[nabs-l] Taking Action to Improve Braille Literacy

[Beth]

I love all your comments, Arielle.  I see too many blind people 
sitting on their butts and collecting welfare bnefits, not 
reading Braille early enough, that it breaks my heart.  We do 
know that 70% of the blind are sitting in their homes, 
unemployed.  I happen to be one of only 10%, and so are you, my 
friends at CCB, a friend in California, no, two friends from 
California, three friends from California actually.  Sorry for 
the repetitiveness here, but there are quite a few people I know 
who are Braille users and they are proficient.  There are lots of 
Braille people on this list I'm sure who actually attest to the 
functionality they experience with it.  Like, for example, there 
are people I went to CCB with who can attest to it being harder 
at first, but when you learn Braille, it is a real life saver.  
The National Braille Bill is simply not enough as you point out.  
I observed the same things as you did with aids and therapists.  
There are, of course, blind people with physical secondary or 
mental secondary disabilities/illnesses that affect their ability 
to concentrate, walk, read, etc.  For instance, I have a mental 
illness that may affect my ability to cross streets safely and 
didn't realize the propensity I had to have nervous attacks--if I 
may use such wording to describe the feeling like a nervous wreck 
at certain turn island corners and intersections--and lose 
concentration.  My biggest concerns at that point are getting 
across the street without being beeped at or hit by a car.  We at 
CCB had suffered a loss before and I want to avoid the loss of 
life associated with being hit by a car.  Thankfully, the mental 
illness does not affect my ability to read.  Reading is actually 
an escape for me.  I learned that imagery in the books I read is 
a good guided imagery exercise in what we call improving the 
moment when we are under stress.  I usually pick out a fantasy 
novel for that purpose because such things are loaded with 
imagery.  Fiction does that to you.  And, thankfully, Braille 
saves the day!
	We have to strike a balance between giving the extra 
services to blind children, or perhaps strike a delicate 
balance when the child has a secondary disability like my 
friend Jason, who has a heart defect and Fetal Alcohol 
Syndrome.  That can turn things around to the worst possible 
scenario.  But he is resilient.  How many other blind 
children are that wagy though?  Is Hank Miller that way?  
There aren't always kids who are resilient with themselves 
and their disability(s).  I'm sure that at least now that 
Hank's getting the Braille instruction he needs to get, 
there won't be any complaints and he can catch up.  25 years 
old and still in high school is a bit of an exaggeration on 
someone's part.  Thankfully, I didn't need to have too many 
services when I was little, but because my mother didn't 
play with me very often--she worked and then had to get 
ready to get married, etc., then she spent her day paying 
more attention to the TV or work and other things--I didn't 
get a good bit of physical play I had to have as a young 
child.  I had to go to a special early learning program and 
learn how to play.  Weird.
Not to make this message any longer than it has to be, but I 
believe that Braille literacy indeed should come before anything 
else, but when others have different disabilities, they have 
problems walking, etc., we have to strike a balance.
Beth
 ----- Original Message -----
From: Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com
To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Tue, 8 May 2012 22:09:44 -0600
Subject: [nabs-l] Taking Action to Improve Braille Literacy

Hi all,
It is obvious to all of us that we need to take action to ensure 
that
the current and future generations of blind children will get the
Braille instruction they are entitled to and be held to the same
reading and writing standards as the sighted. However, I fear the
solution is much more complicated than just passing a national 
Braille
bill. While I am not terribly familiar with Braille legislation, 
I
have definitely seen cases where even in states with laws on 
their
books mandating Braille instruction, kids are falling through the
cracks and not getting it. I know Arizona has adopted a Braille 
bill
mandating that Braille is the "presumed reading medium" for all 
blind
children unless the entire IEP team (including the child's 
parents)
determines that the child can read and write optimally with 
print. But
even in Arizona and other states with similar laws, some kids are 
not
getting Braille. There are many ways teachers or school districts 
can
get around the legal mandates. For example they can simply delay
holding an IEP meeting for a child or delay giving tests to 
determine
whether or not the child is a functional print reader. They can 
agree
to provide Braille but then only give a child 30 minutes per week 
of
instruction because that's all the time the TVI has to work with 
each
student. I've even heard of one case where a TVI insisted a 
particular
child wasn't really legally blind even though this was clearly 
spelled
out by the child's eye specialists. Passing a national Braille 
bill is
an important step toward making change, but it won't be a viable
solution by itself unless everyone involved actually wants to 
obey the
laws rather than finding loopholes around them, and when schools 
have
the resources to provide the amount and quality of Braille 
instruction
they are required to provide.
There are several serious problems with the system for educating 
blind
children that need to be addressed in different ways. The 
educational
system has long been dominated by professionals who are trained 
to
view blindness as a deficit. Because of this overarching 
philosophy,
they are not naturally inclined to aim toward giving blind and 
sighted
students the same standard of education. I think there has always 
been
too much of a focus in the blindness field about what blind 
people
cannot do or what we do differently, rather than what we can do 
and
what we share in common with sighted students. There is a 
tendency to
be "reactive" and respond to deficits after they occur rather 
than
being "proactive" and preventing kids from getting behind in the 
first
place.
There are also lots of very negative attitudes about Braille 
floating
around in the minds of some blindness professionals. Braille is 
slow;
Braille is hard to learn; Braille sets a blind child apart from
others; Braille is only for totally blind people, who are 
maximally
handicapped by their condition; Braille is bulky and hard to 
produce;
Braille is expensive; Braille is antiquated and obsolete; etc. 
etc.
With these kinds of attitudes, teachers aren't motivated to teach
Braille, and are more inclined to delay or avoid teaching Braille
whenever possible.
I have wondered whether much of the negativity toward Braille 
comes
from sighted teachers' own difficulty in learning Braille 
themselves
during training. For a sighted adult learning Braille is indeed
difficult at first, and building fluency takes time and 
dedication.
Working from their own experiences, sighted teachers who 
struggled to
learn Braille may believe that Braille is equally grueling and
overwhelming for their young students--but of course, it's not 
because
learning to read at five is much different than learning to read 
at
twenty-five. Even if this error of judgment is only unconscious, 
it
can still affect their attitudes toward Braille and their 
motivation
to teach it. This issue might be worse when teachers only spend a 
few
months learning Braille and so they don't experience the 
successful
improvement that comes from using Braille for years.
So, I think that legislation is only part of the solution. We 
also
need to examine the psychology of the people involved in the 
system
and figure out how to get the key players more excited about 
Braille.
We want them to truly believe that blind children can achieve 
full
competitive literacy with Braille instead of forcing them to 
provide
literacy instruction that they don't really believe in. I think 
what
the NFB is doing with the TeachBlindStudents and Teacher of 
Tomorrow
programs is right on. We also just need to get more Braille 
teachers
into the field who have had good experiences with Braille 
themselves
and who truly believe in blind people. And, of course, the 
educational
system for blind kids is just not well-funded and there aren't 
enough
TVI's to go around. So even the good teachers are being spread 
thin
with huge caseloads and simply don't have the time to provide 
daily
instruction to every one of their students. We need to figure out 
how
to reorganize the system so that the teachers' time is spent as
efficiently as possible without skimping on important lessons. 
For
example, it seems like some of the special services given to 
blind
kids are not always necessary and not always as important as 
Braille.
I may be opening a whole other can of worms here, but it seems 
like
almost every blind student these days (at least in elementary 
school)
has a one-on-one aide who acts as the student's "eyes". Do all of 
us
really need that kind of help? Do all blind preschoolers need
occupational therapy, physical therapy etc.? what would happen if 
all
the money spent on the aides and therapists was instead spent to 
hire
more Braille teachers so that kindergartners received daily 
Braille
instruction? What would happen if children who were proficient in
Braille could read ahead in their books and then not be so 
dependent
on an aide to read the blackboard because they could follow along 
in
Braille? Wouldn't it make more sense to give a child intensive
one-on-one time with a TVI for a few years so they won't need 
very
much extra support in the future? I may be naive, but I would 
think
that would not only save the school districts some money in the 
end,
but also bring out a generation of blind students who are
self-sufficient and can become taxpaying adults much more easily.
These are just my thoughts and observations about how we can help 
make
change. I welcome any other thoughts or comments.
Best,
Arielle

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