Braille Literacy: The Coin on a Mission, the Crisis & the Controversy
Donna W. Hill
May 12, 2009
But, what happens to this highly specialized region of the brain in blind people? Does it lie fallow? Not according to research sponsored by the US's National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Veterans' Administration (VA). This research – serendipitously published in the Journal of Vision mere months before the unveiling of the Louis Braille Bicentennial silver dollar -- proves that the visual cortex undergoes a re-deployment. Whether a person has been blind since birth or loses sight as an adult, the visual cortex transfers its allegiance to other senses and cognitive processes including the sense of touch.
Well, that makes perfect sense. After all, the images of a blind person's fingers sweeping a page of Braille to read or delicately touching the face of a friend or loved one are commonplace. But, is Braille literacy really all that common?
The commemorative coin, which features a child reading Braille on the reverse side with the Braille abbreviation for "Braille" above, is the first US coin with tactile, readable Braille. Celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, inventor of the raised dot reading system bearing his name, it is not merely a feel-good, shout-out to blind Americans. Every year, Congress selects two non-profits to assist through the issuance of a commemorative coin. Proceeds from the sale of the Braille coin support the "Braille Readers are Leaders" campaign of the non-profit National Federation of the Blind (NFB): http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Braille_Initiative.asp
The Louis Braille Bicentennial Silver Dollar is an acknowledgement by the federal government of a grave social injustice. Braille literacy is declining. Only ten percent of the nation's blind children are currently being taught to read and write Braille. It's lower for the majority of blind Americans who lose their sight as adults. The peak was in the 1960s when fifty percent of blind children were taught Braille. The rarity of its use impacts the employability of blind people, ultimately requiring tax-payer support of blind adults.
Even NASA is getting involved. When the space shuttle Atlantis launched on its final mission to fix the Hubble telescope, it was carrying two of the Braille coins.
"NASA believes strongly in the importance of educational opportunities for everyone," said Joyce Winterton, assistant administrator for education at NASA headquarters in Washington, in an NFB press release dated May 9th. "That is why we have partnered with the National Federation of the Blind to help create programs that enhance scientific study for blind youth. Launching the first coin to contain tactile, readable Braille into space symbolizes NASA´s commitment to the spread of knowledge by every means and to every individual."
Despite changes in legislation, advances in technology and the achievements of some blind people who have proven by their successful lives that blindness is not an obstacle to being a lawyer, chemist, mechanic, engineer, doctor, and so on, unemployment among working-age blind Americans has remained stagnant for decades. Fewer than thirty percent of working-age blind Americans are employed. Many of them receive Social Security Disability or Supplemental Security Income benefits. If you aren't concerned yet, consider this. The CDC recently projected a three-fold increase in diabetic-related blindness among working-age Americans by 2050: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/health/research/10diabetes.html?_r=2&ref=health&pagewanted=allresearch/10diabetes
There is never only one reason for such a disparity. Misunderstanding of blindness by the general public, loop-holes in the laws which favor the hiring of people with other disabilities over blind people, as well as cuts in rehabilitation services all play their part. Nevertheless, one startling statistic presents itself as a huge beacon of both admonition and hope. Of the blind people who are employed, over eighty percent read Braille.
So, why isn't Braille taught to blind kids? Again, the reasons are complex. Now that most blind children attend public schools for at least part of their education, the decisions about how school districts will meet their legal obligations to them are made by administrators who are ever more budget conscious and hold out little hope for their students with visual impairments. Since blindness is far less common than other childhood disabilities such as autism and dyslexia, many of the special education teachers responsible for teaching Braille have little experience with it. They also are unfamiliar with techniques which enable blind people to read two-hundred words per minute – far faster than the sixty words per minute that these teachers believe possible. They say that Braille is out-dated, easily replaceable with recorded books and talking computers.
While no one, including the most ardent Braille readers themselves, denies the importance and usefulness of these tools, many say that the exclusive use of audio formats leaves blind children functionally illiterate. Children who listen to audio books don´t learn spelling, punctuation, sentence structure and so on. That this fact alone is insufficient to silence Braille's nay-sayers is seen by many blind advocates as evidence that society is comfortable holding its blind members to a lower standard, which is itself a recipe for failure.
Blind people who do not read Braille also end up without the tools that make functioning in a sighted world possible, such as Braille labels. These are commonly made and used by Braille readers for many things around the house and office. Labels on kitchen appliances as well as spices and other pantry items make it possible for blind people to cook without assistance. Though they may be able to use a scanner to read the contents of an office file, only with Braille labels can they find the file itself without help. Phone numbers and other personal information can be kept in an audio format such as cassettes and digital files, but accessing information this way is slow and tedious compared to a notebook or file box of Braille note cards. Audio storage also lacks privacy. People who lose vision as adults can benefit from learning the basics of Braille, even if they don't choose to use it for leisure reading.
Children who have no reading vision are not the only ones affected by the current bias against Braille. Others with severe visual impairments, including those who are legally blind and have degenerative conditions which will eventually cause total blindness, are left to struggle with large print and magnification. They contort their bodies to get close to a printed page or a CCTV (closed circuit television) only to read at a fraction of the speed of Braille readers and their sighted peers. The extra time needed to complete homework leaves many students, who are in the gray area between fully sighted and blind, with no time for extra curricular activities, recreation or socializing with friends. Reading this way often causes severe headaches and other symptoms of eye strain. As these children grow up, they fall further and further behind, academically and socially. Parents and educators look the other way, rather than encourage the use of a tool which to many holds a social stigma.
Our Wonderfully Adaptive Brain
Does the NIH/VA research of the visual cortex underscore the appropriateness of Braille as a primary tool for blind people? The findings are published as "Neural processing underlying tactile microspatial discrimination in the blind: A functional magnetic resonance imaging Study," by Stilla, Hanna, Hu, Mariola, Deshpande, & Sathian: http://journalofvision.org/8/10/13/, doi:10.1167/8.10.13.
Krish Sathian, MD, PhD, is professor of neurology, rehabilitation medicine and psychology at Emory University, and medical director of the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation RD Center of Excellence. I wrote to him to find out what the research does and does not mean.
First, an explanation of the tasks used in the study. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) was used to map brain activity in ten blind subjects as they touched patterns with their index finger pads. Two tests were given – one to measure fine tactile discrimination (judgments about relative location) and the other to measure temporal discrimination (judgments about relative lengths of time). In the first, subjects touched a series of patterns containing three embossed plastic dots in which the central dot was offset by varying degrees. They were asked to determine whether the central dot was offset to the right or left. In the second, a series of patterns of three embossed dots was applied to the finger pads, and the subjects were asked if the duration of contact was long or short.
"The first task," wrote Dr. Sathian, "relative to the second (control) task, evoked activity in visual cortex of the blind while it did not in those who were normally sighted."
The sensory processing in these tasks is similar to that necessary for Braille reading, and nine of the ten blind subjects were Braille readers. However, the recruitment of the visual cortex in blind subjects is not limited to the sense of touch. According to Sathian, previous studies have shown similar visual cortical activity accompanying the sense of hearing in blind subjects. See "Cross-modal plasticity for the spatial processing of sounds in visually deprived subjects" by Olivier Collignon et al:http://www.springerlink.com/content/72363l146k3684g8/
Blindness definitely changes the way the brain processes non-visual information. The visual cortex is not involved when sighted subjects are given similar tests.
"Sighted people were tested, writes Sathian, "not actually in this study, but in the companion study (Stilla et al., J Neurosci 27: 11091-11102, 2007). They were not blindfolded, but had their eyes closed."
Although blind subjects all had visual cortical involvement in tactile tasks, the age at which the subject lost sight may have some influence.
"There was a particular connection between visual cortical areas which seemed to be stronger, the earlier the person became blind," Sathian continued, "Also, other studies have shown a tendency for visual cortical activity to be more in early than late blindness."
Many of the questions raised by this research, however, have yet to be answered. I asked Dr. Sathian about the extent of blindness in his subjects.
"Two had very minimal light perception; none had form perception."
Many people who are functionally blind and use non-visual adaptations, such as Braille, have more vision than the subjects in this study. It would be helpful for future studies to examine at what point in vision loss the visual cortex shifts to non-visual tasks. An understanding of this might aid those teaching students with low vision.
The Sathian study did not find that blind subjects had an increased tactile acuity, although some other studies have. Some fear that this will foster the stereotype – so troublesome to some blind advocates – that blind people are tactually gifted.
The significance of this increased acuity, however, may say more about the importance of experience and practice. I asked Dr. Sathian if this research means that blind people are tactually gifted.
"The research on this is mixed," he responded, "Comparing the results of the JOV paper to those in the J Neurosci paper (the companion papers on blind and sighted using the same task), acuity was comparable. However, as outlined in the cited review articles, it appears that there are some tasks at which the blind are better in both touch (Collignon et al., 2009) and hearing (Sathian & Stilla, Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, in press) perhaps due to their specific kinds of experience."
Furthermore, the benefit of visual cortical involvement in blind people may be related to other functions of this complex brain region. I asked Dr. Sathian if it was accurate to say that the boost in acuity is not necessarily a function of increased ability in the basic tactile circuitry but more likely due to a difference in higher cognitive processing such as an increased ability to pay attention or plug the sensations of touch into a verbal or language-based thought structure which may facilitate a more accurate judgment of what is being touched.
"That is our current thinking, he wrote, "but more work needs to be done to flesh this out. Another possibility is that various parts of visual cortex may be specialized for different non-visual tasks in the blind."
Sathian hopes that capitalizing on the abilities of the visual cortex will lead to better designs in tactile interfaces for blind people.
Braille: An Elegant and Versatile System
Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of Braille is the definition of literacy itself. Simply put, it is the ability to read and "write" in a given language. In prehistoric times, people could tell and listen to stories. The ability to write them down, however, did not come until the development of early alphabets. Alphabets are symbolic representations of the sounds of language. Braille is the only tool offering such a representation of language which exists for non-print readers. There is a symbol for each letter and punctuation mark. Even capitals and italics are identified. Braille also has symbols for common letter groupings such as "ing," "dis" and "Ed." Common words like "but," "can" and "Do," are represented by their first letters.
Braille, unlike the print alphabet which relies on the shape of each letter, is a code. Each Braille letter, contraction or mark is based on a six-dot "cell." Each cell has two vertical columns, containing a place for three dots. These six positions are referred to by number – from top to bottom the left column contains dots 1-3; the right column, 4-6.
The Braille code is highly organized. For instance, the configurations for the first ten letters of the alphabet – a-j – are repeated for k-t with the addition of dot 3. The pattern begins again adding dots 3 and 4 – the one exception, 'w, is not in the French alphabet upon which Louis Braille based the code.
Far from being outdated, Braille and its readers are benefiting from the technology revolution. Though Braille books are much larger than their print equivalents, new Braille note takers which can store several gigs of material -- converting them one line at a time into "refreshable Braille" -- are highly portable. Refreshable Braille displays function as computer monitors. There are also Braille embossers, which are used with computers as the Braille equivalent of a printer.
In a press release announcing the release of the Louis Braille Bicentennial Silver Dollar at the NFB's Jernigan Institute in Baltimore on March 26, 2009, Dr. Marc Maurer, NFB's President, said: "If the blind can read, the blind can achieve. The Louis Braille Bicentennial Silver Dollar celebrates the man who gave literacy to the blind and is a unique and beautiful keepsake, but it is also a coin with a mission: to make sure that every blind child and every adult losing vision in our nation has the opportunity to learn Braille. "
The "Braille Readers are Leaders" campaign seeks to double the number of blind children learning Braille by 2015. NFB will receive matching funds from the sale of these coins for every dollar raised privately. The 2006 law – sponsored by democrat Chris Dodd of Connecticut and republican Rick Santorum, former Senator from Pennsylvania – sets a maximum of $4 million. There is a limited number of coins, and any left unsold at the end of 2009 will be destroyed, a common practice for commemorative coins which ensures that they maintain their value as collectables. The price for proof copies is $41.95. The un-circulated version, which is offered in both the mint's standard packaging and an easy-open capsule for those who would like to experience the readable Braille on the reverse side of the coin, is $33.95. For further information call: 1-800-USAMINT (1-800-872-6468), or visit: http://www.usmint.gov
For more information on statistics about blindness visit:
National Federation of the Blind: http://www.nfb.org/nfb/blindness_statistics.asp
Braille Institute of America: http://www.brailleinstitute.org/facts_about_sight_loss#5
National Braille Press: http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/braille/literacy.html
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