Parents Become Braille Teachers

Like many 5-year-olds, Mikaella Bresson is learning to read. So is her mother, who at 32 recently earned graduate degrees in law and public policy.

The two are studying Braille: Mikaella because she is blind, born with congenital cataracts and glaucoma that stole all but the faintest trace of her vision. Her mother, Nalida, although fully sighted, has been poring over a Braille manual designed to promote fluency in the medium that many advocates for the blind say offers the most effective path to literacy.

“Many public school teachers today will say, ‘Oh, it’s too cumbersome or too hard to learn’ -- or, ‘You don’t need it because you can hire a reader,’ or, ‘Use computers or tape recorders,’ ” said Eric Clegg, who is in charge of Braille productions for the California Department of Rehabilitation. “They are wrong.”

Clegg, 55, who was born prematurely and blind and who reads 300 words per minute in Braille, added: “From Braille comes literacy.”

Nalida Bresson’s Braille textbook came as part of a package that is distributed to families with preschool-age blind children by the National Braille Press in Boston. Armed with grants from foundations sponsored by Reader’s Digest and other philanthropies, the nonprofit publishing house is poised to go national with a Boston program called “Read Books! Because Braille Matters.”

The plan to encourage sighted parents to serve as Braille educators and advocates for their blind children captured the attention of First Lady Laura Bush, who last month agreed to serve as an honorary chairwoman.

Working with state agencies as well as organizations that assist the visually impaired, the project hopes to reverse a precipitous decline in Braille literacy. In the early 1960s, according to Braille Press, 52% of blind people 18 and younger could read Braille. By 1990, the figure had dropped to 10%.

The “very serious drop” in Braille literacy occurred gradually, National Braille Press President Bill Raeder said. Beginning in the 1960s, as blind children were taken out of special schools and placed in mainstream classrooms, most public schools de-emphasized reading for the visually impaired. Teaching Braille in public schools required special teachers -- and, some argued, made blind children feel stigmatized and self-conscious.

Taped books became an acceptable substitute for Braille reading. The advent of technology such as voice-activated computers also made the practice of running fingers across a page coded with raised dots seem anachronistic and intimidating. “All this -- the problem of Braille literacy not being promoted and promulgated in our schools and homes -- kind of snuck up on us,” Raeder said.

The consequences of Braille illiteracy are all too familiar to Raeder, a former geologist who lost his sight in 1960 in a dynamite accident off the Alaskan coast. The explosion also claimed his right hand and all but two fingers on his left.

He has tried to learn Braille on three occasions, “but I just don’t have the sensitivity in those two fingers to be able to distinguish all the characters.

“I have been able to get up to three to four words per minute, and after that I have to interpolate. It doesn’t work very well.”

The deficiency nags at him during meetings where both blind and sighted people are present, Raeder said: “A blind person who reads Braille is able to refer to the papers they are discussing, and I can’t. Or the blind person can read from prepared notes -- and I can’t.”

From figures compiled from agencies nationwide, Raeder estimates that “Read Books!” material will be going to about 7,000 blind children 7 and younger. Many more children in this age group are unable to see, often because of problems associated with extreme prematurity, Raeder said. Those children often suffer from multiple physical problems that prevent them from reading at all, he said.

But Amy Ruell, a blind psychotherapist who is coordinating the “Read Books!” program, said the effort to promote Braille may be hindered by a shortage of teachers versed in Braille. “I know of children in Massachusetts who get an hour of education in Braille a week,” she said. “Can you imagine a sighted child getting one hour a week in reading instruction?”

Ruell said she also expects resistance from some parents who see Braille as an obstacle in a culture that cherishes conformity.

“Parents need their children to be as ‘normal’ as possible,” she said. “And many of them still think of Braille as some mysterious code.”

At her home in Boston, Nalida Bresson said she is determined that both she and Mikaella will master Braille. “Nothing can replace literacy,” she said. “Not a computer, not a tape recorder -- nothing can replace the excitement of actually having the words under your fingers.”

But the process of reading Braille is coming more quickly for Mikaella than for her mother.

“It is so much easier to learn as a child. The mind can do so many things when you are young,” Bresson said. “But if I work at it, maybe I too can read in the dark one day.”