The Importance of Braille Literacy
Emergent Literacy and the Young Blind Child
Teaching Reading in Braille
Slate and Stylus Are Not Dirty Words
Where to Find Braille Books for Children
Is Braille a Language?
The Experience of Hebrew Study as a Student Who is Blind
Braille Literacy Resources
Resources for Parents of Blind Children
Orientation and mobility: getting around
Education
Family life
Opinions and experiences
Blindness in Depth
Sarah Blake has lived with blindness/visual impairment due to premature birth since childhood. She has had several surgeries to treat complications such as detached retina, cataracts, glaucoma, and cornea damage which threatened her small amount of vision at various points in her life. She learned both braille and print as a young child. She travels with a dog guide.
Sarah graduated from Anderson University School of theology in 2009 with a Master of Divinity. She is a licensed minister with the Church of God (Anderson, IN) and travels as a guest speaker and singer to churches, colleges, and other community groups. She also works with companies to increase features of software to enable blind students to access foreign language materials.
Sarah serves on the health care issues committee affiliated with the American Council of the Blind, which promotes access to health information and equipment. She also serves as co-moderator for several online discussion groups, including BVI-Parents, a group for parents of blind and visually impaired children.
Sarah provides technology training and support, motivational speaking, and other services. Learn about her services.
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In many school systems and universities, students are allowed to earn foreign language credit for learning braille. This practice has led to a significant debate regarding whether or not braille is, in fact, a language. Many people view it as a language because it is a communication medium shared by a group of people who have a specialized communication need. However, some important things differentiate braille from an actual language.
Contracted braille is not conceptually different from print in its content. It is solely a space saver. A person is still reading the same sentences with the same structure. I often see a similar thing happen when people write email or text messages. For example:
I have an apt with the specialist 2morrow to talk about the dx he made because I need documentation for my child's IEP.
Parents of children with disabilities generally know that apt apparently stands for appointment, dx for diagnosis, and IEP for individual education plan; but the fact that someone else may not know these abbreviations and acronyms doesn't make them a foreign language.
When I learned contracted braille, I learned it along with correct spelling. I learned that dots 2-3-4-6 stands for the letters t-h-e; that dots 1-5-6 alone stands for the letters w-h-i-c-h and in a word stands for the letters w-h; and that the letters bl alone stand for the word b-l-i-n-d. When I write the sentence, "I am (dots 2-3-4-6) girl (dots 1-5-6)o is (bl)," I am writing the sentence, "I am the girl who is blind." There is no language translation taking place because I am still writing in English.
Shorthand isn't taught to sighted students any more, but it was in the past. It was still English, and it wasn't considered abnormal or hard.
American Sign Language has a separate grammatical structure and is rightly classified as a language. There is such a thing as signed exact English, and I would hope that no one try to pass this off as a foreign language. It isn't; it is using the hands to communicate instead of the voice, and the communication is still in English.
I read and write four languages other than English and am learning two additional languages. I learned them using braille. Learning languages is nothing at all like learning braille. Braille is a tool; the person learning braille is learning symbols that can be used to represent the language he/she speaks and reads. The same is true of print. The difference is in how the symbols are read and how many there are. In French and Spanish, the same letters are used that we use in English. There are braille symbols used in these languages for letters with accents that do not occur in our English alphabet. In Hebrew and Greek, the print alphabets are different from the English alphabet. In the braille forms of these languages, some characters resemble their phonetic English counterparts. This occurs because braille has a limited set of characters available for use in representing sounds. It must be stressed that this is not transliteration. All characters are not represented by their phonetic English counterparts; and spelling follows the patterns of the language in question.
As a braille reader, I want people to realize that braille is normal and is equivalent to print. I don't want it viewed as a novelty or as something it isn't. Learning a foreign language implies that the learner is not speaking English. Braille does not meet this qualification.
I don't think that considering braille to be a foreign language would promote quality teaching for students who are blind. When I took languages in high school, we learned the bare bones. We did not learn enough to speak fluently, and we generally did not use the language outside the classroom. If the teaching of braille is approached like the teaching of a foreign language, students will not be learning to use it efficiently for school or work-related tasks. If a child is still working at learning braille five years after vision loss, the solution seems to be to find a way to make learning more successful so that he can continue to access the general curriculum, which is the reason for learning braille in the first place.
I'm always glad when a sighted friend or colleague shows an interest in learning braille. In fact, when a Spanish professor taught herself braille in order to ensure that my Spanish handouts were transcribed correctly, I was truly touched; and my experience in her course was extremely positive. However, even the most dedicated learners do not and will not learn it in the same manner and depth that I need to. They don't have to; they don't use it every day. Braille is not an option for a blind person. It should not be treated with the same attitude that foreign languages are treated. A blind person cannot learn a minimum of braille and get by. It is an essential skill, like print literacy.If you are looking for official documentation, read the position statement fro the Braille Authority of North America.
Sarah J. Blake