                           OF LITERACY, BRAILLE,
                      AND THE ODDITIES OF SEMANTICS 
                           by Kenneth Jernigan 

Is it proper to refer to a blind person who cannot read Braille 
as illiterate? How much do we owe to the blind of the next generation, 
and how can we balance that obligation with the needs of the blind 
of today? I recently found myself pondering these and a variety of 
related questions. Here is how it happened: 
 
                                  December 31, 1989 

Dear Dr. Jernigan: 
  
I write you to shed some light on a recent controversy I have had 
with my fellow Federationists. First of all, I must give you some 
background. I have been in a local chapter of the Federation for over 
a year and have attended a national convention, which was an enlightening 
experience. Recently I was lobbying in the state capital for blind 
rights and further funding. One item on the agenda (an item which 
I wholeheartedly supported) was the request that Braille training 
be provided as an option for all children who are identified as legally 
blind in the school system. These children would learn Braille with 
other traditional reading and writing methods.  

I would have been one of those children back in the fifties who would 
have benefited from such a program. Now, at middle age, after dealing 
with retinitis pigmentosa for a number of years, I have seen the advantage 
of learning Braille and am currently pursuing the study of it.  
My dissatisfaction arose when my fellow Federationists referred to 
the adult community, in the process of losing their vision, as
"illiterate." 

This term is not appropriate for blind adults since it is synonymous 
with ignorance, lacking education, and violating speaking and writing 
patterns. Instead, I prefer to see myself as print handicapped or 
unable to access print. 

We have recently seen Dustin Hoffman win the Academy Award for his 
portrayal of an autistic savant. Twenty years ago, when I was a freshman 
and sophomore in college studying many psychologies, the term was 
"idiot savant." When we look to the deaf community, their 
strides are highlighted by the avoidance of the term "deaf and 
dumb." Fifteen years ago, I was an employee of our local board 
of education working with "emotionally disturbed" children. 
Once again, the terminology has been changed to include "learning 
disabled" or the "Office of Special Education." I make 
these illustrations to question the role of semantics in our view 
of ourselves and society's view of us. 

Let us make an assumption that the word illiterate is correct. Is 
a blind person skilled in Braille who experiences diabetic onset with 
a loss of feeling in the fingers then considered "illiterate?"  My
suggestion is as follows: Avoid emotional pleas to educators and 
congressmen at the expense of peers and fellow Federationists. We 
should be aware of linguistics and the part they play. Governmental 
agencies, libraries, and groups dealing with the blind look to the 
blind for cues in language and descriptive literature as to how we 
wish to be portrayed. 

I thank you for your time, and I look forward to any comments you 
have regarding this matter. 
  
                                  Very truly yours, 
 


                                  Baltimore, Maryland 
                                  January 11, 1990 
  
Dear ----: 

I have your thoughtful letter, and I thank you for it. The dictionary 
in my office says: "illiterate" 1. ignorant; uneducated; especially, 
not knowing how to read or write." Certainly a blind person who 
cannot read may be both well-educated and possessed of learning, but 
by definition one who cannot read cannot read. Therefore, according 
to the dictionary, such a person is at least one-third illiterate--in 
fact, more than one-third since the dictionary uses the word "especially." 
Illiteracy, it tells us, means "especially not knowing how to read or
write."
 
This brings us to the question of what it means to be able to read. 
Again, I turn to the dictionary in my office. It says: "read  
1. a) to get the meaning of (something written, printed, embossed, 
etc.) by using the eyes, or for Braille, the finger tips, to interpret 
its characters or signs."  That is what the dictionary says, and 
the definition seems quite clear. 

You are right in saying that the term "illiterate" carries 
negative connotations. You are also right in saying that we should 
find a way to make Braille available to blind children. You say that 
we should not use the term "illiterate" for a blind person 
who does not know Braille but that we should call such a person "print 
handicapped" or say that he or she "cannot access print."  How 
are we to distinguish between a blind child who reads Braille fluently 
and one who cannot read at all?  Both are "print handicapped," 
and neither can "access print." There is, of course, an exception. 
What about the blind person who puts a print page on a Kurzweil Machine 
and thus "accesses print?"
 
If we go to legislators and tell them that Braille must be made available 
to the "print handicapped" or those who cannot "access 
print," I fear that some of them (being truly illiterate) 
will not know what we are talking about. We must find a way to get 
their attention and help them cut through the jargon of some of the 
educators, so that blind children will have the opportunity to learn 
to read. In matters dealing with blindness, legislators (like the 
general public) tend unquestioningly to take the word of the so-called 
experts--not the blind, who live with the problem, but the professional 
educators, who theorize about it. Still, we must get their attention 
and make them understand, and it must be done in a manner that is 
not only true but also graphic and effective. Everybody (legislators, 
the general public--everybody) knows that to be illiterate is bad, 
and everybody knows (it is accepted without a second thought) that 
those who cannot read are illiterate. Therefore, a rather cryptic 
and powerful way of making our point is to say that a blind child 
who is denied the right to learn Braille is forced to be functionally 
illiterate--which, incidentally, is often the case and which in 
certain subtle ways is, at least to some extent, true of all of those 
who are so deprived. At least, so the dictionary tells us. 
Actually we are dealing on the one hand with semantics and on the 
other with the very real down-to-earth question of what we can do 
to see that blind children have the opportunity to learn Braille. 
As I have already said, there are certainly negative connotations 
to the term "illiterate," and nobody wants to cast aspersions 
on blind adults who, for whatever reason, did not learn to read Braille. 
So we have to speak with care and sensitivity, but we must also speak 
with whatever acerbity is required to see that blind children have 
the chance to be and do all that they can--and this means the chance 
to learn Braille. For the blind person there is simply no substitute. 
In the heat of battle, when we are trying to get something which is 
urgently needed for our children, we may sometimes forget to be temperate 
in our language. We should be careful about this. In our attempt to 
help the next generation we must try to avoid doing things which will 
hurt the present generation. But after saying all of this, I come 
back to the central point. Today's blind and visually impaired children 
simply must not be deprived of the right to learn to read Braille. 
This is key to their future, and we are the ones who have to get the 
job done. The children cannot do it for themselves, and their parents 
do not always have the background, the information, or the clout to 
do it. 

In a sense what I have said does not directly deal with some of the 
central points in your letter. I do not believe that an adult who 
has learned to read and has thereby become "literate" is generally 
regarded as illiterate if he or she loses the physical capacity to 
continue to be able to read. This may not precisely square with the 
dictionary definition, but I think that definition does not contemplate 
such a situation. 

Moreover, there is the added question of whether one is reading a 
book when one gets the information from a tape recorder, a live reader, 
a speech synthesizer, or (as I have already said) a Kurzweil Reading 
Machine. The dictionary would imply that one is not, but the matrix 
for the dictionary definition was formed in pre-technology days, fashioned 
by people who had probably not thought about the questions we are 
discussing. I had always believed that the definition of reading was 
"getting the thought from the printed page."  By this definition 
listening to a book on a tape would qualify, even if one generation 
removed. A sighted person reads a print book (or a blind person reads 
a Braille book) into a recorder, and a listener later activates that 
recorder, thus (one generation removed) getting the thought from the 
printed (or, I suppose, the Brailled) page. 

Still, when I stand before an audience of 2,000 people and read the 
text of a speech, we do not say that the audience read my speech. 
We say that I read it and that they listened to it. But later if they 
hear it on a cassette (especially if it is included in a publication--like,
say, the Braille Monitor), we may say that they read it. Does 
that mean that they are "literate" if they have access to a recorder,
"illiterate" if they lose that access, and "literate" if they get it back?
Probably not. One could be driven to the madhouse at the extremity of such
speculations. 

Ah, the labyrinthine complexities of semantics and human speech! The 
trouble is that the matter does not end with semantics but translates 
into opportunity or crushing deprivation. Certainly the National Federation
of the Blind is cognizant of and sensitive to the nuances of language 
in setting the tone of public behavior toward the blind. All one need 
do to verify this fact is read President Maurer's banquet speech of 
1989 or mine of 1983. 

In trying to get opportunities for our children we must not say or 
do things which will damage the present generation of adult blind 
persons, but I reiterate that (regardless of semantics, hair-splitting 
distinctions, definitions, or high-flown professional theory) we absolutely
must see that blind children have the chance to learn to read and 
that the climate of opinion in the schools (including the nuances 
of language) encourages and nourishes that chance. At the bottom line 
this means that blind and visually impaired children (all of them) 
must have the opportunity to learn Braille. Otherwise, their horizons 
will be narrowed and their prospects limited. 
 
                                  Sincerely, 


                                  Kenneth Jernigan 
                                  Executive Director 
                                  National Federation of the Blind 
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