Historical Development of
Tactile Modes of Writing and an Analysis and Evaluation of Researches
Carried out in Endeavours to Make the Braille Code Easier to Read and
Write." PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 1996. 

---. Reading by Touch: Trials, Battles, and Discoveries. Baltimore: National
Federation of the Blind, 2000.

Lyon, Julia. "Teen's Blindness Revealing a New World," News, Salt Lake
Tribune, February 1, 2009. 

Mason, Christine, Colleen McNerney, and Donna McNear. "Shortages of
Personnel in the Low Incidence Area of Blindness: Working and Planning
Together." Teaching Exceptional Children 32, no. 5 (May/June 2000): 91. 

Mellor, Michael. Louis Braille: A Touch of Genius. Boston: National Braille
Press, 2006. 

Miller, Sally. "Practice Makes Perfect." Future Reflections 21, no. 2
(Summer/Fall 2002): 39-40. 

Mullen, Edward A. "Decreased Braille Literacy: A Symptom of a System in Need
of Reassessment." RE:view 23, no.3 (Fall 1990): 164-169. 

National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. "Board of
Examiners Update, Fall 2003." http://www.ncate.org/documents/
boeUpdates/boe_updates_fall2003.pdf (accessed March 11, 2009). 

Perlman, Rosalind. The Blind Doctor: The Jacob Bolotin Story. Santa Barbara:
Blue Point Books, 2007. 

Rex, E. J. "Issues Related to Literacy of Legally Blind Learners." Journal
of Visual Impairment & Blindness 83, no. 6 (June 1989): 306-307, 310-313. 

Riccobono, Mark A. "The Significance of Braille on the Blind: A Review and
Analysis of Research Based Literature." Unpublished paper, Johns Hopkins
University, 2006. 

Riccobono, Mark A., L. Blake, and A. J. Chwalow. "Help America Vote Act: A
Grant Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Administration on Children and Families." Braille Monitor (forthcoming). 

Ryles, R. "The Impact of Braille Reading Skills on Employment, Income,
Education, and Reading Habits." Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness 90,
no. 3 (May/ June 1996): 219-226. 

Schroeder, F. K. "Literacy: The Key to Opportunity." Journal of Visual
Impairment & Blindness 83, no. 6 (June 1989): 290-293. 

---. "Perceptions of Braille Usage by Legally Blind Adults." Journal of
Visual Impairment & Blindness 90, no. 3 (May/June 1996): 210-218.

Spungin, S. J. "Cannibalism is Alive and Well in the Blindness Field."
Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness 97, no. 2 (Feb 2003): 69-71. 

---. "Braille and Beyond: Braille Literacy in a Larger Context." Journal of
Visual Impairment & Blindness 90, no. 3 (May/June 1996): 271-274. 

---. Braille Literacy: Issues for Blind Persons, Families, Professionals,
and Producers of Braille. New York: American Foundation for the Blind, 1989.


Stephens, O. "Braille-Implications for Living." Journal of Visual Impairment
& Blindness 83, no. 6 (June 1989): 288-289. 17 

Stratton, J. M. "Emergent Literacy: A New Perspective." Journal of Visual
Impairment & Blindness 90, no. 3 (May/June 1996): 90,
http://www.Braille.org/papers/jvib0696/ jvib9603.htm.

Thurlow, Martha L., Sandra J. Thompson, Lynn Walz, and Hyeonsook Shin.
"Student Perspectives on Using Accommodations during Statewide Testing."
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational
Association, Seattle, WA, April 10-14, 2001. 

Thurlow, W. R. "An Alternative to Braille." Journal of Visual Impairment &
Blindness 82 (November 1988): 378. 

Waechtler, Ellen. "101 Ways to Use Braille." Braille Monitor 42, no. 2
(March 1999): 177-181. 

Wells-Jensen, Sheri. "Just Say No to Reading Braille, Part II." Braille
Monitor 46, no. 3 (March 2003): 192-199.

Wormsley, D. P. "Reading Rates of Young Braille- Reading Children." Journal
of Visual Impairment & Blindness 90, no. 3 (May/June 1996): 278-282. 

Wittenstein, S. H., and M. L. Pardee. "Teachers' Voices: Comments on Braille
and Literacy from the Field." Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness 90,
no. 3 (May/June 1996): 201-210.

Vaughan, C. Edwin. "Why Accreditation Failed Agencies Serving the Blind and
Visually Impaired." Journal of Rehabilitation (January/February/March 1997):
7-14. 

****
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore, MD 21230
(410) 659-9314
www.nfb.org
LBB88P

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of justin
williams
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 9:16 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] Sending this again: Article showingwhatparentsofblind
kids are facing

I only heard reference to that once.  I wonder if we can find the stat.  

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Barbara
Hammel
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 9:12 PM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] Sending this again: Article showing
whatparentsofblind kids are facing

I think the stat that goes around is that of the 30 percent who are
employed, 90 percent of them use Braille.
Barbara




Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. -- Carl Sandburg -----Original
Message-----
From: justin williams
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 5:20 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] Sending this again: Article showing
whatparentsofblind kids are facing

I heard a stat once that despite 70 percent of the blind being unemployed,
only 44 percent of those who operate as totals, or cloes to total are
unemployed.  In other words, those who can read braille are less likely to
be unemployed.  I think that is because they are comfortable in using the
blindness skills.

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Donna Hill
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 6:14 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] Sending this again: Article showing what
parentsofblind kids are facing

Lynda
You raise some interesting points. I too have often wondered what percentage
of the 30% of blind people of working age who are working are employed in
blindness-related jobs. I haven't been able to find anything official on
this. I think (and maybe this shows me to be more of an optimist than I
usually care to admit) that it is less now than years ago.

There are many blind people who have broken barriers in professions like
engineering, chemistry and the law, and of course many blind lawyers. I only
know of two living blind people (both men) who completed medical school as
blind students.

Celest Lopes is the head of the Racketeering Department at the NYC District
Attorney's Office, and there are many blind women in teaching and social
work. Temple U. had a blind summa cum laude a few years ago (Harriet Go),
who is now one of several blind teachers in the Philadelphia School
District. I think our NFB Scholarship Committee head, Patty Chang, is an ADA
in Chicago, and Elizabeth Campbell has worked as a reporter for a newspaper
in Fort Worth for over 20 years.

In terms of the sighted TVIs and rehab counsellors being given preference
over the blind ones, I think there's a lot of truth in that. Nevertheless,
my brother, who teaches Braille at Lions World Services in Little Rock, has
survived many lay-offs and was recently given a promotion to a management
position.

I always get the impression though that when the average sighted person
hears about any of these accomplishments, they either think they're being
fed a line of bull or that the specific individual is some sort of sevant --
that the accomplishment is not something that a normally intelligent blind
person could achieve.

When I was heading off for college and indeed throughout my college and post
college years, I felt pressured by my advisers to go into a field like
teaching blind children or rehab counselling. I fought fiercely against this
for several reasons. First, it was my opinion that I really didn't have
anything to contribute to blind kids, since I was having such a hard time
myself and didn't have Braille or mobility skills. Second, I couldn't help
wondering how it could work to funnel all the blind folks into
blindness-related jobs. It felt unsustainable. Third, it felt like I was
being pushed aside into that separate but "not" equal world out of which
black people were trying so desperately to escape.

As far as the trained professionals being stumbling blocks ... I think that
is far too often the case. When I was doing the Braille literacy series, I
had occasion to monitor the online forum for TVIs. They were discussing this
business about Braille literacy that the NFB had been promoting. I don't
know if you recall, but the NFB got Congress to authorize the minting of a
Braille silver dollar as one of the two commemorative coins for 2009, which
was the 200th anniversary of Louis Braille's birth. The one post that stood
out for me came from a TVI who admitted that she wept openly when she
learned that she had to teach Braille. If the teachers of sighted children
were as poorly equipped to teach print reading as the TVIs are to teach
Braille, there would be rioting in the streets.

Carlton Ann Cook Walker, the current president of the National Organization
of Parents of Blind Children, had a lot to say about this issue. When I get
the chance, I'll try to find the article I did about her for my Braille
Literacy series. Her story, which I subtitled, "Lessons from a Right-Handed
World," was the article that got picked up the most by other sites.

I must say though, that there are many wonderful TVIs who are fierce
advocates for their students. Sister Meg at the St. Lucy's Day School for
Blind Children run by the Philadelphia Arch Dioces comes to mind, as do a
couple of the TVIs I corresponded with concerning the winners of our Youth
Braille Writing Contest.
Donna
-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda Lambert
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 1:51 PM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] Sending this again: Article showing what
parentsofblind kids are facing

Donna, what a powerful story! It is really well done, and I love the way you
end it with information for others who may be looking for help.
It seems to me as though the people who are "trained professionals" in this
field are often more of a stumbling block than the helpers that they are
supposed to be.
This is very enlightening to me, as I think it would be to anyone who had no
prior knowledge about blindness.
One person told me when I lost my sight, that she had never known of a blind
person who had a job in any other field than something that is
blind-related. This young man will have many obstacles in his  path as he
pursues his dreams for a profssion in law, I am sure.
I often wonder, out of the percent of blind people who are employed, how
many do you suppose are working in non-blind related fields?
Have you ever done research on this?
One thing that perplexes me, or should I say it dissapoints me, is when
sighted people are working at jobs in the blind related industry that could
or should be done by blind people. And, I wonder if they are given
preference over blind people for those jobs.  As in any field, job placement
is a political animal first and foremost, I know! But, when I was at the
rehab school I saw that some blind people had been let go, and sighted
persons retained and it bothered me so much. I cannot tell you how important
it was to me the day I had called there, and the person on the phone with me
told me she was blind. It immediately gave me hope - and then, while I was
there, that same person was let go, along with some others, due to cutback,
we were told. Hmmm?

Lynda

Lynda


----- Original Message -----
From: "justin williams" <justin.williams2 at gmail.com>
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 12:56 PM
Subject: Re: [stylist] Sending this again: Article showing what parents
ofblind kids are facing


> that is a fantastic story.  I would have been calling for a law suit a 
> log time ago.  I would have taken the legal stick and beat them about 
> the had and shoulders into submission.  She has a lot of patients.  I 
> would have stepd on their throats.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Donna 
> Hill
> Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 12:26 PM
> To: Stylist
> Subject: [stylist] Sending this again: Article showing what parents of 
> blind kids are facing
>
> I don't know if this ever made the list with the problems we recently had.
> Since a week's gone by with no comment, I thought perhaps not.
>
> Donna
>
> Hi all,
>
> With the lively discusion we've been having, I thought I'd like to 
> share this article I wrote for American Chronicle in 2009. Don't think 
> this sort of thing isn't happening today.
>
> Donna
>
>
>
> Braille Literacy: For the Love of Reading
>
> A Mother's Struggle with America's Special Education System
>
> By Donna W. Hill
>
> (Word count: 4981)
>
>
>
> Ad: If you were a modern American educator would you expect a legally 
> blind child to rely upon his remaining vision to use power tools or go 
> snow tubing? How slow would a child have to read print for you to 
> consider teaching him Braille?  How bent over would he have to be, 
> before it occurred to you that he might benefit from a white cane?
> Now that Carrie Gilmer's son is headed off to college, she can talk 
> about their ten-year ordeal.
> As
> President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Organization of 
> Parents of Blind Children, she knows that her experiences are 
> unfortunately all too common.  From her initial reactions to learning 
> that her son was legally blind to the mistakes she hopes other parents 
> won't make, she is candid about the fight she has just been through.
> Carrie's story is a must read for anyone with a friend or loved one 
> dealing with poor vision.
>
>
>
>
>
> Jordan Richardson (18, Minneapolis) is a Blaine High School senior 
> with a
> 3.7 grade point average.  He is a trombonist in the school's jazz 
> band, a reporter for the school newspaper and in Spanish club.  As a 
> freshman, he was on Student Council.  As a sophomore and junior, he 
> was in Science Olympiad.  In his junior year he was in the National 
> Honor Society and received a community service award.  His volunteer 
> projects include tutoring students learning English as a second 
> language and mentoring blind children at a summer camp.  He reads the 
> Constitution for fun and plans to become a judge.
>
>
>
> When we hear stories about young men like Jordan, we are all proud and 
> perhaps a bit relieved that the future is in such intelligent, gifted 
> and generous hands.  The fact that Jordan has done all of this as a 
> blind person is not the amazing or miraculous part of the story.  In 
> fact, if you get too caught up in that, you'll miss the point that he 
> and his mother, Carrie Gilmer, want to get across: blind people can 
> compete with their sighted peers, when given the tools and 
> encouragement to do so.
>
>
>
> There is, however, something which is extraordinary about Jordan's story.
> It involves what his mother had to go through to get him an education 
> in the first place.  Carrie, who has been president of the Minnesota 
> chapter of the non-profit National Organization of Parents of Blind 
> Children (NOPBC):
>
> <http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Parents_and_Teachers.asp>
> http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Parents_and_Teachers.asp</a>
>
> since 2004, is working to stop what happened to her and Jordan from 
> happening to other families.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, her story is all too common. The result is lower 
> achievement, dependence and the need for tax-payer support of 
> unemployable blind adults.
>
>
>
>
> Braille literacy is declining.  Only ten percent of America's blind 
> children are being taught to read and write Braille - down from fifty 
> percent in the '60s.  Braille's significance can be glimpsed in two 
> statistics.  Only thirty percent of working-age blind Americans are 
> employed, and over eighty percent of them read Braille.
>
>
>
> There are three major areas in which a person with low vision may need 
> to make adjustments: literacy (reading and writing), orientation and 
> mobility (getting around) and manual activities (everything from 
> cooking and sewing to doing the laundry and woodworking.
>
>
>
> Does the thought of a blind person cooking bacon or using a power saw 
> make you cringe a little?  There are blind cooks and carpenters who do 
> these things every day.  What is truly scary is when low vision 
> students are expected to do them without learning the non-visual 
> skills which make the safe accomplishment of these tasks possible.
>
>
>
> Sight is a powerful sense.  People are naturally inclined to "look"
> even when their vision is unreliable. One of the biggest challenges of 
> educating low vision and legally blind children is knowing when to 
> stop encouraging them to use their remaining eyesight.  Should you 
> teach them Braille when they are reading large print half as fast as 
> their fully sighted peers?
> Maybe at a third the speed?  What about at a quarter of the speed, or 
> when they're getting headaches and not having time for friends and 
> hobbies?  If the child's vision is well beyond the limits for legal 
> blindness and the child has a degenerative condition, do you teach 
> Braille early, taking advantage of the increased tactile sensitivity 
> in children which makes learning Braille easier in childhood?
>
>
>
> The Special Education system in the US is so biased toward using 
> faulty eyesight that children are made disabled not from their eye 
> condition, but from the choices that force them to settle for 
> substandard achievement rather than learn non-visual skills.  Year 
> after year from the time Jordan was in kindergarten, Carrie struggled 
> with a rat's nest of scenarios which threatened to hold her son back, 
> limit his potential and rob him of his childhood. From not knowing how 
> to evaluate a child's usable vision and
>
> refusing to provide adaptive equipment,   to judging his potential against
> what they thought was possible for blind kids - i.e. not much -- and 
> sabotaging her efforts, the Special Education system has given her an 
> uphill battle.
>
>
>
> Jordan is legally blind. He has a degenerative condition called 
> retinal cone and rod dystrophy, which will probably take the little 
> sight he has eventually.  Carrie didn't know there was anything wrong 
> at first.
>
>
>
> "He liked to get close to things," she says, "but many kids do."
>
>
>
> Jordan was also driving his tricycle into the curb.  When she 
> expressed concern to his pediatrician, Carrie's suspicions were 
> brushed aside as a mother's worry.  Not until he was about to attend 
> kindergarten did she learn the truth.
>
>
>
> "It was the daycare center at the Y where I was working out," she 
> says, "They mentioned it and I insisted that the pediatrician send him 
> to an eye doctor."
>
>
>
> Carrie remembers the eye doctor frowning and saying, "He has an awful 
> lot of vision loss for his age."  Jordan was sent home with glasses 
> for his astigmatism, which didn't help.
>
>
>
> When a specialist finally diagnosed Jordan's condition, his vision was 
> 20/400 - worse than legal blindness which is 20/200.  The doctor said 
> there was nothing they could do and that he would call the state 
> services for the blind to inform them.
>
>
>
> "I cried for twenty-one days," says Carrie, "I couldn't understand.
> How could he be blind without me knowing?  How could he be blind and 
> still see the McDonald's sign?"
>
>
>
> Like most of us, Carrie had little personal experience with blind 
> people, and her impressions were not favorable.
>
>
>
> "When I was three years old, my grandparents took me to visit a couple 
> they knew.  The husband had lost his sight," she remembers, "He was 
> really grumpy and barking orders at his wife."
>
>
>
> Other than that, she knew of Helen Keller, Ray Charles, the Sidney 
> Poitier movie "A Patch of Blue" and that some blind people could 
> string
beads.
> She
> believed that blind people had little chance of living independent, 
> productive and happy lives.
>
>
>
> "I realized that my image of blindness was a horrible one and it hurt 
> to think that people would think that way about Jordan," she says.
>
>
>
> A Gift From Beyond the Grave
>
>
>
> In her pain, Carrie began to notice that something didn't add up.  It 
> was the difference between her impression of what blindness meant and 
> the bright little boy she knew.
>
>
>
> She had just moved and was unpacking a box of literature left by her 
> late grandmother.  On top was something from the NFB.  Her grandmother 
> had a secret.  She had lost enough vision to be legally blind, and she 
> had made donations to the NFB.
>
>
>
> "The word 'blind' just leapt off the page at me," says Carrie, "I read 
> the NFB books "Making Hay" and "What Color is the Sun."  They made me 
> stop crying and gave me hope.  Then, I made my first big mistake."
>
>
>
> Her mistake was that she assumed the professionals at Jordan's school 
> would also have a positive attitude about blindness and would get 
> Jordan the tools and instruction he needed to reach his true 
> potential.
>
>
>
> "I should have called the NFB right then and there," she says.
>
>
>
> In kindergarten, it seemed as though Jordan was on the right track.
> He had a Braille instructor with forty years' experience. She worked 
> with Jordan for half an hour after school four times a week.  She said 
> he was picking it up quickly and was tactually gifted.  The school 
> said he was doing well.
>
>
>
> Carrie didn't realize that they meant doing well "for a blind person."
> Only
> much later did she understand that to say that   Jordan was tactually
> gifted, represented a sighted bias, and that even that first teacher 
> had mythical ideas about blindness and the sense of touch.
>
>
>
> "It's people's ability to use other senses not the strength of those 
> senses," she says, "People don't realize how much they are actually using
> their other senses.   They don't spend time analyzing what they do.  I
> touched the kitchen counter one day after wiping it off and I realized 
> that I could feel that it wasn't as clean as it looked.  Also, they 
> don't realize how often they are wrong about what they see - a person 
> 'looked' nice, the ice 'looked' safe."
>
>
>
> Sighted bias notwithstanding, Jordan's first Braille teacher wanted 
> Jordan to learn Braille and wait at least until forth grade to decide 
> if he would be able to read well enough using print.  She told Carrie 
> they would be gradually adding Braille into his school day.  As she 
> retired, she gave Carrie a prophetic warning.
>
>
>
> "She told us to make sure that we held the next teacher accountable, 
> because there were 'different philosophies.'"
>
>
>
> The Fight Begins
>
>
>
> In first grade, Jordan's new TBS (Teacher of Blind Students) wanted to 
> teach him to use an abacus for math and work on orientation and 
> mobility (OM).
> Suddenly, the thirty-minute sessions were no longer solid Braille 
> instruction. In addition, the quality of the instruction changed.
>
>
>
> "She wanted to make Braille fun, implying that it wasn't fun," Carrie 
> remembers, "They just played Yahtzee and other games that were not 
> even Braille-based. She didn't think Jordan needed to use Braille 
> during the day and wouldn't really need it for a long time."
>
>
>
> Jordan, who didn't understand why he needed Braille, began to subtly 
> fall behind.  Carrie's other two children had been fluent readers by 
> then, but Jordan was a very slow reader and didn't enjoy it.  In first
grade, his
> print reading speed was twenty-five words per minute   and ten in Braille.
> She thought he needed more Braille instruction, but the teachers didn't.
>
>
>
> Carrie was worried, however.  It seemed to her that Jordan would be 
> better at Braille if he had some Braille books and was being 
> encouraged to read them.  She complained at the end of that year to 
> the Director of Special Education.  For five weeks, they gave him some 
> Braille instruction twice a week but no books.
>
>
>
> "They didn't even mention that NLS has Braille books," Carrie says, "I 
> assumed I had to get them from the school."
>
>
>
> People with print handicaps, including sight loss, dyslexia and other 
> physical and learning disabilities, can borrow Braille and recorded 
> books from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically
> Handicapped:
>
> <http://www.loc.gov/nls/> http://www.loc.gov/nls/
>
>
>
> In second grade Jordan was having more problems getting around. He was 
> hesitant about the ground in front of him.  In gym, he was told to sit 
> by the wall so he wouldn't get hurt.
>
>
>
> "He still wanted to hold my hand at seven!" Carrie remembers.
>
>
>
> Jordan had also stopped interacting with his classmates.  Carrie began 
> to question the decisions the school was making. She wanted Jordan to 
> have Braille in the classroom.
>
>
>
> In a decision based on convenience and the cost of bussing him home, 
> the school announced that they were going to remove him from science 
> and geography classes for special instruction instead of teaching him 
> after school.  Carrie asked how this could be a good thing 
> educationally, when he loved those subjects. She was afraid that would 
> make him dislike Braille.
>
>
>
> "He liked the pictures in print books, and I didn't want him to get a 
> bad attitude."
>
>
>
> They then said they could teach him Braille during reading class, but 
> Carrie believed that Jordan would still be missing something.  She 
> wanted after school Braille instruction plus some during school.  In 
> school, Jordan received only 5 minutes of Braille spelling lessons a 
> week and no Braille books.
>
>
>
> Jordan was alone at lunch and not mingling.  The Vision Department 
> kept saying that Jordan could see up close and was doing just fine.  
> They recommended against adaptive physical education because "it's for 
> totally blind kids and they don't do that much anyway."  Carrie's 
> relationship with the Special Ed staff broke down when they suggested 
> that Jordan join a support group for behavior problems.
>
>
>
> A New Way of Looking at Jordan's Progress
>
>
>
> Carrie learned that the school secretary had raised two blind children.
> Like Carrie, she had experienced problems with the Special Ed department.
> She gave Carrie a copy of the NFB's "Future Reflections" magazine.  
> The article "Is Your Child Age Appropriate" by professional educator 
> of blind children ruby Ryles
>
> made Carrie understand that she was the expert about whether her son 
> was on track based on his own potential.
>
> http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/Publications/fr/fr11/Issue5/f110502.html
>
>
>
> Carrie realized that the answer to the article's question was "no," if 
> her expectations for Jordan were the same as they would be, if he were 
> sighted.
> She finally made the call she should have made years before.  Judy 
> sanders, at the NFB of Minnesota told her how to get Braille books and 
> stressed the importance of expecting Jordan to keep up with his class. 
> Carrie entered Jordan in the "Braille readers are leaders" contest:
>
> <http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Braille_Initiative.asp>
> http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Braille_Initiative.asp
>
>
>
> "The Vision Department at Jordan's school treated me like I did not 
> know what I was talking about.  They considered his vision to be good 
> and wanted him to use it every second," says Carrie, "They acted like 
> my husband and I were trying to make Jordan blind."
>
>
>
> Jordan was still not interacting with his classmates.  The school 
> suggested having the class cover their eyes with wax paper to 
> experience what Jordan could see.  Carrie, however, knew that this 
> didn't represent Jordan's vision.  Judy, who is also blind, offered to 
> come to school that spring to give Jordan his Braille certificate and 
> talk to the class about blindness.
>
>
>
> When Carrie picked Judy up at the bus station, it was her first 
> experience with a competent blind person. It was Judy's white cane 
> that drew her attention.
>
>
>
> "She got out of the car by herself and just walked along with me like 
> anyone," Carrie says.
>
>
>
> Everyone loved Judy, including Jordan.  Carrie wanted more time to 
> talk about the NFB's philosophy and offered to drive Judy home.  Judy 
> encouraged her to go to the NFB's annual convention, saying they would 
> learn more in a week than she could tell her in years.
>
>
>
> For financial reasons, Carrie was reluctant to attend the convention.  
> She was a stay-at-home Mom and her husband was a teacher.  But, the 
> NFB of MN sent them, and it changed their lives.  Carrie learned about 
> the slate and stylus - the traditional method for writing Braille, 
> which Jordan had not been taught.  Also, Jordan had been walking all 
> bent over and the school had never even mentioned using a cane.
>
>
>
> For third grade, Carrie wanted Jordan to learn to use a white cane and 
> to write Braille. She again asked that he have Braille books in class.  
> The TBS didn't want to teach the slate and stylus until forth grade.  
> Carrie was overwhelmed.
>
>
>
> "There were so many issues and so much opposition from the school," 
> she sighs, "You have to ask yourself, 'Which battle do we fight?'"
>
>
>
> That year, the only time Jordan read Braille was for thirty minutes at 
> night when his mother insisted.  He was still falling behind.  Forth 
> grade was no different.  When Jordan was ready for fifth grade, Carrie 
> demanded that all of his textbooks be in Braille.
>
>
>
> "The TBS banged her fist on the table and said, 'Whatever.  He's never 
> going
> to be a Braille reader.'" Carrie says,   "She had been telling Jordan,
> 'Your
> parents are the ones who want Braille,'"
>
>
>
> Jordan's print reading was still faster than Braille.  Braille was 
> harder for him, and Jordan didn't understand that that was because he 
> didn't use it.
>
>
>
> With his face down on the page, Jordan could read thirty-five words a 
> minute.  His classmates read eighty-five to ninety or more.  Jordan 
> didn't think of reading as a physical struggle, but he didn't like to 
> read. That troubled Carrie.  Her family loved reading.  Jordan was 
> never a kid to talk back, argue or have tantrums, but he never read 
> for fun, not even comics.
>
>
>
> Ironically, the school obtained Braille texts for Jordan in fifth 
> grade, but the teacher didn't use textbooks, preferring work sheets. 
> They didn't have work sheets in Braille, so Jordan still wasn't 
> reading Braille during the day except for his weekly spelling list. If 
> the class was reading a novel, it wasn't until they were on the last 
> chapter that Jordan received the Braille version.
>
>
>
> By that time, Carrie was panicking and convinced that Jordan needed 
> daylong Braille instruction, and asked for all Braille for sixth 
> grade.  The TBS said that would ruin him and that he would get all d's 
> and wouldn't be able to keep up.
>
>
>
> She was told, "You're dooming him.  You're going to traumatize him by 
> going to all Braille and failure will be the result."
>
>
>
> Gym class was still a disaster.  Rather than using audible game balls, 
> which emit a continuous sound enabling blind kids to catch or hit 
> them, the class was forced to stop the game to give Jordan the ball. 
> He was still sitting in the corner most of the time.
>
>
>
> In sixth grade, the TBS wanted to pull Jordan from reading class for 
> Braille instruction, to learn to use jaws (a screen reader program 
> that works with
> Windows) and the Nemeth Braille Code for mathematics and science notation.
> Carrie didn't want him to miss reading because he would miss out on 
> class discussions on novels.  She allowed the TBS to pull him from gym 
> class, reasoning that it was better for Jordan to miss gym than to 
> miss reading class.  She enrolled him in the YMCA swim teem, which was 
> four nights a week plus Saturday meets, as well as bowling league and 
> ski club.
>
>
>
> "At the Y he was really participating."
>
>
>
> That was the first year Jordan had Braille textbooks.   An amazing thing
> happened.  At the beginning of the year, Jordan's Braille speed was twenty
> words a minute, and his print thirty-five.   In two months, his Braille
> speed was up to forty-five with print still at thirty-five. Jordan 
> suddenly began to prefer reading Braille.
>
>
>
> The victory was short-lived.  Jordan's Braille reading speed plateaued 
> at forty-five. In 7th grade, Carrie asked for them to work on his fluency.
> She
> was told that Braille readers don't read more than sixty words a minute.
> This is only true, Carrie realized later, when they get haphazard 
> instruction.  Instead of working on fluency, they were surfing the 
> internet and using a digital Braille note taker called Braille note, 
> both of which the teacher was teaching herself at the same time.
>
>
>
> Also, Jordan was reading Braille with only one hand and he was a 
> terrible "scrubber" going back and forth over words he had just read 
> before proceeding to the next word.  Carrie wasn't sure if this was 
> due to poor instruction or a reading problem.  She begged for a 
> reading specialist, but was told that Jordan didn't need one.
>
>
>
>
> Most of Jordan's reading was done on the Braille note, a digital 
> device with an eighteen cell "refreshable Braille" pad.  It's the 
> Braille equivalent of reading one line at a time; each cell is one 
> letter or symbol. This meant he wasn't reading long sentences.  Even 
> with that, Jordan had no leisure reading time because he needed more 
> time for school work.  Even with a sighted reader, there was little 
> time for leisure reading.
>
>
>
> Again she was faced with a dilemma.  Do you drop expectations for 
> homework to give him leisure reading? They cut Jordan's homework, so 
> he didn't get the curriculum he was capable of, but had some time for
leisure reading.
> Carrie was still worried about the quality of his Braille instruction. 
> He worked with the TBS one hour every other day, but the TBS focused 
> mainly on the computer.
>
>
>
> The Hard Lessons of Middle School
>
>
>
> In the summer before Jordan entered seventh grade, Carrie took a job 
> at the NFB training center, Blind Inc., in Minneapolis, and enrolled 
> Jordan in Buddy camp.
>
> http://www.blindinc.org/
>
>
>
> She learned about non-visual techniques for doing all sorts of everyday
> activities.   She talked to Jordan's seventh grade teachers about
> non-visual
> techniques for science, suggesting that the teachers speak with the people
> at Blind Inc.   Her suggestions were rebuffed.
>
>
>
> That year, he would have Home Economics and Industrial Arts.  Sewing 
> was first.  Their solution was for Jordan to get fabric and thread in 
> highly contrasting colors. Carrie, however, knew blind sewers didn't use
that.
> The
> TBS finally agreed to talk to Blind Inc and then said the school would 
> buy the adapted sewing equipment, which included a sturdy needle 
> threader and a magnetic strip for keeping seams straight while using a 
> sewing machine.
>
>
>
> Though they hadn't addressed adaptations for Industrial Arts, Carrie 
> was confident that they were finally on the same page.  She listened 
> with delight to Jordan's stories about how well he was doing with his 
> sewing project, a pair of shorts.  Jordan received an A.  His Mom was
impressed.
>
>
>
> "I got a D," she remembers.
>
>
>
> When Jordan brought the shorts home, however, the truth of what had 
> really been going on came out.  Upon inspection, Carrie noticed seam 
> marker lines and realized they had made him do the project visually. 
> Jordan never received the magnetic guide that the school promised they 
> would buy or the sturdy needle threader.  He began to cry and 
> explained that they had tried using duct tape, but he couldn't feel 
> it.  So, the teacher had drawn lines with a magic marker.  In order to 
> see it, Jordan had to tilt his head and press his forehead against the 
> sewing machine.  He had threaded a needle one time using the 
> commercially available foil needle threader, but it took so long that 
> the teacher ended up doing it.
>
>
>
> "I was in complete shock because he had been saying that it was going 
> great," she recalls.
>
>
>
> Carrie was too angry with the TBS to call.  But, things were getting more
> dangerous.   No accommodations had yet been made for Jordan's upcoming
> Industrial Arts class, and he would be expected to use power tools 
> including a ban saw and radial arm saw.
>
>
>
> Then, there was the snow tubing trip.  Despite medical evidence to the 
> contrary, the TBS had convinced the classroom teacher that Jordan 
> wasn't really blind, so it hadn't even entered their minds that they 
> had a blind student. In addition, Jordan's OM teacher had been 
> encouraging him to trust his vision. He came home with two black eyes.
>
>
>
> Carrie asked Jordan what he thought his vision was good enough for, 
> and he said crossing the street.  They soon had an experience that 
> showed Carrie that, even though he didn't realize it, Jordan was 
> relying on his hearing to cross streets not his vision.  They were 
> returning from the zoo and crossing at a congested corner.  Carrie 
> thought it was safe and started crossing between two parked cars.  
> Jordan yelled to stop.  She realized that he had been crossing by 
> sound and did some experiments to prove it to him.
>
>
>
> When Carrie called the Industrial Arts teacher, he was actually glad 
> to hear from her.  He was concerned about how Jordan would handle 
> dangerous equipment.  He said that all the TBS had said was to get the 
> course work to her so she could Braille it.  Carrie invited him to 
> visit Blind Inc.  He
> spent hours with   their wood working teacher and got excited about the
> possibilities.
>
>
>
> NFB training centers use "sleep shades" so that students are able to 
> resist using their faulty vision and develop reliable non-visual 
> skills.  The Blind Inc. instructor suggested painting the shop glasses 
> black so Jordan wouldn't be tempted to lean into the machines to see.  
> But when the IA teacher in his enthusiasm mentioned it to the TBS, she 
> called Carrie, saying that using sleep shades would endanger the other 
> students.  Although she had no personal industrial arts skills, the 
> TBS wanted to assess Jordan's vision on each piece of equipment.
>
>
>
> "Jordan likes to use his vision," she told Carrie, who finally 
> comprehended the depth of sighted bias that this whole team had had.  
> Every decision was based on it.  It was so ingrained in their thinking 
> that they were more comfortable allowing a legally blind kid to try to 
> see what he was doing with a power saw than to permit him to use 
> techniques that are designed to allow a person to safely use power 
> tools without sight.  They even believed that the other students in 
> the class would be safer.
>
>
>
> The TBS insisted that using sleep shades was too dangerous and was an
> insurance issue.   Carrie countered by pointing out the danger that the
> district had put Jordan in with the snow tubing trip and his sewing 
> experience.  She told them she would pull him from class if they 
> didn't go along with the non-visual techniques.
>
>
>
> They realized that Carrie had grounds for a law suit   and had many
> meetings.  Jordan is half African American so they through a diversity 
> specialist onto the team.  They agreed to conduct an experiment.  The 
> team would tour Blind Inc. as well as another training facility that 
> didn't insist upon using sleep shades.
>
>
>
> This took weeks and class was going on, so they agreed that Jordan 
> would participate except for using power tools.  The Blind Inc. 
> woodworking instructor volunteered to do the project with Jordan.
>
>
>
> At the end of seventh grade, the team agreed that Blind Inc. had the 
> superior and safer technique using sleep shades and Jordan would use 
> them at the higher level IA course the following year.
>
>
>
> Finally, Some Competent Braille Instruction
>
>
>
> Between seventh and eighth grade, Jordan attended "Circle of Life," a 
> science camp held at the Jernigan Institute at the NFB's national 
> headquarters in Baltimore. The NFB of Minnesota was having its 
> convention in the fall, and they asked him to speak about it.  Jordan 
> wrote a speech and read it at the convention.
>
>
>
> "It was painfully slow," Carrie remembers, "Everyone was shocked at 
> his poor reading skill."
>
>
>
> She had been asking for help from others but they didn't know how bad 
> it was until then.  Carrie brainstormed with people in the NFB.  She 
> learned about the two-handed method of reading Braille, in which the 
> left hand reads the first half of the line and then jumps to the next 
> line while the right hand finishes.  Carrie realized that Jordan had 
> never known what fluency felt like. She remembered that her older kids 
> had followed along reading print while listening to tape and tried 
> that with Jordan and Braille.
>
>
>
> Jordan was getting into advanced classes but his mother believed he 
> needed intense Braille over the summer between 8th and 9th grade.
>
>
>
> "He doesn't need it," the TBS told Carrie, "He's getting straight A's."
>
>
>
> Carrie pointed out that it was taking Jordan 4 hours to do what others 
> do in an hour.
>
>
>
> "Things got nasty," she recalls, "The Director of Special Ed said my 
> concerns were 'insulting to the staff.'"
>
>
>
> She started writing everyone including the school board and 
> superintendent.
> Only one board member called acknowledging that she had been treated 
> horribly, but insisted that they couldn't provide intense Braille 
> training.
> Minnesota State Services for the Blind, however, sent Jordan to the 
> adult training program at Blind Inc.
>
>
>
> When he started, Jordan's Braille speed was forty-five to fifty words 
> a minute.  For the next six weeks, the staff taught him the two-handed 
> technique and told him he could read more than 60 words a minute.  
> Jordan was motivated.  He was doing two hours of leisure reading 
> daily; his speed was up to seventy-five.
>
>
>
> For ninth grade, Carrie told the new TBS that they only wanted 
> materials from the school; any instruction would be at Blind Inc.  
> Between ninth and tenth grade, Jordan went to the Louisiana Center for 
> the Blind, another NFB
> facility:
>
> http://www.lcb-ruston.com/
>
>
>
> "He really needed to get away from his parents and gain more 
> independence,"
> she explains.
>
>
>
> Jordan started reading everywhere. In tenth grade, his speed was in 
> the eighties for leisure reading. For his honors courses it was in the 
> sixties.
>
>
>
> Carrie says that Jordan's high school principal and teachers have been
> wonderful.   They have high expectations, and the new Special Ed Director
> understands where they've come from.  Carrie wanted a cheerleader and 
> coach, someone to motivate Jordan and encourage him and work on 
> fundamentals.
> Every year since second grade, she had been asking for a reading 
> specialist.
> She asked again in eleventh grade, and the Special Ed Director agreed.
>
>
>
> Carrie requested that the reading specialist sit with her back to 
> Jordan and listen to him read, not knowing if he was reading print or 
> Braille.  The reading specialist determined that Jordan's print 
> reading was full of errors and hesitancy and his Braille was much 
> better with no deficit.  She said it was about practice and 
> encouragement.  She gave them ideas she used for print readers.
>
>
>
> "By that time," Carrie says with a laugh, "Nobody wanted to work with 
> me, though they all loved Jordan."
>
>
>
> But, the new Braille teacher did want to work with Carrie.  Carrie 
> didn't know why she should trust this new teacher. The new teacher 
> agreed to tell Carrie exactly what they would be working on.
>
>
>
> "She's been teaching him three times a week for two years.  If books 
> came in plastic, he'd be reading in the shower!"
>
>
>
> Now, as a senior, Jordan reads Braille at More than one hundred words 
> a minute. For leisure reading, he's up to 125.
>
>
>
> Jordan will attend the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus 
> next fall.  He is interested in constitution law, human rights and 
> political science.  He says that, if he makes it to the Supreme Court, 
> he's going to re institute wigs.
>
>
>
> "He'll be OK," his mother says with tears of relief in her voice, "125 
> is OK.  He can still increase it and he can survive in college and he 
> enjoys reading and chooses to do it.  If he had gotten Braille all 
> along, maybe he'd be at 200 words a minute.  Every time he reads, I 
> thank god I hung onto that.  His print reading speed never improved.  
> He wouldn't have made it without Braille."
>
>
> Read Donna's articles on
> Suite 101:
>
> http://suite101.com/donna-w-hill
>
> Connect with Donna on
> Twitter:
> www.twitter.com/dewhill
> LinkedIn:
> www.linkedin.com/in/dwh99
> FaceBook:
> www.facebook.com/donna.w.hill
>
> Hear clips from "The Last Straw" at:
> cdbaby.com/cd/donnahill
>
> Apple I-Tunes
> phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playListId=259244
> 374
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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