Making braille literacy relevant
Technology seeks to preserve fading skill
BOSTON — For nearly a century, the National Braille Press has churned out millions of pages of braille books and magazines a year, providing a window on the world for generations of blind people.
But as it turns 90 this year, the Boston-based printing press and other advocates of the tactile writing system are wrestling with how to address record low braille literacy.
Roughly 13 per cent of U.S. blind students were considered braille readers in a 2016 survey by the American Printing House for the Blind, another major braille publisher. That number has steadily dropped from around 30 per cent in 1974, the first year the organization started asking the question.
Brian Mac Donald, president of the National Braille Press, says the modern blind community needs easier and more affordable ways to access the writing system developed in the 1800s by French teacher Louis Braille.
For the National Braille Press and its 1960-era Heidelberg presses, that has meant developing and launching its own electronic Braille reader last year — the B2G.
“Think Kindle for the blind,” Mac Donald said as he showed off the portable machine — which has an eight-button keyboard for typing in braille as well as a refreshable, tactile display for reading along in braille.
The venerable press, which started as a Boston newspaper for the blind in 1927, has also looked beyond printing Braille versions of popular books and magazine titles.
Educational materials like school textbooks and standardized tests, as well as business-related publications like restaurant menus, instruction manuals and business cards, comprise an increasingly larger share of revenues, Mac Donald said.
“Braille isn’t dead by any means,” he said. “But it needs technology to adapt and evolve.”
Waning interest in braille has been a challenge since the 1970s, when school districts started deemphasizing it in favour of audio learning and other teaching methods, said Chris Danielsen, spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind.
New technology has allowed people with visual impairments to live more independently than ever, but they’re also playing a role in eroding braille’s prominence, said Cory Kadlik, 26, who lost his sight as an infant.
Computer software reads aloud emails and other digital documents for him, and his smartphone helps him complete everyday tasks like sorting the mail.
“I have an application that can read the print on the envelope to me,” said Kadlik, a technology specialist at the Braille & Talking Book Library in Watertown, Mass., part of the Perkins School for the Blind, where Helen Keller was educated. “That’s crazy. That’s unheard of.”
But while technology has opened up a new world not dependent on braille, it also presents its best chance at survival, said Kim Charlson, the library’s director.