Hi Sandeep,
Mr Vashisht has well mentioned the advantages of braille. I will add that
braille is very helpful during presentations where you can jot down the
cue
points on a paper. Listening to Jaws via speakers disturbs the audience
and
headphones might look odd and can even confuse you. During speeches too
braille is helpful.
Technology may not be available everywhere, all the time. You can utilise
time well if you know braille. Besides, learning a thing always comes in
use
somewhere.
So, do learn braille, it would definitely be a bonus.
Regards
Shadab
When you feel afraid or nervous to do a thing then do it because the real
harm which you may thus receive is less poignant than its expectation and
fear.
Easy tips of improving English at
http://shadablucknow.blogspot.com/
My contributions to the press
http://shadablucknow.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-contributions-to-press.html#link
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandeep Singh" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2010 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: [AI] NYt
Nice little story, but it still confuses a little bit more: to learn
braille or not. As a matter of fact, I started by learning braille
but after the initial period, I've hardly ever find any real use.
Regards,
Sandeep
At 12:31 PM 28-12-10, you wrote:
David Paterson Learned Without Braille - NYTimes.com
The New York Times
December 26, 2010
For Paterson's Parents, the Choice Was Independence Over Special Education
By
JEREMY W. PETERS
It is a quandary that parents of disabled children grapple with
early and often: What is the right balance between teaching them
self-sufficiency and making
sure they have the special accommodations they need?
As Gov.
David A. Paterson
has discovered, the way parents answer these questions has a
tremendous impact on how disabled children fare in the adult world.
Mr. Paterson, in recent interviews, has expressed worry about
leaving the governor's office and learning to live on his own again,
after years of relying
on others for a variety of tasks, like guiding him up stairs and
reading his mail.
He never learned to read
Braille,
as about 50 percent of blind children did at the time he was growing
up. Instead, he used what little sight he had in his right eye to
read with high-powered
glasses, attending regular classes in a public school.
That decision was driven by his parents,
Basil A. Paterson
and Portia Paterson, who were determined to shield him from any
stigma and insisted that they would not place young David in
special education classes.
The teaching of Braille was far more common in the early 1960s, when
Mr. Paterson, now 56, was entering elementary school, according to
the National Federation
for the Blind. Now, with the development of technologies like
software that reads material aloud at high speeds, only 10 percent
of blind children learn
Braille.
"Sometimes the argument is 'I don't want my child to be different,
so I don't want them to learn Braille,' " said Mark A. Riccobono,
executive director
of the
Jernigan Institute,
the research and training division of the national federation. "On
one level there is something to that argument. But in the long term
it means they have
fewer tools in their toolbox."
There are no easy answers, of course, about what path is the right
one for a blind child.
Sheri Wells-Jensen, an associate professor of linguistics at Bowling
Green State University who is blind, said, "I hated it when I got
pulled out of the
mainstream classroom to do something the other kids didn't have to do."
Ms. Wells-Jensen said she eventually came to accept Braille but
fully understood why children and their parents would resist,
because of the common misperception
that blind people have extremely limited capabilities.
"If you buy that cultural stereotype, you're not going to want to be
seen hauling a big old Braille book around," Ms. Wells-Jensen said.
"You aren't going
to want to be pulled out of the classroom to learn Braille."
Parents like Mr. Paterson's often go to great lengths to create as
normal a life as possible for their blind children. The Patersons
searched all around
New York City and its suburbs for a school that would not segregate
David into special education.
When they finally settled on the Hempstead school district on Long
Island, their son's school had to order large-type textbooks to
accommodate him. David
learned to read by putting on his glasses and pressing his face
close to the page so he could make out the words.
When he tried to learn cursive writing in the third grade, he would
stand next to the blackboard to see.
To this day, he uses a pair of high-magnification glasses to read
letters and write personal checks. But he is able to focus on
reading and writing for
only a few minutes before the strain overwhelms him. During his
years as governor, aides have read daily briefings, newspaper
articles and personal correspondence
into a special voice mail system for him to listen to.
Mr. Paterson, who is proud of the way his parents raised him, said
in an interview that his life would be no less difficult had he
learned Braille because
Braille has its limitations, too.
"I don't think things would have been easier for me if I had learned
Braille because there's a point that you get to in Braille where
they can't Braille
everything for you," he said. "You can't Braille the daily newspaper."
While parents want their children to live without the stigma that
special education classes carry, some experts say that this often
plays down the child's
limitations.
"Parents see Braille as saying their kid is really blind," said
Diana Brent, who is blind and has studied the developmental
differences between blind children
who read Braille and those who do not.
"I've often thought that partially sighted people might have a
harder go of it because they're trying to live in two worlds," Ms.
Brent said. "I live in
a sighted world, but I function as a blind person. I'm not trying to
function as if I can see because I never have."
The governor said he was much better at recognizing his limitations
now than when he was younger. "What you learn as you get a little
older," Mr. Paterson
said, "is you really aren't exactly like anyone else."
Mr. Paterson was just 3 months old when he lost most of his vision,
as a result of an infection. He can see nothing out of his left eye
and just shapes,
shadows and colors out of his right.
The governor's mother - despite her insistence that he be treated as
a regular boy - also helped him recognize that he needed a balance
between striving
for independence and asking for help when he needed it.
In the book "Sacred Bonds: Black Men and Their Mothers" by Keith
Michael Brown, Mr. Paterson tells a story about a conversation he
had with his mother after
he had broken his wrist jumping out of his brother's bedroom window
to win a $5 bet.
His mother cautioned him that he could not take risks like other
boys, but she also urged him to keep going to mobility classes to
learn how to get around
more safely.
He recalled her saying to him: "You felt you had to pretend to your
friends that you don't have a sight problem. I thought that going to
this course would
be a message to your friends that you need a little help every once
and a while."
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