[blindkid] 2 questions for the group

Thu May 22 16:16:05 UTC 2014

Those are two excellent questions. In our experience with our daughter, a rising 6th grader (and Braille reader with no light perception, in the gifted program) , they unfortunately are not exactly "easy."

The books are a loosing battle. We've encountered situations where some schools keep pleasure reading books in a classroom for the sighted kids but only have Braille in a special shelf in the resource room (if the school has one) or in the library. 

We had limited success just bringing books from home and stocking a shelf in the library. Wherever the sighted kids access books is where we feel our daughter needs access to some Braille books as well, but the selection will ways be terrible, especially if you cannot pre-order books on an upcoming topic of interest and have them in place. 

I would explore getting (borrowed) books sent from the library of congress (in conventional embossed Braille), but an electronic source like Bookshare, (as well as library of congress now) is the best long-term solution. That offers nearly instant access to thousands and thousands of electronic books to be read on an Apex or a variety of refreshable Braille or voice synthesized solutions. 

With that said, the books are the lesser of the two problems for most Blind gifted students. The following link to an article my wife wrote about the adventure we went through getting Kendra into the gifted program may be helpful. I hope you have less of a conflict, but too often, the response from school systems is that they don't test the blind kids (especially in the lower grades) presumably because they just assume the blind kids won't be gifted. 

There are also limited sources for adapted testing materials. You can't just Braille a copy of a testing mechanism and hand it to a blind student. Many standard assessments of creativity involve observing things like the ways children draw pictures. I can assure you my daughter is quite gifted. I can also assure you that any picture she might scribble with a pencil would not begin to reveal that she is gifted.  Yet there are known cases of school systems refusing blind kids access to gifted inclusion based on these very kinds of drawing assessments. Questions with a visual bias must also be adapted or eliminated. Once a test is modified it is by definition no longer standardized until norms are produced for the modified test. But you can't create norms with too small of a number of kids taking the test. It gets really complicated. The good news is that there are blind kids in a number of gifted programs now, so it is possible to get kids in, it just may take some extra effort. 

Probably enough said, at least from my iPhone. (Tired thumbs.) feel free to contact me on or off list for more info. 

Here's that link...

https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/fr/fr32/2/fr320212.htm

Good luck!

Sent from my iPhone

> On May 22, 2014, at 10:57 AM, Erin Teply via blindkid <blindkid at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> I've got two fairly easy questions for you.  
> 
> 1.  How do you go about stocking the library shelves for your children?  How many books are available to them and/or how many blind children are in the school they attend?  My son (rising 3rd grader) is the only blind student in his school and probably has maybe 10 books available to him at a time, but wondering how to get more on the shelves.  The books that are there are ordered by his TVI and some purchased by the school.
> 
> 2.  For any of you that have had your child tested for the gifted program, can you give me some insight on how the test was performed, what is the name of the test, and any other details.
> 
> Thanks so much,
> Erin Teply
> 
> 
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