Announcer:
Welcome to the Nation's Blind Podcast presented by the National Federation of the Blind, the transformative membership and advocacy organization of blind Americans. Live the life you want.
Melissa Riccobono:
Hello and welcome to the Nation's Blind Podcast. I am Melissa Riccobono and here I am with the one, the only, often imitated but never duplicated (Anil laughs), Anil Lewis.
Anil Lewis:
We got to have to keep on working on that itty bitty living space (Melissa laughs). Yeah, it's good to be here. And Melissa, I haven't seen you since last year. Man, how you been?
Melissa Riccobono:
I know it's been so long, Anil (Melissa and Anil laugh). How was your New Year's? Was it good?
Anil Lewis:
My New Year's was outstanding. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to 2026. I had a pretty spectacular 2025, but I'm pretty sure 2026 is going to exceed it. So calling that out there.
Melissa Riccobono:
Ooh, I love that. I actually wrote 2026 this morning in an email a couple of times and I said, I'm writing this as many times as I can so that I get it in my head that it's 2026. I don't know that I've necessarily said happy 2026 out loud a ton. So I'm going to say it here. Happy 2026 to all our listeners and welcome to the first podcast, the Nation's Blind Episode of the 2026 year.
Anil Lewis:
Hooray!
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah, hooray! And of course, January means lots of things. One thing that it means before we get started with the actual topic of this episode is that we are getting ready for Washington Seminar and we are going to be having the Great Gathering-In. What day is that, Anil? It's a little earlier than usual.
Anil Lewis:
Yeah, I'm looking forward to the Great Gathering-In, Monday, January 26 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
Melissa Riccobono:
Right.
Anil Lewis:
Washington Seminar is like a mini convention, so I'm looking forward to that. Absolutely.
Melissa Riccobono:
It's always wonderful. And not only do we talk about the legislative priorities, and that's actually why we're gathering, right? To make sure that we're on Capitol Hill to talk about the things that really impact the blind of this country to the people who should be able to help make a difference in our lives legislatively and help us make these laws and pass these laws that we feel are important. But it's also a time for us to be together and we will definitely be bringing some pre-show banter.
Hopefully both Anil and myself, it does get a little dicey once in a while because there might not be a good enough signal to do things quite the way we want to, but we will most definitely try to be with you before the Great Gathering-In starts at 5:00, probably around 4:30, but look out for more information. I'm sure that'll be coming from our fantastic communications team. But that's not the topic of this episode, right, Anil?
Anil Lewis:
It was for a brief moment, but now let's move to a different topic (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah, let's do it (laughs). And what topic would that be?
Anil Lewis:
It's something else special about January, right?
Melissa Riccobono:
Yes, very special. Yes.
Anil Lewis:
Like World Blind Day, maybe? How about that?
Melissa Riccobono:
Not World Blind Day. Try again.
Anil Lewis:
World Braille Day?
Melissa Riccobono:
Yes, World Braille Day. And why?
Anil Lewis:
Braille is blind. Blind is Braille. Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe.
Melissa Riccobono:
Why is January 4 World Braille Day, Anil Lewis?
Anil Lewis:
Oh, because it's celebrating the birthday of Mr. Louis Braille, the creator of the Braille code.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yes, and he was only 15-years-old. And we have two people to talk about Braille who are just as passionate about Braille as Anil and I are, because it's really no secret or it shouldn't be a secret. If you're wondering, I'm incredibly passionate about Braille, use Braille in my everyday life. And just am so grateful that I learned it as a child, use it in my employment. It just has opened up so many opportunities for me in all different ways. And Anil, I know you're a Braille...
Anil Lewis:
I'm just so grateful that the Federation let me know how important Braille is because as I was losing my side due to retinitis pigmentosa, I was really into technology and everybody outside of NFB was telling me, "Well, you don't really need to use Braille. It's obsolete." And had it not been for the Federation really getting me to double down and make sure that I actually learned Braille, there's so much I would've missed out on today. So absolutely. I recognize the importance of Braille. And hopefully through this podcast, we can encourage and empower everyone else with the same perspective to understand how important Braille is.
Melissa Riccobono:
Absolutely. So we have two ladies, and I know Anil usually says ladies first, but how are we going to decide today which lovely lady gets to introduce herself first?
Anil Lewis:
Well, I can't add characteristics because there's a new day around that, but I will show favoritism (Melissa laughs) because we do have one of my favorite people on this podcast. Casey is just phenomenal and I'm so glad she's able to join us. She's worked so well through PIDRIB, of course, and our relationship with LaTech, but just really her work within the Federation, partnering with the Federation, contract with the Federation to really promote Braille and her attitude around Braille and the teaching of Braille and how people learn Braille. It's just phenomenal. And I'm looking forward to some wonderful things out of Casey Robertson as well.
Melissa Riccobono:
Casey, why don't you introduce yourself? What a great introduction Anil gave you.
Casey Robertson:
Yes. Thank you, Anil, for that introduction. And this is one of my favorite topics in the world. It's Braille literacy, and...
Anil Lewis:
Do you have any other topics, Casey? I think I've ever heard you talk (laughs)...
Casey Robertson:
Well, I'm taking up crocheting, but that's going to be second to Braille. And literacy just opens the doors for everyone from... It doesn't matter who you are. If you have literacy, you can do and go any place in your mind with a book. So that's why I've always been so passionate about it. So I am Casey Robertson and you mentioned PIDRIB, and I am the lead instructor there at Louisiana Tech University teaching pre-service teachers.
Anil Lewis:
Now, Casey, I cheated because I didn't remember what the PIDRIB acronym stands for. So you may want to tell our listeners, what is PIDRIB?
Casey Robertson:
Yeah, so PIDRIB stands for Professional Development Research Institute on Blindness.
Anil Lewis:
Thank you.
Casey Robertson:
So now you see why we kind of shorten it to say PIDRIB (Anil laughs), because it's a mouthful.
Anil Lewis:
Yes.
Melissa Riccobono:
And I've never heard PIDRIB. So thank you for educating me. I did not know that that's what we called it. And thank goodness there's an acronym because I always get it all mixed up, so I'm happy to know that. And Casey, your accent suggests that you're not from around Baltimore. Where are you living? And...
Anil Lewis:
Definitely New York. Sounds definitely New York.
Melissa Riccobono:
Oh, I was thinking England (Anil and Melissa laughs) or New Zealand. Doesn't she sound like Jonathan Mosen (Melissa laughs)?
Anil Lewis:
Wow.
Melissa Riccobono:
Plug for the Acess On podcast.
Casey Robertson:
That is one of the first things people pick out is my accent. I've tried to say for years I would like to give it away, but after fifty years, it's here to stay. So I actually live in Mississippi and I work for Louisiana Tech in Louisiana, but I really work all over the country because with my partnership with the National Federation of the Blind, I'm always advocating for students no matter where they're at. So I like to joke and say I work out of my car or an airplane (Anil laughs) or wherever Braille needs to be given its utmost respect. That's where I'm at.
Melissa Riccobono:
Very nice. Off in the IEP table. How long have you been doing this kind of work?
Casey Robertson:
I've been in education twenty-five years. I've been in the blindness field for about eighteen of those years.
Melissa Riccobono:
Well, thank you so much, Casey, and we're going to hear a lot more from you. And we're going to get, first of all though, to our second lovely lady guest on the podcast. She works at the Colorado Center for the Blind, a wonderful NFB training center. Chris and I have the fact that we both... I used to work in Colorado as a summer counselor twice, and I also did exactly the same thing that Chris does. I taught Braille. So Chris, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself so people get to know you a little bit?
Chris Parsons:
Thanks, Melissa, for that introduction. I am Chris Parsons, and right now I am our communications instructor here at the Colorado Center for the Blind. And I am so grateful to have learned Braille as a child. The school district didn't want me to because I could press my face up against a CCTV, and they thought that was fine, and I was the only blind student they'd ever had. So they didn't really know. And my mom said, no, she's going to learn Braille.
And now I use it every single day in my work, in reading, and reading to my son, in all kinds of things that I'm sure we're going to talk about later. But I love being here at the center because I get to nerd out about Braille with everyone (Anil and Chris laugh). And Julie and I will stand up at the front desk, a lot of times, Julie, our director, and we'll say, "Oh, this isn't formatted quite right, or the Braille doesn't look quite right." And I love that.
Melissa Riccobono:
So you said communications. I mean, obviously Braille is communications, but is there someone else that teaches Braille itself? Or in Colorado, do you just lump all the communications types of things together? What does your job entail?
Chris Parsons:
So actually, my job is a fairly new one here at the center. So mine is a little bit... It's a lot of tech and some Braille. I work with a lot of our students who don't kind of fit in that traditional class model. Maybe they're not going to use a computer practically in their day-to-day lives for whatever reason, or a lot of them are not necessarily going to use Braille all the time, but some of them really want to learn it for labeling purposes and being able to navigate.
And then sometimes it's cool because what I love about this class is I get such a variety of students. So a couple months ago, I did get a student who was working to become a TVI, teacher for the visually impaired, and he needed some more practice on Braille than even in his regular Braille class.
So he would come to me and we would work on some even more advanced Braille than what he was able to do in his other center class. So I really do a variety of things. My class is kind of focused on very practical things, very, what can they go home that day and do and put into practice immediately. And sometimes that's tech, sometimes that's Braille, sometimes that's labeling in a variety of ways. So it's fun because it's different every day.
Melissa Riccobono:
So Chris, thank you so much for letting us know what you do. Your job sounds incredibly fascinating. And I guess we didn't quite do the same thing in Colorado, but similar things because both of us are really helping students understand, number one, the importance of Braille, even if they're not going to use it every day, but also the importance of kind of all the tools in the toolbox. And Braille is just one of those tools. And as we get talking, I'm sure we'll talk more about why we wouldn't want blind people to have all the tools that are available. But I think Anil, right now, we should maybe pause for a brief message and then come on back and talk a little bit more about Braille. How does that sound?
Anil Lewis:
Works for me.
Melissa Riccobono:
All right. You're listening to The Nation's Blind Podcast.
Message:
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Melissa Riccobono:
Well, welcome back, and let me just tell a really quick story about Braille. Chris, you moved into this so beautifully and Casey too, because unfortunately there are so many questions still about... And Anil, I mean, all of you guys have touched on this. Is Braille still something people need to learn today? Why with all the technology we have, are we still teaching this code of dots that was given to us centuries ago at this point?
Braille's bulky, all these different things. People having too much sight to use braille. I mean, Chris, you could press your face up against the CCTV. Isn't that good enough? And I was born totally blind. So it didn't matter how big the print was. I was not going to be able to see it. And so the only option for me was Braille. Luckily, I have an older sister who's blind and she used Braille.
And so from the time I was a tiny little child, she was reading to me because she's such a reader. And so I always knew that Braille was a good thing. I didn't always want to read it myself because I liked being read too, but that's a whole other story that we won't get into. The thing was that in school, it was just told to me that I was going to learn Braille.
I was going to use it. That was how I was going to get information. And eventually it was told to me, "Look, if you want the information, you're going to get it yourself. People aren't going to read to you. You have to read your own things and you have to figure out things on your own." And one way to do that is Braille. And as I got older, more and more, I realized how wonderful Braille is in all sorts of ways.
And then our daughter, Oriana was born and we found out that she was blind, but Oriana, unlike me, has usable vision. And so we had an assessment done and I actually cried, not because we were told that she should be a Braille reader, but because we were told that she was going to be a Braille reader.
And I thought, oh, thank goodness we have something that if the schools try to tell us, "Oh no, no, she can see too much. No, there's not going to be any type of reason she needs to learn Braille." I had a piece of paper that said, "No, according to this assessment, these are the ways that Braille is going to benefit her and there's no reason she can't learn some print, but she also should be being taught Braille." And I was just so, so relieved that I had that.
And so I don't know, Casey and Chris, if you just want to touch on sort of those reasons why people say Braille shouldn't be taught, kind of the myths and then how do you counteract them? What are your thoughts about Braille for both of you?
Casey Robertson:
So I think what you said is so important because so many families face that situation. If they have some sight, there's this old adage in our field that says use that sight until they lose it. And then once it's lost, then we will start Braille. So we approach Braille as a broken model, as in something has to be wrong before we give Braille to students. When we need to change that paradigm and say, "No, the child deserves Braille in the beginning and we need to prove why they don't need Braille."
And that's exactly what our laws say, but you know as well as I do, Melissa and Anil, those are just words on a paper unless you have teachers that believe that same thing. So some of the things that I hear out in the field are Braille is too slow. It will take them many years to learn Braille.
They still have a little eyesight, so they need to use that sight because if we start teaching them Braille, then they won't be able to see any longer and use the sight that they have. And you and I both know that those are simply myths. And if Braille is taught in the correct way, it's not slow and it's not boring and it can be as fun as anything that the sighted students of their peers are learning. It's all in about the way that we approach it, but we do have it in our society where we approach Braille as it's a lesser model, that it's inferior to print and that is not the way it should be.
Anil Lewis:
I think one of the points to take a quick pause here to even get people to understand why that's the case, and we may get into this, is when you're in an environment where Braille is not recognized and appreciated like in an educational environment and you don't have teachers that really know how to teach it in the correct way, it's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? You're going to end up with instructors that don't teach someone well enough.
They're not going to really evoke enough interest for that student to learn. And how do you expect them to really become competent Braille readers if they don't have the infrastructure in place to really provide them with that skillset? So what you're saying is absolutely happening in the industry and that's why we are working as an organization to make sure that teachers are more qualified and that we can create opportunities like this to educate the public around these myths.
Melissa Riccobono:
Definitely.
Anil Lewis:
So Chris, when I was a student at the Louisiana Center, that was a pivotal point for me because although I was able to learn Braille because of the encouragement of the Federation, I should learn Braille as I was losing vision due to retinitis pigmentosa, society made me feel like the thirty-three words per minute was sufficient.
And that was as an adult learner that that's where I was going to peak out. So as you're working with adults at the Colorado Center for the Blind, do you have individuals that also come in with kind of those low expectations or the misconceptions that as adults they can't or will be unable to read Braille?
Chris Parsons:
Oh, absolutely. I'll say I've done a variety of jobs at the center over the past decade or so, and one of them was working with our seniors and I would have so many seniors and they'd come in and say, we would tell them about all the things that we could help them with, cane travel and home management and tech and Braille.
And the first one that would always go would be the Braille. Oh, there's no way I could ever do that. And this is not my story and I wish it was, but it's legendary here at CCB. We had a senior who was at least 100 (Anil laughs), I'm going to get the age wrong, but she was at least 100 and she said, "I'm going to learn Braille." And she learned Braille.
Anil Lewis:
Wow.
Chris Parsons:
So none of them, none of my seniors could make that excuse ( Chris and Anil laugh) that they were too old to learn Braille.
Anil Lewis:
Very nice.
Melissa Riccobono:
I love that, and it's so frustrating because President Riccobono tells a story where when he was in high school, Braille was never even offered to him. Even though he was using a monocular, which is supposed to be used for distance viewing, he was using a monocular in fifth grade to read his textbooks. And nobody looked at him and said, "You know what? There's a better way." And he could not even read his own writing. I mean, that's horrible. Think about that. He would take notes and could not read what he wrote. And he eventually, when he was a senior in high school, was told, "Well, we could teach you Braille if you want to learn it. " And he always says, "I didn't know why I would want to. "
Anil Lewis:
Yeah, I had a study hall. I don't want to give up my study (laughs).
Melissa Riccobono:
Right! Hw had two study halls, he said. I worked hard for those two study halls (laughs). And why would I want to learn it? And so Chris, what do you tell your students? I love Braille because I can sit down and read a novel. You talked about reading to your son. That is so important as well. I miss the days that my kids wanted me to read to them. I usually don't read to them anymore because they're all older, but I loved reading to them.
Casey, you talk about using Braille for education and that once you have literacy, you have so many things. But again, Braille is a tool in the toolbox and some people for whatever reason might not want to or be able to, maybe they have diabetes or other types of neuropathy in their fingers or arthritis or especially if you're talking about older people, but what are the reasons why you might want to learn Braille?
And let's talk a little bit too. There is a lot of technology. So how can Braille sort of go hand in hand with the technology that we have and how can people sort of use it either with technology or use it to make things even more efficiently than they might be if they're just focusing on and depending on technology only?
Casey Robertson:
I think of it as if I read a book and I find something that's very interesting in it, I want to write that down. I want to come back to it later and remind myself of what was so powerful about that book. And when we have audio only, we don't have that input method that Braille allows us to have. And when we compare Braille with technology, it doesn't eliminate the need for Braille, it just opens up all the possibilities of how we can learn Braille.
I don't know if you're familiar with the Braille Doodle or not. It's a new tool that has little hard pens in it and it allows students to draw and it's kind of, they're magnetic. So as the pen moves across the pens, they raise up. Well, that's a simple form of technology, but I just used that a few weeks ago to work with a child that has autism, that was being resistant to touching the Braille.
But when we would do the dots on the Braille Doodle, he loved it. So to me, it's just another way that we can add technology to Braille and open up the ways of true literacy of having a means of output and input.
Anil Lewis:
So Chris, in your role as a communications instructor, I'm sure that you're trying to find that balance of teaching your students how to read Braille and also teaching them how to use technology. Do you have any strategies that you would like to share around how you can fold them both into that learning experience?
Chris Parsons:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I mean, I am a techie, right? I love all the techie stuff, but when I need a list or I need a schedule, because of the nature of the class I teach, I have different students every day. And if I listen to that with JAWS or NVDA on my computer, my brain just doesn't compute that all the time. But if I read it in Braille, it's right there. It's just right there at my fingertips.
So what I will tell my students a lot of times, and I think this is really important, is what we've been talking about, about Braille being a tool in the toolbox, right? I tell a lot of my seniors and I tell now a lot of my communication students, right? You may not be reading a novel, although if that's what you want to do and you're committed to learning Braille and you practice, right? But as you pointed out, a lot of people have diabetes and neuropathy and other things. So what I tell people is if you can learn, well, I always say for labeling, elevators and bathroom signs (Chris and Anil laugh).
Anil Lewis:
The essentials.
Chris Parsons:
If you could get those three essentials, absolutely, then you are using Braille in a really practical way that is meaningful to you and that gives you more independence.
Anil Lewis:
Yeah, and I encourage people not to let the neuropathy be the deterrent because I taught Braille for a short period of time and I had individuals that had neuropathy in their fingers, but with practice, they were able to read Braille. It was so funny, I had one consumer who said they weren't able to. I convinced them to at least start trying with jumbo Braille and they got pretty proficient with jumbo Braille. And one day I snuck in just regular sized Braille in a lesson and voila, look who's reading regular sized Braille, Ms. neuropathy.
So don't let the labels be the deterrent on your education. I think that's important. Another deterrent that I also saw, and Casey, I think what you're doing around the natural order of contraction is really meaning that as well. When I started learning Braille, I was already literate, right? I could read print, so I understood words and syntax and grammar, etc, but I was still learning Braille like I had to learn the Braille A, the Braille B, the Braille C through Braille Z. And then we introduced some contractions with no real order. So can you talk to our listeners about the strategy of the natural order of contractions as an instructional methodology?
Casey Robertson:
Absolutely, and now when we're still sitting here about four hours from now, you're going to say, "Boy, I opened up that can of worms with her to talk about (Anil laughs)." No, the natural order of contraction, I like to say that it's not rocket science, but it is something that had not been happening in our field. We teach with the natural order of contractions, it's just what the words say.
You teach in the natural order of reading. You base your lessons off of what science has already proven works in reading classes. And by doing this, we don't teach Braille in isolated segments. We don't teach all of the dot five words and then all of the short form words because when we do that, students or consumers have to learn seventy-five short form words before they're able to read. Well, our end goal is to be readers.
It's not to know the code. Somewhere over the years, we lost our end goal. Our goal is to become literate, to learn to read. And teachers for many years now have put the goal as to know the code. So as long as they taught it in isolation, they felt like they were teaching the code, therefore they were doing their job.
And then when readers were not progressing and their words per minute were not increasing and things like that, they said, "Oh, it's because Braille is hard," and it's not. It's because they were instructing them in a way that goes against everything that research tells us about the natural order of literacy.
Anil Lewis:
And this is so real to me because as I was learning Braille, I got extremely frustrated trying to remember all of the contractions in the short word forms and that kind of thing in the order that it was taught. But once I did acquire that knowledge and was able to start reading and enjoy the reading, that's really when my interest and ability to read Braille proficiently increased. So if you can do that simultaneously, if you can create a way for an individual to learn Braille and at the same time enjoy the experience of reading something, that's just a win-win. Yeah.
Melissa Riccobono:
Well, and that's how it should be. I mean, I remember during COVID, I got to experience how my kids were being taught Braille, particularly Elizabeth, because she was the youngest, and so she was still working on some of the Braille code. And I remember hearing her teacher blind students at the time, a lovely, very well-meaning woman, having her say, "Well, you're going to practice these things by writing." And it was this very ridiculously complex long sentence that had all of these contractions in it.
I mean, basically she was just taking it from a book that she as a teacher or as a transcriber would look at and use when she was having questions about how things should be in Braille, but this was not at all interesting to Elizabeth who was a third grader. And I mean, yeah, I guess she could write that sentence, but once that session was over, I don't think she really maintained a lot.
It wasn't until we really sat down, my husband and I, and her grandma and our friend Karen and other people, my sister, and sat down with both girls and just had dedicated reading time every day, thirty minutes a day, that they really got proficient at Braille and particularly Elizabeth. Oriana has some other reading disabilities that we didn't know about at the time, and so she kind of struggled a little bit more, but Elizabeth really got excited about the code and could read and could read well and could read with expression and enjoyed the books that she was reading. And that's exactly what it needs to be like.
And Casey, I know you're going to have something to say about this, but I hear all the time in IEP meetings, "Oh, this child doesn't know enough Braille. We can't put it in the classroom yet because they just don't know enough Braille." And I just shake my head every time and I always say, "So that means that pre-k kids and kindergarten kids, we're not going to put Braille or print in their classrooms because they just don't know enough print to have print." "Well, no, that's not what we're saying."
Well, then why on earth is that the expectation for Braille, that you have to be proficient to a certain extent even to get access to it in the natural order of your day? It just boggles my mind. So I don't know, Casey, if you have other things to say or Chris or Anil, but that's always been my soapbox.
Speaker: This has been part one of our "Say Yes to Braille" episode of the Nation's Blind Podcast. Stay tuned for part two to hear more of the importance of Braille, and to play our fun Braille trivia.
Announcer:
We'd love your feedback. Email [email protected] or call 410-659-9314, extension 2444.