[blindkid] Those producing braille who don't even read braille

[Carol Castellano]

Hi Valerie,

Welcome to the list!

I have just read your comments on the braille being produced by the 
Alternative Media Centers.  We are really witnessing history in the 
making.  It wasn't that long ago that there was virtually no such 
thing as braille at the college level.  With the advent of the ADA 
and the slow but steady movement toward college disability services, 
textbooks in alternative formats are now a reality.  The system is 
relatively new and still evolving.

In my view, this has been a mixed blessing.  As you probably know, 
blind people have been going to college since time immemorial, using 
human readers for the most part to get their reading done.  Now the 
disability services offices in many universities are providing books 
in alt format, but this has come at a price.

Where blind students used to have direct access to their professors 
to make their own arrangements for test-taking, etc., now in order to 
receive any accommodations at all, they must go through the 
disability services office.  Where blind students used to make their 
own decisions about how they were going to read a particular 
textbook, now many are forced to accept what the disability office says.

My feeling is that through these offices, the dependence fostered 
through all the accommodations in the IEP process is being continued 
into and through the college years.  Our students, instead of 
learning to make their own decisions and becoming independent during 
these crucial four years, are being infantalized.  Now, when they 
enter the world of work, they may have had no experience at all in 
creating their own solutions for the challenges they will inevitably 
have.  I fear for them.

So I guess the bottom line is that we need to put the idea of 
accommodations into perspective.  We are always walking a line.  We 
must insist on equal access and first class citizenship for blind 
people, but at the same time we do not want the public to develop the 
view that so many things in the world must be changed in order for 
blind people to function.  It's tricky.

Carol



At 08:10 PM 12/4/2009, you wrote:
>Hello everyone!
>
>
>
>I am SOOOO glad to find this list! I have a lot of reading to catch up on in
>the archives list. I know there is a listserve  for college students and my
>daughter is on it (Freshman). I was wonder from parents if they have seen a
>trend of those producing the textbooks, syllabus, tests etc. in Braille at
>the college level (other than community college), who can't even read a page
>number? It seems to be acceptable practice. I am wondering if the students
>are preferring to use the doc files for Jaws and braillenotes because the
>Braille being produced is not effective. It seems to me a certified Braille
>transcriber should be on staff at these "Alternative Media Centers". More
>ideally if publishers had a transcribing unit that put out the Braille
>electronic file of the textbooks at the same time as the print! J
>
>
>
>Thanks
>
>  Valerie
>
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