Dear AccessWorld readers,
I hope everyone had an enjoyable and safe holiday season. To kick off the new year, we at AccessWorld are celebrating the birthday of Louis Braille on January 4th with our annual braille-focused issue. If you would like to learn more about Braille or refresh yourself on his story, please visit our online Braille Museum.
When I was young, I learned braille using tennis balls and a muffin pan. Though I prefer to do my reading using text-to-speech these days, I was a voracious reader when I was young; I remember that my school system had a braille library of books from Seedlings, and looking at their catalog, they still have many of the books that I vividly remember reading.
With the rise of accessible and affordable assistive technologies that can allow a user to read using synthetic speech, the rates of braille literacy have been falling drastically in the past 50 years or so. The National Braille Press reports that the rate of braille literacy 40 years ago was 50 percent, while it has decreased to 12 percent in modern times. Everyone will have a different relationship with braille and depending on your circumstances you may use it constantly or rarely. That being said, I earnestly believe that even if someone eventually uses speech entirely for their reading needs, the learning of braille when young is a critical skill. From what I understand, the way that the brain processes the spoken word differently than writing, it would follow then that as visual literacy is crucial for the development of sighted children, braille would be the same for children who are blind or have low vision. Recently, our very own Deborah Kendrick and Bill Holton discussed the benefits and drawbacks to learning braille as someone new to vision loss. You can watch the presentation on the APH YouTube channel here.
Even though we specifically focus on braille in this issue of AccessWorld, we also publish braille content throughout the year. For example, this summer, Scott Davert reviewed the two braille displays, the QBraille and the Mantis, that aim to merge the technology with traditional QWERTY keyboards. Remember that you can always explore the entire last 20 years of AccessWorld on the Back Issues page. In addition, until we have an AccessWorld specific search, if you would like to search AccessWorld for specific content, you can use the search string "Site:afb.org/aw " to search only the AccessWorld site in any search engine that supports more advanced search options (I know both DuckDuckGo and Google support this). As an example, I discovered this interesting article regarding braille literacy in the developing world, which poses many questions that I believe are still relevant today, even though the article was published in 2008.
This month, Steve Kelley brings us a review of new braille courses from Hadley, this time aimed at sighted and low vision users. Scott Davert brings us an article comparing the various 40-cell braille displays currently on the market. Finally, Jamie Pauls wraps up our braille-focused content with a retrospective on his journey with braille and how braille has evolved over the decades. Closing out this month's issue, Janet Ingber brings us a review of the latest MacOS operating system and J.J. Meddaugh reviews the new Chromecast streaming media device.
If you would like to have access to AccessWorld from yur inbox, I am happy to announce that we have restored the automated AccessWorld Alert Signup page. You can also find a button on the AccessWorld homepage which will direct you to the signup form.
As always, I love to hear from readers. How has braille impacted your life? What do you think of the current trends in braille literacy? Do you prefer braille or speech? Send us your comments, questions, thoughts and more!
Sincerely,
Aaron Preece
AccessWorld Editor-in-Chief
American Foundation for the Blind
