A boost for Braille

The Boston Globe

By Ralph Ranalli

Original Boston Globe story and audio slide show

WATERTOWN - Justin Morse's hands glide nimbly across the keys at the bottom of a device about the size of large hardcover book. His eyes closed, his head nodding rhythmically in concentration, the 14-year-old looks like a young virtuoso playing a small, silent piano.

From the hallway, Rob Hair, the principal of the Perkins School for the Blind Lower School, peers into Morse's classroom, feeling a familiar mix of pride and sadness. Morse has mastered Braille, the written language of the blind, and has become adept at working the electronic BrailleNote translator he is using to follow a teacher's written assignment.

But Morse, Hair knows, is an exception. In 1960, 50 percent of legally blind, school-age children were able to read Braille, invented by Louis Braille, born 199 years ago this Friday. Today, of the 55,000 legally blind school-age children in the United States, only about 12 percent are able to read Braille, according to federal statistics. Braille literacy rates have also dropped around the world.

Now, the Perkins campus, tucked away between the Charles River and the Arsenal Mall and office complex, has become one of the front lines in a war to reverse a major drop in Braille literacy in the United States over the last 50 years.

Without Braille, Hair said in an interview outside Morse's classroom, "you don't have a way to write down a phone number or an address. . . . You are unable to participate in the world the way sighted people do."

In recent years, Perkins has conducted teacher-training seminars, aggressively sought increased funding for its extensive Braille library, and ramped up production at an on-campus factory that produces the Perkins Brailler, the most widely used Braille-writing machine in the world.

"I am an incurable optimist and believe strongly that working with partners, other schools, organizations, governments around the world, that [the decline in] Braille literacy rates can be reversed," said Steven M. Rothstein, president of Perkins.

Educators and advocates for the visually impaired cite numerous causes for the steep drop in Braille usage, including school budget constraints, advances in technology, and philosophical differences over how blind children should be taught.

A key turning point for Braille was the passage by Congress of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which moved thousands of children from specialized schools for the blind into mainstream public schools. Because only a small percentage of public schools could afford to train and hire Braille-qualified teachers, Braille literacy has declined since the law took effect.

Braille literacy rates have stabilized somewhat over the last 10 years, advocates say, in part because a number of states, including Massachusetts, have passed laws mandating that blind children capable of learning Braille should be taught to read it whenever possible. Advocates cite studies that show that, among the estimated 85,000 blind adults in the United States, 90 percent of those who are Braille literate are employed. Among adults who do not know Braille, only 1 in 3 is employed.

Along with efforts by Perkins to emphasize Braille, suppliers of printed material such as the National Braille Press and American Printing House for the Blind have dramatically increased their output and selection of Braille books and materials, and six years ago the California-based Braille Institute of America started the National Braille Challenge, a sort of national spelling bee for blind students.

Despite the efforts of Braille advocates, however, most visually impaired students are being taught in public schools where many special education administrators see Braille as only one tool - and an expensive one at that - among several that can be used to teach visually impaired students.

Training students to read using text magnification and text-to-speech computer equipment requires less specialized training and less classroom time. A good portable video magnifier can be purchased for between $800 and $1,500, while state-of-the-art electronic Braille note-taking devices such as Morse's BrailleNote, which function like a small personal computer, generally retail for around $6,000.

"There are so many options other than Braille," said Stephanie Powers, assistant director of pupil services for the Newton public schools. "The technology has sort of outgrown it."

Even in wealthier school systems like Newton's, Powers and other administrators said, Braille teaching is often limited to "a handful" of students for whom it is deemed essential. Often those are students whose vision is too low for them to read text with magnification or whose vision is deemed likely to deteriorate over their lifetime, specialists said.

Marisa Parker, a 12-year-old seventh-grader at the Old Rochester Regional Junior High School in Mattapoisett, is one such student. She is also an example of successful Braille education in the public schools, her teachers say.

Born with a severe visual impairment, Parker can distinguish light or darkness, but cannot recognize shapes. Since the second grade, she has been to the National Braille Challenge in Los Angeles five times, placing first in her age group three times and third once in the annual event.

During a recent science class, her hands flew over a Braille version of the day's pop quiz, and she typed in her answers at a speed that made one of the school's Perkins Braillers, a heavy manual Braille typewriter, sound like a machine gun. While she is allowed an extra 50 percent of time to finish a given assignment, Parker often finishes at the same time as her classmates.

Capable of reading at 160 words per minute, she said Braille allows her to read and feel more like a normal teenager. "I like all sorts of books, but the Harry Potter series and the 'Circle of Magic' series are my favorites," she said.

Parker is still an anomaly in the Old Rochester schools. Of seven visually impaired students taught there, she is the only one using Braille, said Kristine Lincoln, the system's teacher for visually disabled students.

Lincoln and other specialists say that low Braille literacy rates are not simply a matter of opting for text magnification over Braille. While some other students in the system use video magnification tools, special markers, and high-contrast paper to take advantage of their limited vision, others are not learning Braille because they are not physically capable.

Due in part to advances in medicine, special education administrators said, there are more blind students today who have multiple disabilities and are harder to teach. While improvements in emergency care and immunization have prevented much of the childhood blindness once caused by accidents and diseases, advances in neonatal care have allowed the survival of more children born with serious birth defects, including blindness.

"These days, learning has to be student-specific," said Lauren Gilbert, director of pupil services for the Natick public schools. "Blind isn't just blind anymore."

Ralph Ranalli can be reached at ranalli@globe.com.