I found this article in the July, 1990 issue of The Braille Monitor, published by the National Federation of the Blind. You can view the entire issue by going to http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm90/brlm9007.htm. WHY BRAILLE LITERACY BILLS? by Michael Freeman Michael Freeman is Second Vice President of the National Association to Promote the Use of Braille and one of the leaders of the National Federation of the Blind of Washington. Throughout this country, much attention is being devoted to the problems besetting our system of elementary and secondary education. Whole forests have been sacrificed in the quest to provide a definitive answer to the guestion: Why can't Johnny read? Although there may not be a simple answer to this question, there is a growing consensus among the blind that if Johnny is blind, and, most especially, if Johnny has some residual vision, the answer to this question is, at least in part, that Johnny is not being taught Braille, the system of raised dots used for reading and writing by the blind. According to the National Braille Press in a recent publication, whereas in 1978, 52 percent of school-aged legally blind children could read and write Braille, today, only 12 percent of these children can do so. This is a shameful statistic! When asked to justify this deplorable state of affairs, educators advance a plethora of arguments, notably (1) that technology tape recorders, talking computers, print- magnification equipment and the like makes Braille obsolete and (2) that teaching Braille to any but the totally blind is psychologically damaging since Braille makes the student conspicuous and not normal and is tantamount to forcing the student to be blind. These arguments are easily answered. First, if technology REALLY could supplant reading, it could do so for the sighted as well as for the blind. Thus, television could become an acceptable substitute for the written word. I know of few educators who would be prepared to defend such a proposition. If such a proposition is indefensible for the sighted, it is equally indefensible for the blind. Tape recorders and talking computers, useful though they may be, do not easily convey format and spelling information. Tape recorders do not lend themselves to quick scanning or skimming for particular bits of information. Print enlarging equipment tends to limit the amount of material which can be seen at a given instant and tends to cause fatigue if used for long periods. Such equipment is often not very portable, limiting its usefulness. Braille, on the other hand, does not suffer from these shortcomings. Second, simply by virtue of being legally blind, the student is already conspicuous. Reading print two inches from the nose, using equipment that makes letters six inches high, or carrying around a lot of electronic gear is not inconspicuous behavior. This is not to argue that such activities are wrong; it is simply to say that the argument that the use of Braille makes the user more conspicuous than does the use of other methods is not valid. It is simply an attempt to justify the attitude that the blind are inferior and, as a class, are incapable of performing to the same standards as do the sighted; that it is somehow not quite respectable to be blind. Such an attitude is starkly evident on the part of special education personnel when discussing the ramifications of mandatory exposure of blind and visually-impaired students to Braille instruction. Whereas objections to educational requirements are seldom raised when discussing sighted children even those with handicaps a host of problems is discovered when it is proposed that legally blind children be exposed to Braille. It is suggested by special educators that requiring exposure to Braille would violate the Individualized Education Plan of legally blind children required under the federal statute Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act as Amended; that many, if not most of these children are multihandicapped and therefore would be impossible to instruct in Braille; that, for example, laws mandating some level of Braille exposure for blind students would require even students in a coma (are they really in school?) to be given Braille instruction, etc. Such assertions are ridiculous. First, the Congress of the United States never intended Public Law 94-142 to be used as an excuse to eliminate educational requirements for handicapped children, nor did it intend that the requirement that a handicapped child's education should be tailored to meet his/her needs be used to foster illiteracy among the blind! The intent was, rather, to see to it that a handicapped child's education would be structured in a manner which would best remedy any deficits the child had and which would equip the child to overcome the problems he/she would face in becoming a productive member of society. Second, the objection to Braille's being taught to the multihandicapped blind is based on the false assumption that the study of Braille is a very abstruse and arcane discipline. This is nonsense! Braille is not difficult; one can learn to read Braille in the same time it takes to learn to read print. Moreover, in the days before recorded materials and computers, blind persons were known to have learned to read Braille with their toes and tongues. The real problem in learning Braille is not the medium but the negative messages about it conveyed by educators. In opposing legislation promoting Braille literacy, special education personnel often maintain that such legislation would require inordinate expenditures by state education departments and local school districts. In assessing the cost of Braille literacy legislation, it is necessary to bear in mind two costs associated with the status quo. First, there is the recognized cost of illiteracy. Today's world of work requires, no less for the blind than for the sighted, the ability to read and write fluently and with precision. Illiteracy tends to equate to lower paying jobs (with the consequent lessened tax revenues) or no jobs at all (with the attendant burden on the taxpayer). Second, many legally blind students graduate from high school illiterate, since they cannot read print fluently. When they attend rehabilitation centers, they often must be taught Braille in order to obtain a good job and integrate themselves successfully into society. Taxpayers are therefore paying twice to teach these students reading skills. This is a waste of tax dollars. Over and above the tangible costs of Braille illiteracy, there is the intangible cost of wasted lives and talents lost to society. In an era when many demographers are predicting a labor shortage, society can no longer afford to bear these costs. For the sake of this nation's blind children, the blind adult citizenry of tomorrow, we must secure passage of Braille literacy legislation throughout the country. Johnny, whether blind or sighted, deserves the chance to live a fulfilled, literate, and happy life.