5 Shocks Braille Gave a Visually Impaired Audio Book Reader
At age three, before learning to read, I heard my parents talk about the family who lived next to us in our cookie-cutter suburban development in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. I thought they were our “next store” neighbors. As I learned the alphabet and meanings of words, I asked my mother what the neighbor’s sold at their store. I learned that I had, of course, misheard.
That wasn’t the last time my ears let me down in the spelling department. Reading, however, is supposed to clue us in about those words that aren’t spelled the way our ears think they should be.
A Visually Impaired Student Struggling Through Without Braille
As a child of the ’50s with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative eye disease, I was expected to rely on my failing vision, even though I was born legally blind. I bluffed my way through school, reading so slowly that I had blistering headaches and time for little else. Needless to say, I eventually became a bit picky about what I read. Literature and science were in; math and history were out. Braille was never discussed.
In college, my vision deteriorated beyond the point of faking it. The answer was recorded books, which I still love. Nonetheless, my lack of fluency in Braille resulted in a lifetime of functional illiteracy.
I’ve tried to make up the deficit. A friend taught me the Braille alphabet after I graduated from college and I began to use it to enable myself to live independently. Spices, records and cassettes, my own writings, recipes, contact info and to-do lists all started showing up in that beautiful code of six raised dots.
Despite this and borrowing Braille knitting books from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped:
reading remained a largely aural experience. In the close to four decades that it has taken me to progress to reading age-appropriate material in Braille, my ability to spell, and therefore write, has suffered.
Braille: the Struggle for Literacy Continues
Before allowing you to view my mistakes, I want you to know that it didn’t have to be this way. Braille, when taught correctly, can be easily and happily learned. The only reason I share this now is because, contrary to public assumptions, things are worse now than in the ‘ 50s. Then, over fifty percent of America’s blind kids were taught Braille. Today, it’s ten percent.
Most blind people are audio book not Braille readers, and most working-age blind Americans (seventy percent) are unemployed. Of those few who work, however, over 80% read Braille. These blind people, who are truly literate by the same definition used for print readers, are machinists, lawyers, chemists, mechanics, engineers, chefs and are successful in many other fields.
Why the discrepancy? There is a shortage of qualified Braille teachers and more importantly a surplus of misunderstanding about both Braille and blindness. For more information visit the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC):
http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Parents_and_Teachers.asp
Braille Reveals Spelling Errors
Now, for those mistakes. I regularly read “Syndicated Columnists Weekly” from the National Braille Press.
As I learn what the nation’s top writers are saying about issues facing the country, I routinely stop, dumbstruck by a word that is spelled so differently than I expected that I often marvel over it for days. Once I “see” it in Braille, I don’t forget.
1. I routinely confuse “n” and “m.” The “n” in “rendition,” for instance, was a total shock! I thought it was “rem”dition — well, maybe that’s the dream version. On the other hand, I thought “Mesopotamia” had an “n.” Why didn’t I make the hippopotamus connection? Mesopotamia is the land between the rivers; hippopotamus is river horse.
2. Sometimes, I get even the number of words in a common expression wrong. I now know, for example, that it’s “fait accompli” not “fate a compli.”
3. My concept of “camaraderie” – “comradery,” which is at least listed in four of the top 7 dictionaries according to Roots Web — was based on the word “comrade” – probably a hazard of growing up during the Cold War. But still, what’s with the “ie” at the end? It makes it look like a nickname. Hmmm, that is friendly, though.
4. I thought I had a “pention” for music; now, I find out not only that it’s “penchant,” but that the word I had been misusing is “pension.”
5. Despite a year of ballet, I never was much of a dancer and wasn’t familiar with “choreography.” The “h” was a surprise, but with “choral” and “chorus,” I suppose I should have seen that one coming.
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