Braille: writing system that represents spoken language and enables blind/visually-impaired people to achieve literacy.

• grade 1: spelt-out
• grade 2: also includes contractions

methods of reading:

• two-hand scissors
• one-hand unguided

methods of writing:

• slate and stylus
• perkins brailler
• braille notetaker/pda

lack of awareness about braille research leads to a knowledge vacuum:

• erasure
• adequation
• misconceptions
• stigmatization — “print at any cost”

blindness is a continuum

the population of proficient braille users is heterogeneous

braille research:

• braille script
• braille orthography
• teaching and learning

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2004

Visible Braille, Invisible Blindness —Kleege (2006) §

• elevator signs

• alabama state quarter

• FDR memorial

  “concept of that piece was to have Braille as a kind of invitation to touch, more than anything else”

• ann hamilton 199 installation at american pavilion

Disability Studies §

• critical

• lived experience

• historical context

• intersectionality

• “nothing about us without us”

• inspiration porn

• appropriation

social media posts about people with disabilities tend to “objectify” them for “inspiring” non-disabled people while ignoring their lived experiences and overlooking ongoing injustice

“being inspired from” vs “learning from”

• medical model vs social model
• custodialism vs self-determination
• exclusion vs integration
• transform the individual vs environment

History §

• ugly laws

  any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object

  —Municipal ordinance, Chicago, 1881

“if you have a disability you need a fierce mom for sure”

• forced sterilization

  Buck v. Bell (1927) — regular scotus L. partially superseded by Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942).

  “lebensunwertes leben”

• world wars 1 and 2, polio epidemic

• 1962: ed roberts, independent living movement

  Upon learning that Roberts had a severe disability, one of the UC Berkeley deans famously commented, “We’ve tried cripples before and it didn’t work.”

• 1972: willowbrook state school

• 1973: section 504 of the rehabilitation act of 1973

  No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States, shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

• 1975: education for all handicapped children act

• 1977: section 504 sit-ins

• 1988: “deaf president now”

• 1990: capitol crawl, ada

note: bookshare. national library service for the blind and physically handicapped.

Blindness §

Central visual acuity of 20/200 or less if the better eye with corrective glasses or central visual acuity of more than 20/200 if there is a visual field defect in which the peripheral field is contracted to such an extent that the widest diameter of the visual field subtends an angular distance no greater than 20 degrees in the better eye.

when vision has deteriorated to the point that, to function capably and efficiently, the individual uses alternative (nonvisual) techniques to accomplish the majority of life’s daily activities. This is true even though there is some residual vision […]

Responses to the blind §

• purge
• segregated care (“custodialism”)
• integration (self-determination)

chomsky bad?? said language acquisition innate

pattern recognition and social interactions may be innate, but language acquisition isn’t

stochastic = statistically based (as opposed statistically cringe)

“blindness alone is not sufficient to produce deviant language acquisition” — Mills, 1983. semantic underextension.

Evidence from blindness thus challenges the idea that sensory motor representations play a major role in semantics.

Verbalism: the use of visual vocabulary by people who are blind. Allegedly “disordered” since these words have no sensory basis.

Empty husks of visual meaninglessness.

Development of Braille §

…

Unified English Braille §

• alphabetic wordsigns
• strong contractions (part and whole words)
  • ⠯ and
  • ⠿ for
  • ⠟ of
  • ⠮ the
  • ⠾ with
• strong wordsigns
• strong groupsigns
• lower groupsigns
• lower wordsigns
• initial-letter contractions (“dot 5 contractions”)
• final-letter groupsigns
• shortform words

Braille reader population estimates §

• APH’s federal quota census

  printing house. quota funds to make braille materials.

  Statements regarding student literacy, use of appropriate learning media, and students taught in a specific medium cannot be supported using APH registration data.

• No clear support for ‘10% braille literacy rate’ stat

  • 10% stat for fundraising
  • 10% stat to reduce braille accessibility

• Cogswell-Macy act for K-12

Bola et al §

• 29 sighted adults given a 9-month braille training course

Our study shows that most sighted adults can learn whole-world braille reading. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that adults with an intact visual system can learn such a complex tactile task, given the right motivation and method.

• “intact visual system”
• unclear definitions of visual impairment.
• “visual deprivation hypothesis” vs “tactile experience hypothesis”
• didn’t address “motivation” and “method”
  • unclear if the participants had strong motivations anyway
  • they didn’t use good adult braille teaching methods either

• poker in the dark
• pre-/post-test of tactical acuity (TA)
• what types of TA measurements are most relevant to braille reading
• is there a threshold of TA necessary for reading braille in the first place?
• baseline
• are there different strategies/methods for reading that people with high vs low TA use?

Bedny & MacSweeney §

• suggests that early blindness causes slow reading speeds
  • why?
  • ways to bypass this?
  • critical period theory?
• what about dual media learners?
• does away with the “deficit model”

Reading Wars §

• whether or not there should be early systematic instruction in phonics
  • phonics vs “whole language”
• “three cuing approach”
• cracking the “alphabetic code”
  • graphemes represent phonemes!
• development of alphabetic decoding skills
  • phonemic awareness
  • letter knowledge
• myths about phonics instruction
  • …teaches children to read nonwords
  • …interferes with reading comprehensions
  • …not of value because english is too irregular
  • …is boring
• …

Millar §

• contraction independently vs contraction as part of a word
  • frequency effects?
• contractions used as a whole (no separate contraction step)

The question whether contractions that occur as different segments of words pose specific difficulties is clearly an important issue.

Engelbretson et al §

• is braille read completely serially? do braille readers show chunking effects?
• distractor blob
• subjects were slowed down when a distractor interrupts two-cell contractions vs when the distractor is elsewhere
  • two-cell contractions are read as a single unit
  • sublexical structure
• morphemic awareness
  • do braille readers uncontract words into print spelling before recognizing them?
  • morphological bridging
  • error rates ($p < 0.01$)
    • bridged: 23.8%
    • control: 8.9%
  • made more errors, slower with morpho briding
  • not decoding to print spelling! morphemes matter!
• things Dr E would change
  • title focuses on justifying research in braille
    • wanted to make sure that it was seen as relevant in cogsci
    • would focus on braille itself, if he were to do it over

Ryles R §

• not a longitudinal study

• post-hoc descriptive correlational study

• findings

  • “more sight was not synonymous with lower unemployment rate and financial independence in this study”

  • “extensive and early acquisition of braille reading skills were the two factors that had a strong impact on employment rates”