been with my classes and my choices about majors if I had known Braille! It's a sad state of affairs that this misguidance is still occurring in today's mainstream schools with children who have extremely low vision or are blind. Sometimes parents are told that because of "modern digital communications" like audio books, braille isn't really necessary. But in my opinion, braille is essential for literacy gains.
Dear Louis, it took me several decades to see the
proverbial light, but thank God I found out that braille is just about the most useful skill a person who is blind even a person with very low vision can learn! Thank God I took the braille reading and writing courses from the (free) Hadley School for the Blind, and from a teacher in my state's Division of Rehabilitation Services! Thank goodness there were braille magazines to help to practice my braille skills, like "Our Special Magazine," from National Braille Press, and the Matilda Ziegler Magazine (now sadly discontinued in hard-copy braille).
Oh, dear Louis, the stories I could tell about
learning to use a Braille 'n Speak and then taking notes in graduate school faster than any of my sighted classmates; about borrowing print-braille books from National Library Services and joining National Braille Press's "Braille Book Club," so that I could read picture books to my then four-year-old son
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