[PHOTO/CAPTION: Jagdish Chander]

[PHOTO/CAPTION: Jagdish Chander]

Braille

Monitor

October

2004

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Reflection

on a Visit to LCB

and Louisiana Tech University's PDRIB

by

Jagdish Chander

Jagdish

Chander

From the Editor: Jagdish

Chander is a doctoral student in disability studies at Syracuse University.

He has also taught at the University of Delhi and is working to establish a

school in India at which students with and without disabilities learn together.

This is what he says about his experience in Ruston, Louisiana:

I arrived in Ruston, Louisiana,

on the evening of July 21, 2003, and was received by Dr. Ronald Ferguson, my

host and advisor, who had facilitated my visit. I started my first day with

a tour of the Louisiana Center for the Blind (LCB) and an introduction to some

key people working in the center. I had lunch and dinner with a visitor from

Utah there to learn about the operation of the center. The first morning I was

picked up by Jim Omvig, the author of Freedom for the Blind: The Secret Is

Empowerment, who introduced me to Matt Lyles, a master's student from Yale,

who was working in Ruston for the summer.

Matt

spent the whole day giving me a tour, and I discovered a lot about the center

and collected taped literature, including Mr. Omvig's book. I finished reading

the book in two days during breaks in completing several graduate school writing

assignments. It was such a light and interesting read that I turned to it for

pleasure. However, despite being written with simplicity and clarity, the book

was practically a bible on rehabilitation of the blind. Having read the book

and gotten to know the author, I concluded that this book should be translated

into various languages with minor adaptations to take account of culturally

relevant values and omitting some discussions specific to the United States.

So

why did I want to spend almost a month in Ruston, Louisiana, during the hot

and muggy months of July and August? I attended my first convention of the National

Federation of the Blind in July of 2002 in Louisville, Kentucky. The convention

was an amazing experience. I had never attended such a large assembly of blind

people, almost three thousand. What was most astonishing was that the activities

were conducted by blind people themselves. Never in my life had I seen blind

people functioning so independently.

Because

of this convention experience, I became interested in learning more about the

NFB and its philosophy. That July I vacationed in Colorado, where I visited

the Colorado Center for the Blind (CCB) in Littleton, near Denver. That's when

I started learning about the NFB training centers for the blind. The CCB, LCB,

and BLIND, Incorporated, are the three privately operated training centers modeled

on the Iowa Commission for the Blind, which was designed and developed by the

late president of the NFB, Dr. Kenneth Jernigan. I could not have found a better

place than one of these three centers to interact with and learn about blind

people in the United States.

In addition to the LCB,

the other major attraction in Ruston is the Professional Development and Research

Institute on Blindness (PDRIB, referred to familiarly as the Institute) affiliated

with Louisiana Tech University. From the phrase "research institute on

blindness," one might assume this was a facility attempting to cure blindness

or perhaps a rehabilitation studies center. Being a graduate student of disability

studies—a discipline that looks at blindness or any other mental or physical

disability as a social construction—I found the Institute on Blindness

and the LCB the best place I have observed to conduct research on the sociological,

political, and historical aspects of blindness in the context of the NFB's radical,

alternative philosophy of blindness.

Recognizing

the importance of the LCB and the Institute on Blindness, I spent four weeks

in Ruston, primarily to achieve two objectives: (1) to observe closely the activities

of LCB and (2) to identify the relevant literature on civil rights of the organized

blind movement in the United States. The former goal was to enrich my personal

knowledge about LCB and the experiences of blind Americans, while the second

allowed me to identify and collect literature to add to the literary treasure

of the Disability History Museum project aimed at developing lesson plans to

teach the history of disability at the high school level in the United States.

My school, Syracuse University, is involved in developing lesson plans for this

project, and I happened to be one of the graduate students working on the project.

With the guidance and support of Dr. Ron Ferguson and his wife Jan, I was able

to identify immensely valuable literature on this topic. This collection includes

little-known, unpublished literature highlighting the contribution to the blind

civil rights movement of Dr. Newel Perry, the mentor of NFB founder Dr. Jacobus

tenBroek. In addition to enhancing the Disability History Museum project, I

intended to use this literature to highlight the contribution of the blind civil

rights movement prior to the growth of the broader disability rights movement

begun in the late 1960's and early 1970's. By the end of my trip I had read

and identified immensely rich literature on the civil rights movement of the

blind in the U.S.

Some

of the ideas developed by early NFB leaders like Dr. Perry and Dr. tenBroek

were far advanced, even radical, in the pre-civil-rights era in the U.S. Dr.

tenBroek described three key concepts in his 1948 NFB banquet address: equality,

opportunity, and security. These ideas were radical concepts during this period.

Similarly Dr. Jernigan's frequently quoted 1963 speech, "Blindness: Handicap

or Characteristic?" is an important philosophical and analytical piece

challenging the traditional meaning of blindness as defined through the negative

attitudes of the public. The approach to the problems of blindness outlined

in this historic 1963 lecture is embraced today by scholars of disability studies

who adhere to the social model of disability, under which disability is understood

primarily as a social construction along the lines of gender and race.

What

did I learn during my visit to LCB and the Institute on Blindness? Before visiting

Ruston, I did not understand many NFB rehabilitation concepts. I regarded some

of these ideas as the products of a misguided philosophy. My observation of

LCB activities and discussion with the students and staff of LCB and PDRIB significantly

increased my understanding of some of these ideas and concepts. Here are several

examples of myths I was able to dispel as a result of my findings during my

visit to Ruston:

1.

Braille is too cumbersome and slow a method of reading to be efficient, and

the NFB over-emphasizes the importance of Braille literacy.

2.

Blind mobility instructors cannot teach travel safely.

3.

It makes no sense to ask a person with residual vision to use sleepshades during

training.

4.

Blind students should never be discouraged from walking with a sighted guide

or maintaining contact with a blind friend while walking together or in a group.

I

will address these four issues, one by one.

1.

To my amazement I discovered that some blind people can read Braille at more

than two hundred words a minute--a speed at which many sighted graduate students

read. With practice a person can read Braille really quickly. To my astonishment,

I met a Louisiana Tech graduate student, Brook Sexton, who could read Braille

at up to five hundred words a minute. I had always understood the importance

of mastering Braille, but I had no idea that it could be read with a speed comparable

to that of sighted people reading print.

2.

Having been trained by sighted mobility instructors, I always believed it would

be difficult for me to feel safe going through O and M training under the guidance

of a blind instructor. However, in Ruston I observed blind mobility instructors

who have trained many blind students with no injuries or accidents attributable

to the blindness of the instructor, and the graduates of this program are both

confident and competent independent travelers.

3.

From a layperson's point of view, it sounds strange to discourage blind students

from using their residual vision while they are undergoing life-skills training.

However, after interacting with the staff and students at LCB, I could understand

more clearly that blind people can learn to lead normal lives through the use

of alternative techniques more quickly and efficiently when they are not straining

to use failing vision. Moreover, poor vision usually gets worse, and, if people

do not learn to adapt to their blindness using sleepshades, it is harder, slower,

and more depressing for them to adapt their alternative techniques to their

loss of vision.

4.

I have blind friends who resist taking the arm of a sighted guide under any

circumstances. Having studied Dr. Jernigan's 1993 speech "The Nature of

Independence," I have come to recognize this insistence as a stage (rebellious

independence) on the way to complete and well-adjusted independence. It is important

for blind people to be confident in their travel skills and competent to meet

any situation. But there are times and places when, if sighted assistance is

available, it is less obtrusive and more responsible to accept it. Getting to

this point of maturity requires much work and training, and students must courteously

insist on working through travel problems independently in order to gain the

experience they need to travel with full confidence and safety.

In

short, my interaction with LCB staff and students and the Institute on Blindness

staff, and my observation of the activities of LCB, helped me resolve these

myths and convinced me of several facts: Braille can be read as fast and efficiently

as print, and all blind children and adults should be encouraged to make good

use of it. Blind mobility instructors can be just as effective and efficient

as sighted mobility instructors. It is desirable to wear sleepshades during

life-skills training to discourage the use of residual sight and to teach students

confidence in their ability to manage their lives efficiently without sight.

And, finally, it is appropriate for students to avoid using sighted guides during

training in order to sharpen their skills of independence.

Thus my visit to Ruston

helped me accomplish my twin objectives of observing the LCB program and identifying

relevant literature about the civil rights movement of the organized blind.

But my visit also helped me dispel certain myths about NFB philosophy and life-skills

training in the centers established by the NFB.

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