DOTS for Braille Literacy (Development of Teacher Support), Volume 12, Number 3, Summer 2007

In this issue...

• From the Editor
• Audio-Assisted Reading and Braille
• Dear DOT
• News Briefs
• Calendar Dates of Interest

From the Editor

How do we achieve perfection?

Have you ever been working at your keyboard and been distracted for just a moment; then when you look at the screen or check the braille display, you find you've gotten off the home keys and at least half of what you've written is garbage? No, that's never happened to me, either. Well, how about: have you ever been typing or brailling along and your fingers stop because you just know you hit the wrong keys and your hands won't keep going forward until you stop to correct the error? No, that's never happened to me, either.

Well, maybe a few times.

How does that sort of stuff happen? How are the actions of our hands wired so that our brain recognizes what is going on? How does one become a perfect typist or braillist, and how can we ever increase our reading or writing speed? For that matter, how do some people ever learn to make sense of the print or braille in front of their eyes or fingers?

I'll leave those answers to someone else; it's all I can do to keep my fingers typing the letters correctly for this newsletter. Instead, I'll use information from others to find strategies to improve tactile perception and learn how to learn from the errors we make when we are reading and writing braille.

Carol Anne Evans, Ph.D., has written an article about audio-assisted reading. Now, don't leap to the conclusion that audio materials have nothing to do with braille literacy. Evans offers this as a method of assisting students who have tactile perception difficulties to increase their reading speeds and improve reading comprehension.

In Dear DOT, we read about "braillos," those pesky litttle errors similar to the ones some people are known to make when they type. (Oops! Did I get too many t's in little again?) Dot assures the reader that she is not the only person in the world to make such errors and shares information from Sheri Wells-Jensen on a study of braillos.

"News Briefs" and "Calendar Dates of Interest" offer ways to learn from others, to use technology to tutor students, and to keep up-to-date with information that may help in your efforts toward perfect braille literacy.

So, how do we achieve perfection?

Practice — specifically, we practice using correct methods, and we correct errors in order to be aware of the need to change how we do something. We use all the tools in our toolbox to figure out the best way(s) to learn new information and keep improving our skills and building knowledge. And we seek feedback from others who have achieved perfection (or close to it).

For now, let's concentrate on a perfect summer. Let's see, that would be sitting by the shore, or maybe hiking up a mountain trail, or a week of solitude while the kids are away at camp. Whatever "perfect summer" means, that is my wish for you.

—Marie J. Amerson, Editor

Audio-Assisted Reading and Braille

Carol Anne Evans, Ph.D.

Teachers of students with visual impairments who teach braille have had experience with students who learn to read easily and well. They have also had experience with students who struggle to learn to read. The reasons why students have difficulty in learning to read braille vary. Students may have identified or unidentified learning disabilities in addition to being blind or visually impaired. If the origin of a student's visual impairment is neurological, there is a greater likelihood that he or she has additional disabilities. Nevertheless, even students with strictly ocular causes of blindness or visual impairment, will sometimes have difficulty learning to read braille independently and efficiently.

Some students struggle for years, reading character by character, or worse, dot by dot. [Years ago I evaluated the braille reading of a 14-year-old student who stumbled over each character; her teacher prompted her to say the dot numbers, and then she could identify the letter. This method was more struggle than reading, and the student was unable to derive meaning from reading braille in this way.] Many students have reading deficits that cannot be explained by vision loss alone.

Some of these students have experienced traumatic brain injuries (e.g., auto-bicycle accidents, truck rollovers, and falls from trees or flagpoles).One of my students had such fine tactile discrimination that he could read accurately through a Band-Aid. However, his brain injury resulted in severely reduced processing speed. That, and his habit of compulsively checking his accuracy by backtracking, made his braille reading so inefficient that completing assignments in a timely manner was impossible.

The use of recorded materials in a variety of formats (e.g., tapes, digital, and computer synthesis) has come a long way from the days when it was primarily a substitute for reading when materials in braille or large print were not available, or when students had to read large quantities of material in a short period of time.

Audio-Assisted Reading is a method of using recorded books simultaneously with the corresponding book in another medium. For the purpose of this article, I will concentrate on methods for using recordings along with braille. It can assist students who struggle with braille for the various kinds of reasons detailed here.

The choppy, word-by-word reader, or one who is accurate, but very slow

Observe the student's speed of reading independently. Read to the student as he or she tracks along in the braille, just slightly faster than he or she reads independently. About once per sentence, stop reading and let the student read the next word. Gradually increase the frequency of stopping your oral reading, and allow the student to read the next several words.

Read chorally with the student, at a speed slightly faster than his or her independent reading speed. Do this several times, and then allow the student to read the passage independently.

As a compensatory method, for students with large volumes of material to read

Using playback equipment with variable speed, allow the student to adjust speed to his or her own tracking ability. Some students will gradually learn to read braille with auditory support at very high rates of speed with excellent comprehension.

The recorded book provides a model of fluent reading, discourages backtracking, and increases comprehension.

Some advantages of use of recorded materials along with braille include the following:

1. When braille reading is slow and labored, it consumes all the energy needed for comprehension. Research has proven the link between fluency and comprehension.
2. Use of dual sensory modalities may reduce the attention difficulties that interfere with comprehension.
3. Recorded textbooks provide cues to when it is time to examine charts, maps, and other graphics. They then instruct the reader to return to the text. Much valuable information may be obtained from this verbally guided exploration of the graphic materials.
4. Some students will improve their independent reading speed, fluency, and comprehension by using this method. Others may simply benefit from improved access to the general curriculum, and will require auditory support for efficient study. Students with a variety of print-related disabilities have successfully completed college and graduate school using Audio-Assisted Reading.

Dear Dot:

I have a student who is frustrated because I transcribe her work into print just like she brailled it, mistakes and all. I recognize that braille typing errors are not a representation of intelligence or understanding of language, but how can I explain to her the importance of noticing the errors so they can be corrected and she can learn to avoid making the errors so often?

—Eileen Wright

Dear Eileen (or is that ieliin?),

Print readers are very familiar with "typos," the errors that occur when an individual is keying in information and hits the wrong keys. In braille, we might call them "braillos."

That's actually what Sheri Wells-Jensen and her colleague Bradley E. Gosche called the errors when they conducted a study on the phenomenon. Dr. Wells-Jensen and Gosche, from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, were familiar with previous studies suggesting that braille typing errors were problems within the brailling system or a student's problem in mastering the system itself. Wells-Jensen and Gosche decided to look at the underlying processes involved in writing braille, or how the mind and hands work together to produce braille. They found that error is essentially natural, and determined that specific trends exist among the types of errors made.

Specifically, they studied the errors of an adult braillist who used a braille notetaker with a six-key Perkins-style keyboard. They organized the braille errors on the basis of type and classified them for further analysis. Within the study, they created what they termed a Model of Braille Writing Process that explained how spontaneous braille writing happens, and where errors are most likely to occur in each step of the process. The process they outlined for spontaneous braille writing included the following:

1. An individual searches for the word he or she hopes to use; errors at this level involved either the whole word or parts of the word with individual meaning.
2. The individual spells the word, leading to the potential for misordering the various components involved (letters, contractions, and other characters).
3. The individual accesses information on character shape. Errors at this level involved mirrored cells (such as the characters for 'e' and 'i') or raising or lowering with cells (such as the characters for 'e' and the contraction 'en').
4. The shape of the cell is analyzed for each hand, and finger designations are made for each hand. Errors at this level often involve the anticipation or misplacement of a specific dot.
5. The notion of synchronization comes into play — both hands work together to create an individual character; when they do not react in conjunction with one another, errors are made due to the hands being out of sync with one another.

Dr. Wells-Jensen and Gosche concluded that, just as in speech and typing errors, brailling errors are made on multiple levels, including whole words, individual parts of words, characters, and single dots within characters. Similarly, they expect that errors occur across brailling codes and exist evenly within the various codes. Errors involving dot substitutions are more likely to occur within the same hand. They note that characters and contractions are stored as single units in the mind — contractions exist within one's knowledge of the word and are transferred as such.

Wells-Jensen and Gosche formulated these hypotheses based on errors they gathered over a six-year period studying one adult braillist. (They are currently examining data from similar research with a larger sample.) The researchers concluded that braille writing error is natural. Focusing on how the error happens can help to alleviate it and help educators come up with strategies and exercises to reduce it.

Maybe knowing she's not the only one who makes braillos and that researchers are trying to find ways to understand the process will help your student feel better about your strategy of calling attention to her errors. I'm sure you remind her that the classroom teacher focuses on typing errors of sighted students as well. Both of you do that in order to make students aware of the mechanical errors so they can reduce them in the future. Perhaps with additional studies by Dr. Wells-Jensen, Gosche, and other researchers, we can come to a better understanding of how braillos happen and formulate strategies and exercises to reduce braille writing errors. Good luck!

—Dot

News Briefs

National Braille Association features "Ask An Expert" on its Web site

The National Braille Association (NBA) has announced a new website feature called "Ask An Expert." The new feature offers an opportunity for individuals to post questions to skilled experts in the field of braille transcription. Lists are moderated by NBA members skilled in particular areas of expertise, including Braille Formats Course, Computer-Assisted Transcription, Educational Materials (Textbook Format), Foreign Language, Literary Braille, Mathematics and Science, Music Braille, Online Learning, Tactile Graphics, and Transcriber and Educator Services. Visit www.nationalbraille.org to ask your questions and network with others in the field who may have similar questions and be able to provide helpful answers.

HumanWare Launches Nemeth Tutorial for BrailleNote mPower Family

HumanWare, a leader in assistive technologies for people who are blind or visually impaired, recently announced the launch of the Nemeth Tutorial for the BrailleNote mPower family of notetakers. The tutorial, written by Dr. Gaylen Kapperman and Jodi Sticken of Northern Illinois University, is presented in 18 chapters with lessons covering everything from the basics of writing numbers to statistics. Each lesson is organized into four parts: an explanation of the lesson, and reading, writing, and proofreading exercises. The Nemeth Tutorial is available as an option for the BrailleNote mPower BT and QT only, running the latest version of KeySoft. Visit www.humanware.com or telephone (800) 722-3393 for more information.

Freedom Scientific Offers FSBraille Coach

A free web download from Freedom Scientific allows teachers to use everyday word processing software to create custom interactive braille study lessons. The tutorial is called FSBraille Coach and comprises 51 lessons that include basic tests for beginners and more rigorous exercises for more advanced braille readers. The free software download was created for use with Freedom Scientific's PAC Mate accessible Pocket PC using PAC Mate version 4.1 or later. Students use their PAC Mate braille display to learn through a series of lessons and reading exercises. They can get immediate spoken help with any braille symbol they encounter by pressing a button above the symbol. The PAC Mate will first say the symbol, then speak the word and spell it out. Lessons are designed as a teaching support for uncontracted and contracted braille. Visit www.FreedomScientific.com or telephone (800) 444-4443 for more information.

BANA News

The Braille Authority of North America (BANA) meeting in October, 2006, in Washington, DC, was hosted by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of Congress (NLS). The Spring 2007 meeting in Louisville, KY. was hosted by the American Printing House for the Blind (APH), another member organization of BANA. The fall meeting featured election of the following officers: Judy Dixon, Chairperson; Eileen Curran, Vice-Chairperson; Jennifer Dunnam, Secretary; Mary Archer, Treasurer. The officers of BANA are charged with the mission and purpose of ensuring literacy for tactile readers through the standardization of braille and/or tactile graphics. BANA facilitates the use, teaching and production of braille. Visit www.brailleauthority.org to learn more about the Braille Authority of North America.

Note: The editor of DOTS invites you to submit links to news about braille for future issues of DOTS.

Calendar Dates of Interest

• July 13-15, 2007 - Omaha, Nebraska. Families Connecting with Families. This national conference, which covers all aspects of raising and educating a child who is blind or visually impaired, is sponsored by the National Association for Parents of Children with Visual Impairments, the American Foundation for the Blind, and The Seeing Eye. For more information visit www.napvi.org, www.afb.org or www.seeingeye.org.
• July 30 - August 4, 2007. - Baltimore, Maryland. National Federation of the Blind Youth Slam. NFB, Johns Hopkins University, NASA, and the National Science Foundation will host an event designed to strengthen science literacy for youth who are blind or visually impaired. Visit www.nfb.org and connect to the Youth Slam link for more information.
• September 27-29, 2007. - Atlanta, Georgia. AFB Workshop - Braille Literacy: A Functional Approach. Presenter - Diane Wormsley. (See AFB Calendar of Events for details.)
• October 11-13, 2007. - Louisville, Kentucky. Annual Meeting of the American Printing House for the Blind. The theme will be "Expanding the Core." For more information visit www.aph.org or call (800) 223-1839.
• October 18-20, 2007. - Atlanta, Georgia. AFB Workshop - Looking to Learn: Teaching the Use of Low Vision Devices. Presenters: Carol Farrenkopf and Frances Mary D'Andrea. (See AFB Calendar of Events for details.)
• November 29 - December 2, 2007 - St. Pete Beach, Florida. 2007 Getting In Touch With Literacy Conference. The theme of the 8th biennial conference will be "Chart a Course to Literacy for Students with Visual Impairments." For more information check www.gettingintouchwithliteracy.com or call (813) 837-7829.
• January 30 - February 2, 2008. - Orlando, Florida. Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) Conference. For more details check www.atia.org or call (877) 687-2842.
• July 22-27, 2008. - Chicago, Illinois. AER International Conference. Be on the lookout for a Call for Papers. Visit www.aerbvi.org for more information.

DOTS (Development of Teacher Support) for Braille Literacy is published three times a year (October, February, and June), and is available online at: www.afb.org/dots or in braille, by request. For further information please contact:

DOTS Editor
American Foundation for the Blind
100 Peachtree Street, Suite 620
Atlanta, GA 30303
Telephone: (404) 525-2303
Fax: (404) 659-6957
E-mail: literacy@afb.net

If you would like routinely to receive an e-mail alerting you to the posting of future issues of the DOTS newsletter, please send a message to Shirley Landrum (slandrum@afb.net) as follows: In the subject line, please write "DOTS notification," and in the body of the message please include your entire name and any changes to your contact information that may have occurred over the last 12 months. You will be signed up to receive notices automatically. If you choose not to receive an e-mail notice, you will still be able to access current and archived issues of DOTS online at www.afb.org/dots; and if you are a braille format subscriber, you will continue to receive your DOTS newsletter in braille.

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