Gibert 1 Nathan Gibert Mr.

Grey 3 January 22, 2009

From Past, To Present, and In To The Future

Braille is a system of touch reading and writing for blind persons in which raised dots represent the letters of the alphabet. Braille also contains equivalents for punctuation marks and provides symbols to show letter groupings. Braille is read by moving the hand or hands from left to right along each line. Both hands are usually involved in the reading process, and reading is generally done with the index fingers. The average reading speed is about 125 words per minute, but greater speeds of up to 200 words per minute are possible. By using Braille, blind people can review and study the written word. They can become aware of different written conventions such as spelling, punctuation, paragraphing and footnotes. Most of all, blind individuals can have access to a wide range of reading materials including educational and recreational reading and practical manuals. Equally important are the contracts, regulations, insurance policies, directories, appliance instructions and cookbooks that are part of daily adult life.

I could potentially give you a five page paper on the invention of the Braille system, and how initially it was rejected, however in this next paragraph I hope to give you enough of an overview to where you will understand how and why the Braille system was created. The creation of the Braille is accredited to one man, Louis Braille who was born on January 4th, 1809, in Coupvray, a small town near Paris, France. His father was a shoemaker and the young Louis enjoyed playing in his father's workshop. It was during one of his playful adventures that Louis

Gibert 2 accidentally punctured his eye with an awl, a sharp tool used to punch holes in leather. Infection eventually set in and spread to his other eye, leaving Louis completely blind. With the support of a local priest and schoolteacher, Louis' parents were determined to allow Louis to develop his demonstrated intelligence. He was enrolled in a regular school where he learned by listening and excelled in his studies. By the age of 10, he earned a scholarship to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris, where he learned to read letters that were raised on a page. Since pressing shaped copper wire onto a page made these letters, it was impossible for people with vision loss to write anything for themselves. It was at the Institute that Louis was first introduced to the idea of a coded system of raised letters. In 1821, a French army captain, Charles Barbier de la Serre, visited the school to introduce his invention, "Night Writing", intended for soldiers to communicate at night without speaking. In his system, a series of 12 raised dots were used to represent sounds that, when combined, would form words. It proved to be too complicated, and the army eventually rejected it. Barbier adapted his system for use by people who were blind and people living with vision loss, but the 12-dot phonetic system still proved cumbersome. Recognizing how useful this tactile system could be, Louis set out to experiment with a simplified version. Eventually, he settled on a system based on normal spelling using six dots to represent the standard alphabet - Braille. Louis Braille went on to become an admired and respected teacher at the Institute. But even though his system allowed for people who were blind and people with vision loss to write using a simple stylus, Braille was not widely used. Plagued by ill health, Louis died of tuberculosis on January 6, 1852. The Braille code was eventually recognized for its practicality and simplicity and became a worldwide standard. And today, Braille literacy is just as important as literacy itself. In 1952, the accomplishments of Louis Braille were fully recognized by the French government. His body was exhumed and reburied in

Gibert 3 the Pantheon in Paris to lie with the rest of France's national heroes.

Louis has brought much to our modern day lives, but in that newfound system of learning, writing, and reading he has brought much controversy to the modern day people. Now and have been facing the question, are blind children able to integrate back into the public school system now that the Braille system has been accepted globally? The idea of integrating visually impaired children into regular classrooms is a good one. Unfortunately, as in many other areas of life, you can get too much of a good thing. Many visually impaired children do well in a fully integrated program. Many other children who benefit from being integrated in classrooms with sighted children also need daily contact with a teacher of visually impaired students in a resource room. I believe that we go too far if we insist that all children attend their neighborhood school, even at the expense of their education. Surely we can arrange it so a child can be home at night and yet attend a classroom more designed to fit his or her needs. So the choice is yet to be decided. This controversy has spanned for hundreds of years.

There were many other famous people whos lives have encountered problems much like blindness, but as far as the lack of sight the most famous would have had to been Helen Keller. Helen Keller was less than two years old when she came down with a fever. It struck dramatically and left her unconscious. The fever went just as suddenly. But she was blinded and, very soon after, deaf. As she grew up, she managed to learn to do tiny errands, but she also realized that she was missing something. "Sometimes," she later wrote, "I stood between two persons who were conversing and touched their lips. I could not understand, and was vexed. I moved my lips and gesticulated frantically without result. This made me so angry at times that I

Gibert 4 kicked and screamed until I was exhausted." She was a wild child. I can understand her rage. For preemies the practice at the time was to pump a large amount of oxygen into the incubator, something doctors have since learned to be extremely cautious about. Helen was both blind and deaf. But, oh, the transformation that came over her when she discovered that words were related to things! It's like the lyrics of that song: "On a clear day, rise and look around you, and you'll see who you are. I can say the word see. I can speak the language of the sighted. That's part of the first great achievement of Helen Keller. She proved how language could liberate the blind and the deaf. She wrote, "Literature is my utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised." But how she struggled to master language. In her book "Midstream," she wrote about how she was frustrated by the alphabet, by the language of the deaf, even with the speed with which her teacher spelled things out for her on her palm. She was impatient and hungry for words, and her teacher's scribbling on her hand would never be as fast, she thought, as the people who could read the words with their eyes. I remember how books got me going after I finally grasped Braille. Being in that school was like being in an orphanage. But words and in my case, music changed that isolation. With language, Keller, who could not hear and could not see, proved she could communicate in the world of sight and sound and was able to speak to it and live in it. I am a beneficiary of her work. Because of her example, the world has given way a little. In my case, I was able to go from the state school for the blind to regular public school from the age of 11 until my senior year in high school. And then I decided on my own to go back into the school for the blind. Now I sing jazz. - Excerpt From Times Top 100 Most Influential People

Gibert 5 Now Im sure by now you are pretty well equipped with the history and implication of Braille not only in a few peoples lives, but also how it affects teachers who may not even be visually impaired.

Everyday life must be tough for a blind person, imagine if you had no sight, what would you be unable to do? However today they have new innovations to common inventions that we take for granted. The first of these inventions is the Braille watch, which has a set of numbers in Braille, which by a quick touch the visually impaired can tell what time it is. Many other inventions have come about like the Braille embossers, which can print Braille, and even the invention of many popular games into Braille. As you can clearly see from my paper there is many different controversies and inventions to Braille, but the overall theme of my paper suggests that the blind should not be viewed any lower than the common man who can read, write, and live, just like that of a blind person. First I spoke of the original inventor who was a genius whose ideas were rejected widely and then soon accepted globally. Next I talked about the controversy of blind and non-blind students coinciding in the same schools and we all heard my stance of how it is a great idea. Third, I brought up one of the most well known deaf-blind person imaginable whos steps to reading and writing shocked the world and ushered in a new age of understanding. Last I gave you a brief list of the common tools that have been converted for visually impaired use. I hope now you understand that they may not be equal, but they should be treated as equals, because they have lost or never had something that we take for granted everyday.

Gibert 6 References

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Doake, David B. (1995). Literacy learning: A revolution in progress. Bothell, WA: The Wright Group.

Ianuzzi, J. W. (1999). Braille Literacy in America: A student's view. Online: Available from Other visions e-zine.

Irwin, R. B. (1956). As I Saw It. Online: available from the New York Institute of Special Education.

Johnson, L. (1996). The Braille Literacy Crisis for Children. Journal of visual impairment and blindness; 90(3).

Mullen, E. (1990). Decreased Braille literacy: A symptom of a system in need of reassessment. Re:View; 22(3), 164-167.

Rex, E. J. (1989). Issues Related to Literacy of Legally Blind Learners. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness. 83, 306-07,10-13.

Rex, E. J., Koenig, A. J., Wormsley, D. P., and Baker, R. L. (1994). Foundations of Braille literacy New York: American Foundation for the Blind.

Ryles, R. (1995). Beyond Braille. speech Presented at Getting in touch with literacy. Austin, TX.

Ryles, R. (1996). The impact of Braille reading skills on employment, income, education and reading habits. Journal of visual impairment and blindness; 90(3).

Schroeder, F. (1989). Literacy: The Key to Opportunity. Journal of Visual Impairment

Gibert 7 and Blindness. 83, 290-93. Spungin, S. J. (1989) Braille literacy: Issues for blind persons, families, professionals, and producers of Braille. New York: American Foundation for the Blind. Spungin, S. J. (1996). Braille and beyond: Braille literacy in a larger context. Journal of visual impairment and blindness; 90(3), 271-274. Stephens, O. (1989). Braille--Implications for living. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, 83, 288-89. Wittenstein, S. H. (1993). Braille training and teacher attitudes: Implications for personnel preparation. Re:View; 25(3), 103-111.