An interesting study that focuses on the corresponding link between Braille literacy and increased successful indicators on standardized assessments. One problem when looking at the value and impact of assistive technologies on student achievement is that there have been few true academic research projects based around studying the potential impact, which is huge of student's access to assistive technologies that use Braille. In this case, the students were evaluated and their reading grade levels tracked before and after only a single year of access to a Braille notetaker. The study demonstrated a three year growth in their reading grade levels. How can this happen? Braille is no different than most acquired skills. The more a person practices the skill the faster and more efficient they become in using that skill. We have more access to more types of materials in Braille now than at other times in history. Refreshable Braille display technologies have been dropping in prices which continue to lower the price for standalone refreshable Braille displays and electronic Braille notetakers. The data in this study only highlights the huge benefit of providing an electronic Braille notetaker as early as possible. I have provided Braille notetaker training for students as young as eight years old and I have seen and read reports from the student's teacher that only validates my unwaivering support for electronic Braille notetakers. More studies need to be published so that these advanced assistive technologies are made available to more students.
"Those with command more likely to get jobs
Published: 07.10.2006, Source: http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/18551.php
MARY BUSTAMANTE
Tucson Citizen
The loss of Braille skills is making blind children illiterate and deprives them of the single most vital skill to lead them to employment and more self-sufficient lives, educators of the blind say.
Recent figures from the National Braille Press indicate that a generation ago 50 percent of blind students used Braille. Now it's less than 12 percent.
Couple that with American Foundation for the Blind statistics that the U.S. blind employment rate is 32 percent, and Blindinc.org figures that say 93 percent of blind people who do have jobs read and write Braille, and the problem is clear.
"I've seen it over and over again that the students with the best literacy skills are the ones getting the good jobs," said Debbie Hartz, who teaches high school English, and British, American and multicultural literature at the Tucson-based Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind.
Knowing Braille definitely improves literacy, she said. Hartz started teaching Braille to her blind daughter before she started kindergarten. Now, at 26, the daughter has a good job and is self-sufficient.
Technology is leading the way for visually impaired and blind students to think it's OK not to pursue Braille. Information is at anyone's beck and call these days through talking computers and auditory books, teachers say.
"Auditory reading (is) not primary reading. Imagine a sighted person's entire world of literacy being auditory only," said Dorinda Rife, principal at the Arizona School for the Blind, on the ASSDB campus. "It's a great backup, but students edit better when they are reading and writing Braille. They learn conventions of the English language better. They are better spellers, better writers."
Cheryl Hannan, an ASB teacher who is working on a doctorate at the University of Arizona, wants to buck the trend.
Hannan's thesis in progress focuses on showing the importance of the blind being able to read and write.
She is studying students from ASB to try to prove Braille's importance and, specifically, the importance of electronic Braille note-taking devices.
The purse-size machines, carried around on straps, allow students to read countless books and give them the opportunity to take notes in class, write and edit their work.
The work pops up on a refreshable Braille line underneath their fingertips as they type.
Students can listen to what they have written, so they can hear mistakes they've made and correct them.
ASB has found that electronic Braille note-takers, at $5,000 to $6,000 each, have allowed some children in one year to raise their Braille reading level by two to three years, Rife said.
"So we're putting them into kids' hands younger and younger," Rife adds.
The thesis could have national implications since the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires research to back up teaching practices and there is little such research in the area, Rife said.
ASB has a full-time Braille teacher at the high school and Braille is offered to all students, at all grade levels, who have a condition in which they will lose vision as they grow older.
That isn't the case across the country.
At Tucson Unified School District, which has 85 visually impaired students, including six deemed legally blind, just six use Braille, officials said.
Others use books with large print and other options for those who have some sight.
Lorraine St. Germain, executive director of Exceptional Education at Tucson Unified School District, said that the ability to read and write Braille is crucial to literacy, successful employment and independence.
"Braille is important as one of the tools to be used to assist a person with a visual impairment to obtain, store, access and communicate information. It is a method of legible writing and reading that results in literacy and independence, which is fundamental to communication with others, whether blind or sighted."
Curtis Chong, president of the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science, in an article in The Braille Monitor in 2004, said blind students should "have the knowledge and the ability to produce printed material with a variety of tools. Electronic Braille note-takers are one way to generate print; but just as it is important to master these devices, it is equally important for a blind person to be able to create printed material."
Hannan's hypothesis is, given the ability to edit, students will want to write more and the writing will improve because they can make changes easily.
Her pilot study this spring of three ASB students using the more advanced machines initially shows that the students' writing samples are different in the amount of editing and how the samples are edited. There is also a reduction in spelling and grammar errors.
Hannan, who has been an ASB reading specialist for two years and a English and language arts teacher for two more, has compared the electronic Braille word processor with a Perkins Braille writer, a long-used electric typewriterlike machine with no memory.
Hannan hopes that when complete results are available at the end of the month, it will be enough for companies to want to fund further studies on the subject with larger groups of students.
"There are just not enough blind students in Tucson," she said.
ASB junior Amanda Estes, 19, has some vision, but has been reading and writing Braille since she was 5 or 6.
Electronic Braille note-takers allow her to get away from the bulky Braille books at ASB, although she still reads some of them.
"I like Hardy Boys and have been reading them in Braille books, but with the note-takers (a flash card with several books on it can be inserted into them) my interests have broadened," she said. "It makes it so much easier to do homework, too."
Estes is interested in acting, writing mysteries and poetry and stand-up comedy.
She said that the doors electronic Braille note-takers are opening for her can only help.
"It's such a big advantage and it's improving my whole literacy," she said.
Hannan isn't surprised. "Eight or nine years ago, (the) Los Angeles Times said technology was going to replace Braille.... But I have seen a rejuvenation of Braille," she said. And electronic Braille note-taking devices could level the playing field in landing jobs."
