More About Braille

More About Braille

Future Reflections April/May/June 1985, Vol. 4 No. 2
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MORE ABOUT BRAILLE
(Note: The following articles are reprinted
from the November 1984 Slate
and Style, the Newsletter of the National
Federation of the Blind Writers Division.)
BRAILLE
THE FUNDAMENTAL SKILL
FOR BLIND WRITERS
by Catherine Horn Randall
Today's technological revolution is
providing blind people with alternate
aids only dreamed of less than ten years
ago. Wonderful as word processors and
speech synthesizers are, they should not
be allowed to eclipse Braille. These
and other alternate aids serve as tools
to work with language. Braille is our
unique written language, and language
is the alpha and omega of our craft.
Braille literacy is the most fundamental
skill a blind writer can develop.
The blind writer's most elementary
problem is the ability to communicate
with himself. I seem to have to do this
on paper. I can use a tape recorder for
many things, but not for writing. I
have tried dictating many times, but it
does not work for me.
Using Braille, I can read and reread,
write and rewrite my work. Most writers
agree that rewriting is essential to a
good product. Braille is the blind writer's
tactile ticket to independence.
Long time Braille users probably think
I have overstated the obvious, but thousands
of partially blind students do not
learn Braille in school because they
have enough sight to read print. This
happened to me thirty years ago and it
still happens to children today. This
philosophy is an educational outrage.
It has done a terrible disservice to
blind people who should have learned
Braille as well as print in school.
I learned Braille five years ago as an
adult, after losing my remaining functional
vision. It is never too late to
learn Braille.
IS BRAILLE WORTH IT
by Nancy Scott
In the realm of communication for
blind people, the current emphasis is on
the spoken word: Talking Books, Cassettes,
Radio Reading Services, computers
with speech output. This ^emphasis
has one major drawback: It promotes the
attitude that Braille no longer fills an
important role for blind people. As a
writer, and Braille user, I would like
to dispel this notion.
Braille has provided benefits to me
which I could not derive from verbal
sources. It is the only method which
gives me the exact information to be
found in print sources. Braille allows
for the physical act of reading and
writing, which, for me, at least, is
different than listening to or speaking
into a tape recorder. I have real interaction
with the words. I can read
passages at random and in any order. I
determine emphasis on particular words
as I, or the writer, wish (the difference
between, "I like you," and "I like you!"). Editing is easier in Braille. Since the punctuation and paragraphing
are there for me to read, no questions
arise about them, as they often do in
verbal formats, and no special notation
need be made in explanation.
Reference materials are easier for me
to handle in Braille. Have you ever
read a disc magazine, and wanted to
write to someone, only to find you don't
know how to spell the street name or the
name of the person? Or have you perhaps
listened to a poem and wondered how the
lines were set forth and what punctuation
was used? Are you often left wondering
how words are spelled? These
questions can't arise when you use
Braille. All words are spelled, and all
format and punctuation at your fingertips.
Certain
other types of information,
such as phone number and address files
or recipes, are especially handy to have
in Braille. There are also simple identification
tasks: You can label almost
anything in Braille (cans, pills, appliances,
tapes, records, file folders,
just to name a few). This use of
Braille alone has kept my household from
approaching total chaos.
If you still aren't convinced that
Braille has a place in your life, let's
talk technology. There are many computers
and adaptive aids that can make
Braille more accessible, less expensive,
and in the case of paperless Braille,
very easy to store. This technology has
made large advances in just a few years,
and is bound to be even more innovative
in the future.
Braille provides the same immediacy of
information for the blind that print
provides for the sighted, whether we are
talking about books, or computer readouts.
In short, Braille is the only way
to gain the exact information in essentially
the same way as a print user
gains it. It is the only system that
provides a physical interaction with the
written word, and allows for instant
perception of format and letter by letter
content. Braille is the closest you
can get to the literal literacy that can
be achieved with print, and this literacy--or
the lack of it--will leave its
mark in every area of your life.
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