SALON

Wednesday, Feb 3, 2010 5:30 PM UTC

Why is braille dying?

In an age of audiobooks, only 10 percent of blind kids learn it. But listening isn't the same as reading

By and

Topics: Disability, Books,

Why is braille dying?

A version of this post previously appeared on The Biblio Files blog.

If you listen to an audiobook, have you read the book?

It’s undoubtedly a different experience to read a book with just ink and paper (or pixels and screen) between you and the author, than it is to listen to someone’s vocalization of the sentences. In “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain” author Maryanne Wolf describes how the brain processes written information differently than audio or other information. Stanislas Dehaene delves even further into the science of reading in his book “Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention.” Listening or reading? It seems like an academic question. What difference does it really make? But a couple of articles I read recently have made me wonder.

In this New York Times article, we find that many blind people, including the governor of New York, don’t read braille. Instead they rely on audiobooks, recordings of newspapers and magazines, and human assistants to orally brief them on the business of the day. Text-to-speech technology allows people to hear their e-mails and other documents.

And in this Canadian Broadcasting Corp. article, we find that the major provider of books in braille in Canada is about to go out of business if it can’t get government funding or some other source of revenue. They are having a hard time convincing people that braille is even necessary anymore.

In the New York Times article, one advocate for the disabled characterizes blind people who don’t read braille as illiterate. He describes their writing as “phonetic and butchered.” If it were merely a matter of acquiring information, as seems to be the case with the woman profiled in the New York Times, then there’s no doubt that the quickest, most efficient method of “reading” is preferable.

I can’t help thinking that it’s a mistake to let braille die, though. According to the National Federation of the Blind, only 10 percent of blind children learn braille today, down from 50 percent in the 1950s, and only 10 percent of blind people in America read braille. Is it just as good to listen to a book as it is to read it? When I listen to a book, my mind wanders more often than it does when I read a book. If I want to read faster or slower, it’s up to me, not the person who is reading (although there are audiobooks now with adjustable speeds). My brain seems more passive when I’m listening than when I’m reading, but that could be a lack of mental discipline on my part.

Human beings have been talking and listening to each other for at least 50,000 years. We’ve been reading and writing for around 7,000 or 8,000 years. People don’t have to be taught to listen. Reading is a different, more complex activity than listening.

Don’t get me wrong — audiobooks are great for car trips or when you’re in the gym. Multitasking dynamos like Gov. Paterson and others, blind or not, find audiobooks and other recorded documents an efficient way to acquire information. You have to admire that.

 But listening isn’t reading. I hope that braille instruction and braille books remain an available option for people who can’t read print.

More Stephen Towey.

More Helen Cota.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 20 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
196 points197 points | 7 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
166 points167 points | 27 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
124 points125 points | 59 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
73 points74 points | 15 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
45 points46 points | 5 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations