A fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine explains that knowlege about and usage of Braille by visually impaired people is declining as they shift to electronic means of acquiring information.
The trend is real and significant; nowadays fewer than 1 in 10 blind children learn Braille. Part of the problem is that Braille is intrinsically an inconvenient medium:
The replacements for Braille are audiobooks, computer text-to-speech, and other auditory technologies. The upside for the visually impaired is a much more rapid acquisition of knowledge. The potential downside is a flawed understanding of language itself.
The question extends well beyond obvious things like spelling words or distinguishing homonyms to the broader concept that the acquisition of the ability to read actually shapes the brain itself, and that people from literate societies actually think differently from members of oral societies.
Link. Image credit Tom Schierlitz.
The trend is real and significant; nowadays fewer than 1 in 10 blind children learn Braille. Part of the problem is that Braille is intrinsically an inconvenient medium:
Braille books are expensive and cumbersome, requiring reams of thick, oversize paper. The National Braille Press, an 83-year-old publishing house in Boston, printed the Harry Potter series on its Heidelberg cylinder; the final product was 56 volumes, each nearly a foot tall.
The replacements for Braille are audiobooks, computer text-to-speech, and other auditory technologies. The upside for the visually impaired is a much more rapid acquisition of knowledge. The potential downside is a flawed understanding of language itself.
“What we’re finding are students who are very smart, very verbally able — and illiterate,” Jim Marks, a board member for the past five years of the Association on Higher Education and Disability, told me. "Now their writing is phonetic and butchered. They never got to learn the beauty and shape and structure of language.”
Horror stories circulating around the convention featured children who don’t know what a paragraph is or why we capitalize letters or that “happily ever after” is made up of three separate words.
The question extends well beyond obvious things like spelling words or distinguishing homonyms to the broader concept that the acquisition of the ability to read actually shapes the brain itself, and that people from literate societies actually think differently from members of oral societies.
Link. Image credit Tom Schierlitz.
It appears the blind have now achieved parity with the rest of the population.
If they done use paragraphs what is the big deal in them not learning about them, Same with how to spell. Writing is clearly not a good medium for the blind. Why not be an oral society. What next are we going to teach them about art so they can uselessly know about colour and composition and primary and secondary colours? In the scheme of knowledge a person should acquire the useful things should come first and clearly learning our sighted version language is not one of them.
But the person who did not know happily ever after is not one word was clearly not listening well since they are spoken with separate meaning often.
I don't think the issue is that complicated. I think there is a lot of discussing "what if's" to try and make it more complicated.
I figured that brain function in visual areas would be different for people who can't see. Why try and make them function more like sighted people. I think working on their strengths in oral communication is a better way to go. I can see why braille developed being in a time without the voice technology we have today but seeing as we have it now braille is like the morse code. Why bother when you can say it or hear the words.
I still don't see why it is relevant today to teach them a written style of language (unless of course they want to learn) when oral works just as well.
There are cameras that will read text for the blind like a menu. When was the last time you went to a restaurant that had a braille menu anyway? No not everything comes in an audio form but there are tools to translate print into words. I understand that technology is not available to everyone everywhere but things like that will be one day. So until then braille has it usefulness but I don't think it is something that is necessary or useful in the next 100 years.
I understand that making people who function differently conform into a sighted society will only go so far. It makes more sense to focus on their strengths in oral communication.
Your argument--essentially, "so what"--is just kind of short-sighted, and rests on the notion that written language just isn't all that.
But it's a lot more complicated than that. Written language is a whole 'nother dimension of communication, and if you can't participate in that dimension, you aren't able to connect in all the ways you might want to, or others might want you to. Not everything will be transmitted fully in oral modes. People don't usually "say books" describing their theories or life experiences. They don't "say" new sonnets they've been working out. There's a vast arena of life experience unavailable to people that don't get proficient with the written word.
And frankly, I had to read your first post a couple times before I understood where you were coming from because of the awol punctuation and jammed thoughts. It matters. We want to be understood and to understand others. Written language is incredibly powerful, and we should all have access to that or we are limited profoundly in so many ways.
I do take your point that blind people shouldn't be forced to be exactly like sighted people and that their unique ways of apprehending and communicating with the world should be preserved, but not, I don't believe, at the expense of the capacity to use the written word. It's too important.
In fact, blind people are employed as NASA engineers, NYC ADA's, mechanics, chemists and in a wide range of professions. Your ignorance about the usefulness of Braille fails to take into account that only 30% of working-age blind Americans are employed. That's right 70% are unemployed. Of the few who work, over 80% read Braille.
You seem to think the the written word is the sole property of the sighted. Why is that? Do you suppose that there are no blind writers or journalists, or that those who wish to write rely on hiring sighted people to take their choppy writing and translate it into meaningful prose?
The bigggest problems in the Braille literacy controversy are:
1. Blindness is seen as a failure, so teaching Braille to someone who can read -- even though they suffer headaches and can't keep up anyway -- is deemed more preferable than stooping to Braille. Listening to audio books makes a person look less blind than reading Braille.
2. Society is, as one commenter infers, sinking into illiteracy. Sorry, but I won't stand by and let that happen without a fight. One disadvantage of audio books is that it is difficult to make adjustments in the speed. In print and Braille, you pause to wonder about something as long as you like, and you haven't lost your place.
3. The new technologies which have removed the problems of bulk and accessibility addressed in the article, are not made available to most blind people. Imagine a little digital device which shows one line of print at a time and then refreshes itself at the click of a button to reveal the next line. The Braille equivalent is already out there, manufactured by several companies. Refreshable Braille has brought a revolution in availability of Braille books, magazines and other documents.
4. Braille teachers cost more than free talking book machines and low cost access to other audio books. Public school officials with about as much understanding of the capabilities of blind people as you seem to possess and as little regard for the benefits of a literate society are the ones making the decisions not to teach Braille. Parents, who think the schools know best go along with it.
I wrote an in depth series on the Braille literacy crisis for American Chronicle in 2009 in which I interviewed parents who had epic struggles to get their kids Braille education and blind adults who explain what Braille has enabled them to accomplish as well as others who share the pain and failure of having been denied Braille literacy. I taught myself Braille after I graduated from college and have been trying to make up the deficit ever since. I wrote an article for Suite 101 in response to the NY Times article.
Braille Literacy Crisis – Fact or Fiction
Jan 16, 2010
http://educationalissues.suite101.com/article.cfm/2009_in_review_progress_for_the_blind
Not blind? Don't know anyone who is? The CDC predicts exploding diabetes-related blindness. Will declining Braille literacy affect taxpayers? Or, is Braille obsolete?
It's great that there are so many ways for the blind to communicate and interface, but illiteracy will still, and always, limit you in ways you can't anticipate.
That said, one of my favourite podcasts is the grammar girl podcast. I like to think I have a fairly good grasp of written English as it is, but I still enjoy thinking about, and reinforcing my understanding of language.
Donna
Sorry you find my comment tasteless about listening better. I was not implying blind are better.(yes that was snark because your comments to me were assuming I am a very uneducated person). Simply that if you were paying attention to the language you would have heard those words and recognized they were separate. Like when kids in kindergarten think "LMNOP" is all one letter.
Technology is always improving and because of that getting cheaper. I have never said lets just get rid of braille now and go on a book burning party. I think in the future a way of communication that is used by few and in many ways inconvenient will eventually phase itself out because it will be no longer relevant to our technology focused society.
I don't think the written word is for the sighted only but it works better for them.
One thing the article and Donna touched on was the literacy and employment rate. I think those are related. When one thinks of a blind persons abilities braille does come to mind. Does that percentage include blind people that have/had birth defects or other problems that would keep them out of the workforce? Don't shoot me for saying it because the article mentioned more preemie babies surviving and having blindness being on a list of problems that could make them potentially illegitimate anyway.
Next. That is a shame they withheld education for you when you wanted to learn braille that is not right.
You can pause a book on tape to ponder the words so it will stop and start when you hit the button.
Teachers being expensive would be one more reason not to have braille.
I also don't suppose there are no blind writers. (man you have had a lot of judgment on you and are putting it on me) You don't have to have someone translate your words there are already computer programs for that and they are not over the top expensive.
Peace out i am done!
I just don't understand people like zeezaxa who think that blind/low vision people are just fine being illiterate. We have audio technology for sighted kids, too. It would be much cheaper and easier for schools to not bother teaching anyone to read - just be a listening society. Can anyone say "Baaaa?"
Hmmm, hope the electricity doesn't go out!