[nfb-talk] is Braille the great equalizer

[Judy Jones]

There is nothing to substitute for braille skills.  Many have probably seen 
the statistic that approximately 70% of blind people are unemployed, but 
around 90% of those employed do use braille.  It is fast, and one can use 
skills, such as skimming a document, just as a sighted person would skim 
print.  You get spelling and format input, just as sighted readers do, and 
reading speeds are comparable.  I would be very limited in my working and 
personal life if I didn't have braille.  It allows me to file documents for 
sighted colleagues, and pull documents upon request.

As a classroom teacher, I could work with AV media that had braille 
captions, read print/braille books to our daughters when they were little, 
and brailling the bottoms of bank checks help to keep track of them.

In my office, I make sure any print document goes through the Perkins 
brailler to receive a date and data description at the bottom.

Anyone who uses braille does many of the same things and more.  I can't 
stress enough the value of braille, and believe without it, literacy is in 
jeopardy.  One can be very well-spoken, highly intelligent, cultured, and 
poised, yet, if unable to actually read and write for personal use, is still 
technically illiterate.  This may sound hard-line to some, but I am so 
serious about blind people having the right to read.  Professionals and 
educators in the field of blindness, never, never, never should down-play 
the importance of braille.

Judy
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Patrick Gormley" <kk3f at msn.com>
To: <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2010 5:23 PM
Subject: [nfb-talk] is Braille the great equalizer


> As a fluent Braille reader, I can tell you as I grow older, I lean on my
> Braille skills more and more.  I will also tell you that one of the fringe
> benefits of being in the nfb as long as I have been, you learn new
> techniques that I've implemented to increase my Braille reading speed most
> notably an article published in the Braille Monitor in the 70's by Dr.
> Jernigan in which he suggested some approaches he used to increase his
> speed.  There were some articles written by Jerry Whittle on this same
> subject.  I picked up those techniques such as dividing lines and using 
> both
> hands  while reading.  I've regularly read at 260 wpm and at times  have
> read as fast as 330 but my comprehension suffers a bitso a good reading
> speed for me is about 250 to 260. The short answer is Braille is just as
> important to the blind as print is to the sighted.
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