Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Callie Sandel. I am a first year student at Clemson University. I got my undergrad from Winthrop University. I grew up here in the Midlands. I went to Lexington High School and this is still where my family lives, in the Lexington-Columbia area.

What is your experience today, using braille in everyday life?

Braille is not something I use every single day, but when the time comes that I do need to use it, it's wonderful for finding room numbers in an unfamiliar building, reading agendas, reading little tidbits of information. I know that I've used song lyrics when everybody is singing the same song instead of having the page right in front of my face and trying to figure out the words and getting left behind. Just little things like that, it really comes in handy. I've started using it when I have to give speeches in front of a class, having notes in braille on a note card. Just little bullet points, nothing extensive, just to keep me on track instead of really having to rely on my memory. So it definitely comes in use.

What do you remember about when you first started learning Braille?

I was kind of an odd candidate for learning Braille. I actually started learning Braille at the same time I was learning print, they went hand in hand. So it's something that’s definitely ingrained in my memory permanently. My Mom, when she found out that I was legally blind, insisted upon it, would not take no for an answer. So, from kindergarten all the way up to the 12th grade, I had a braille class every single day. I read novels just it was my kind of downtime, in high school especially. I just go and sit in a room for 45 minutes and read whatever book we were reading at that time just to keep my mind fresh on it because I didn’t use it in the classroom. So that’s really how I learned it.

How old were you when your parents learned that you are legally blind?

I was (oh, goodness) just over a year, old enough to talk but not really old enough to follow any specific directions. My Mom tells a story about how, one day, it was kind of dark in the kitchen and she was saying, “Callie, come over here.” I said, “Oh, but I can't see you.” That just ruined her and that, from that point on, like we went to 14-15 doctors and nobody could really figure out what was going on because I have so much functional daytime vision. It's at night and in dim lighting that it really escapes me.

Has your vision changed over the years or has it pretty much stay the same?

It has changed for the worse. I find that I can't read like the expiration date on a milk carton. It's the most aggravating thing where I've really noticed it that is the expiration dates on things. So, knowing Braille has come in handy, like I said, more for notes in front of classes to get speeches. I'm finding that I'm using it more and more that it's definitely been nice to have as a back-up plan.

Why was your Mom so adamant about you learning Braille along with learning print? I could imagine a lot of parents would just, you know, there's a stigma I'm learning attached to braille. So, so I think your Mom is very forward-thinking, why was she so adamant about it?

She is forward-thinking, she’s a pretty smart lady, and she’s stubborn. Really, my understanding of trying to get a child to be taught braille in the public school system is that you have to be adamant. You have to not take no for an answer and I think that’s really what she did. Fifteen years ago, it was just unheard of for somebody with high partial vision to be taught Braille, and I was lucky enough that I was in a really good school district. She kind of knew the district administrator through some other friends, and so she had some ins…"

Though she had some ins.

What was the hardest thing that you remember about learning Braille?

Oh, I’ve always wished that I had better tracking. The bringing one hand down and getting half, you know, a third of the way through the next line. I’ve never been good at that. The original teacher that I had didn’t instill that in me, so that’s really the hardest thing for me. That little lapse between lines. And the, the more advanced punctuation- the parenthesis and the math especially, all those symbols. It’s hard to keep track of sometimes, especially since I don’t use it every single day.

Looking back now when you think about being taught braille from, it sounds like the earliest ages, what’s your opinion as a young adult now of the way that you were taught as a young child?

I, in retrospect the very first instructor that I had, though he was nice and though we got along, he wasn’t really the best teacher for me. And I think my mom realized that about the seventh or eighth grade and we swapped to a new teacher who- we really started from the get go. But it was harder to learn as a seventh and eighth grader, so though the alphabet and the contractions are forever ingrained in my mind, which I don’t think they would be if I had learned it later in life. Some of it still is- it’s always a little bit iffy, and I always find myself having to kind of, oh yeah that’s what that means with some of the punctuation.

How would you describe the difference between the good teaching that you got growing up and the teaching that could’ve been better? What was it that made the difference?

Drills. The stuff that nobody likes to do. The stuff that as an eighth grader I dreaded going to braille class because I knew this woman was gonna be a drill sergeant and was gonna make me do my slate and stylus, that’s all I had. You know, calluses on my fingers and, but, in retrospect that’s what I needed. Making sure that we didn’t move on to the next level until I, 110 percent had the foundation that I needed. I mean, as an eighth grader who had been taught braille since kindergarten, we were going over the alphabet. We were going back over all the contractions and having immediate recognition and immediate recall, and we weren’t moving on until I had that. And so that was, that was something that I think I really needed.

How many other students were in the school with you who were learning braille?

I was the only one. It was one on one attention from both of the instructors, I was the only blind child, K throught 12, up until I was in the tenth grade.

How did that make you feel?

Um, kind of like the odd person out. I mean, it wasn’t ever really something that I dwelled on, it’s just the way it had always been. You know, I figured that no other blind person had blind kids at their school. And so, but you’re always, you know-I jokingly now say, Oh I’m the blind girl at the party [laughter]. It’s just, you know, that’s who I was and that’s- it wasn’t something that bothered me or that I dwelled on, that was just my identity.

Was there more that you were gonna say? Sorry.

No, no. That’s it.

OK. Today, when you read for pleasure, what kind of material, in terms of content, do you read? And how do you read it? Do you listen to it? Do you read it with Braille? Do you read large print? What’s your method for reading for pleasure?

[laughs] There’s pleasure reading in grad school? When I do find time to read a book just for fun I generally get it through the RFB&D because it is a real person reading the book.

Could you say what that means? You said RFB&D.

The Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. They’re a- I want to say they’re a non-profit organization and they have volunteers read anything from textbooks to pleasure reading, and then they record it onto CDs, and they have special playback devices that they sell to the public and you can speed up the speech and you can navigate, they have different levels of navigation. And, their CD players actually have a keypad with the twelve standard keys and a few extra other buttons. And you can do all your navigation that way.

So for pleasure, that’s what you like to read?

For pleasure that’s what I, I do, just because it’s a human voice. But for school reading and any other reading that I need to do I use a screen reader. Either Kurzweil, which is a screen reader application or ZoomText has a screen reader application too, so I kind of toggle back ‘cause they have their strengths and weaknesses.

In terms of content, what’s your pleasure reading?"

Oh, goodness, I don’t pleasure read anymore. [laughs]

Okay. When you did.

Comedies, something that is not too deep. I don’t really like the one for the ones where at the end you’re like sobbing hysterically, that’s just not fun for me. The last book I read was about a circus. I mean, just anything, kind of if somebody else says, “Oh, I read this, really a good book,” then just whatever other people are reading and say they like.

So no braille reading for either pleasure or for school.

No, I used to. I used to, in high school, do it in class and kind of push myself to do it at home. They used to send out Goosebumps books in braille. I don't know how I ended up getting the Goosebumps books in braille, but I remember several nights not being able to sleep and not wanting to turn on the light [laughs] and reading my spooky Goosebumps books in braille. But that’s been so long ago.

What’s it like for you in graduate school, what kinds of things do you do to get by, to access your text to complete your assignments, to do the research, those sorts of things? I know that at my school where I teach, in the library, the academic databases don’t have especially accessible interfaces for searching.

I don’t know that I want to use the word “lucky,” but I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of residual vision. So as far as scanning the page, I can pick out the headings and the important stuff that needs to be tagged that often times isn’t. So my ZoomText software, which I can change the contrast on, I use a 2 ½ times magnification and you bump around with your mouse and you can eventually see the whole screen. So, for research, that’s what I use. And then the Kurzweil 1000 for PDF files is character recognition software. Then, ZoomText also has a screen reader application, so if I find an abstract that I want to read through pretty quickly, I can just do some key strokes and click on the first word and it goes.

You're a student at Clemson?

Yes.

I have two questions following up on what you've just said. What is it that you're getting a master’s degree in?

Public administration.

So, are there articles that you get out of JSTOR?

Yes.

Those are often very poorly OCRed. You know, it's a scanned image of a journal that might be 30 years old with very rough OCR behind the image. So, what do you do with text like that?

I can't say that I've run in into enough that I have a protocol for. If it's something that I really, really have to read, I would print it out and I would put it under my CCTV and get the kind of basic idea, because I do have that residual vision.

Is that a device, the CCTV with the camera?

Yes.

Is it a device that you own?

I do. I have one that I got through the Lion’s Club in high school. So, it's mine, nobody can take it from me. [laughs]

[laughs] Does your academic library, which is Clemson, have good assisted-technology resources in the library?

I've been fighting with these people tooth and nail because they don’t have…I don’t know what they have and they don’t know what they have. There's an assisted-technology room that has, I think, a CCTV and some flatbed scanners and some computers that are “accessible,” but you have to have a key. Being that I don’t go to campus very often and that all the library database information is online, I haven’t really found the need to go and really poke around. But when I asked them, “Can we get zoom text in these labs where I like to print?” They're just not willing to do it. So, I can't just go to a computer on campus and make it work.

Without its being a hassle.

Well, I can't, period, and it's endlessly frustrating.

I can imagine. But do you have fellow students at Clemson who also would benefit from assisted-technologies designed to help to fulfill the needs of students with vision like yours or no vision? Are there other students?

I’m sure that there are. None that I know personally, I haven’t been there very long, and when I say, “Can we get zoom text on at least one or two computers around?” Their justification for not getting it is that they don’t think there's a big enough use, that there's not enough high partial students who would utilize it.

Have they done a study?

I'm not sure.

Have they surveyed the students at the school?

No. [laughs]

They don't know really.

They don't know and that's just it. When I ask them what version they have or, what is there. They don't know. They say they'll call somebody. Then two weeks later, I'm like, did you ever call that person? Oh no, no, they didn't know either. So nobody, they are all kind of pointing me in circles. George:That’s got to be frustrating.

I just want to print. I don't really want to do anything. I mean, I paid 12 dollars to print, and I want to print.

You want to print it in a larger font?

No. I just want to print. I just want to be able to, if I have a 20 page paper due, instead of printing it on my personal ink, on my personal paper . . .

I see.

Utilize my 12 dollars.

But their computers don't have the assistive enhancement software that will allow you to get them to print . . .

No.

. . . like you can do on your home computer.

Yes. They tell me that they have Windows Magnifier. I don't know if you guys have played around with that but it's a joke. It's a joke.

That's too bad.

[Laughter] So, that's their thing. We have Magnifier. [laughs] Really?

You were the first student, the first interviewee that is a student in higher education either, undergraduate or graduate. That's why I asked all these questions . . .

Yeah.

. . . about library access. But turning back to our standard set of questions. In terms of literacy, some people say that listening to a book, that, that's not an example of literacy. That you're not literate unless you're reading by sight or through braille. That's what makes a person literate. What's your opinion on the issue?

I agree with those people. I think that you can't learn spelling. You can't learn proper punctuation. You can't learn how words are supposed to flow together properly unless you can read them, either tactually or visually and write them. I know a lot of people who have tried to get into the higher education systems and their writing has suffered so poorly that they don't do as well. Because they've always just taken the audio out. Which is great. I mean, once you get to the point to where you can do it, go for it. But you do need to learn, you know. You don't, you can't learn where a comma goes by sitting in English class. You have to constantly see it and be exposed to it. I agree with those people.

So, the emphasis that you're making, that's interesting is, your writing skills will be very weak if you don't know how to read braille.

If you don't know how to read braille, if you haven't had access to print, yes. If print isn't an option, then you need braille to get those punctuation and those spelling skills. Cause you're not going to get them through an audio book.

So, would you say that there are advantages enjoyed by braille readers that sighted readers miss out on?

You don't have to get up and turn the light on. I can sit here and be looking through an agenda and continue to make eye contact with you. I found that . . . The reason I started utilizing the braille note cards for my public speaking classes, is because I could still scan the room and make “eye contact” with the people in the class and still be getting information from my note cards. It's got some advantages.

Yeah. I'd love to be able to do that.

[Laughter]

Ok. Turning from reading to writing. When you write, and you're in graduate school, so you have to write a lot, I'm assuming.

Yes, yes.

How do you compose? What tools do you use? How do you edit?

I use the same tools that everybody else does. Microsoft Word, and use my ZoomText to proofread, to scan through and make sure. Sometimes I think I have an advantage with my screen reader. And I can read more quickly. People walk in and I'm reading speed and a half from what they'd normally be able to do. I can get through assignments more quickly. Then when I'm proofreading, I might as well have somebody in the room reading my document back to me. So I can tell if a sentence form is right, or if it sounds choppy or not. Sometimes when you're just visually scanning over something, you know how you want it to sound in your head. But it may not really sound that way. So there's some advantages to the assistive technology too, I think.

The voices are getting more and more natural.

Yes.

The first time I heard a screen reader was about ten years ago. Hearing what the Apple VoiceOver system does and you can choose all these different voices, it's amazing.

It is. When they're bad, they're bad. When they're good, they're appreciated. [Laughter]

Obviously, it's going to depend on who your audience is, I was going to ask, do you use a brailler? Do you ever write in braille for an audience of braille readers?

I had a guy that I was dating for a while who lost his vision 18 months prior to us meeting and so he was learning Braille at Louisiana centre for the blindness program run by the National federation of the blind and so even though we talked on the phone, I would write him letters in Braille and send it to him so that he could get some extra practice and in sort of “See spot run” kind of stuff that really was meaningless for him to try to read, it was that added push to really try to decipher what was on the page. And so that’s really probably in the last ten years the only braille that I have composed for another blind person.

And if you are not writing for a blind person, you don’t necessarily need to write in braille?

No.

How would you describe the difference in when you are composing a text for one of your professors in graduate school versus when you are composing a braille text for somebody who is blind. Not that you have done, as you said, a lot of the ladder of those two, what is the difference between the two in creating the text.

You have to be, with the braille writer especially, you have to make sure you know exactly, when I would write this letters I would write them first in a Word document and then transcribe them over because nobody likes scratchy braille where you mess it up and you have to scratch it out.

And then you punch it again.

And then you punch it again, it doesn’t come out as crisp, so you have to be more exact and I think in that way the Word and the technology has made composing that much easier. But there is not a whole lot of difference; I mean what you just figure out what you are going to say and you say it. It’s just another medium for doing it.

When you were a child, were there adult role models who were visually impaired or blind that were there adults with visual impairment or who are blind that you looked up to as role models in your life.

That’s come later, oddly enough, I went to the Lion’s camps and hung out with a bunch of blind kids and they were blind camps of course but nobody really sticks out you know I want to be like that person and that’s come later in life and there wasn’t really anybody that read braille all my sided braille professors didn’t read braille tactically, they read it visually.

Oh wow.

And so, I wasn’t exposed to people reading braille, it was just something that I did, because there was nobody else [laughing].

Do you think that it would be important for young person who is visually impaired to have adult role models like them or would that be important?

It is important, it is important to know people like yourself to, I used to jokingly, when I got older could explain it, going to camps and being with other blind kids, you feel like you are the only purple person in town until you go and hang out and then there is a whole bunch of other purple people and you know you are not the odd bird out anymore, so I think that would be helpful and there is a stigma attached to reading braille and there is stigma attached to using a white cane and if you see other people who you look up to, doing these things, then that’s just icing on the cake, why not?

Is it purple icing?

It’s purple icing.

So you know, as a young adult, as far as you know, are you a role model for young people in your life who are visually impaired or who aren’t visually impaired?

I was a camp counsellor for several years and I like to think that, you know, I had an impact on the kids and the camp system; making sure that they didn’t just get led around everywhere, making sure that we didn’t bring their food and cut up their meat, that they did those things. Just little things like Putt-Putt golfing and a girl didn’t use a cane and didn’t want to use a cane and “Look, at the stairs you can use your golf club to tell what the steps are”, just little stuff like that, “Oh I never thought to do it that way”, and that’s what really blindness is about is learning alternate techniques to doing things, that you just don’t typically think of off the bat.

It seems to be a peer to peer advice that can take place, we have all had something in our lives where somebody goes ‘oh you know if you, I made that recipe once and I found that if you double the sugar, it’s a lot better or if you add more chocolate or,

There is a lot of that.

We all have a story about sitting down using the computer and somebody sits next to you and says ‘why are you are doing it that way, why don’t you just do this’.

Yeah.

And you say ‘wow’. If there’s nobody else in your life who has to deal with the same challenges that you do, you’re not going to have someone to do that sort of peer to peer suggestion work.

Its funny that you say that. I found myself seeking out... “I know that Ed has a dog, so I’ll ask him questions about the dog, and Marty’s really good about computers and I’m having problems with this part.” And its a rush to get to these people because you know they have the answers. It’s a lot more of that in the blind community.

Anything else that you would like to add about braille and braille literacy?

I think we’ve-- The main things I thought were important were the literacy not being listening. I think that’s my main thing.

Please tell us about yourself.

I'll start off with my name, I am Tracy Bundy. I am a, originally from Lake City, South Carolina. I have been visually impaired or blind... well, I have some usable vision but not enough to make a whole lot of difference. I've been a braille reader all my life. I went to public schools in Florence through the Project Share program, and after high school, I went to Newberry College, got my undergraduate degree there, then I went to the University of South Carolina and got my Master’s in Special Education with the emphasis on vision. And,then right after I got out of college, I got married, and I have two kids, and I have been teaching: this is my 13th year, and I taught at Creighton Middle School which is in Richland School District One here in Columbia ever since then.

Today, in your day-to-day life, what's your experience with braille?

Braille has always been there, from the get-go that's what I learned. I have, like I said, I have some vision but it was basically enough to make me think I can see better than I could. I'll turn my head to the side because I don't see straight ahead, all the vision I have is peripheral vision, and basically no color vision: I can tell if something is lighter or darker than something else, and it was never enough to read any kind of print, so I started braille when I was in kindergarten and people ask me all the time, you know, "How'd you learn braille?" I honestly cannot remember, it's just always been such an integral part of what I've done that I don't remember the process and even, you know, from a teacher’s point of view, "Well how did you do it?", and looking at the way I teach my kids I really cannot make myself think back and figure out. I remember some things we did, but I don't know the whole process, I don't remember it. But it has always been there, and it's always been something that I have always loved.

One of my favorite stories to tell is I used to come home from school and I’d have my papers with braille on ’em and I would scatter them all over my grandmother’s living room floor, and I’d tell her not to come in the living room because she was stepping on my students. And at five years old, I told her I was teaching my students, and so it's just I've known basically since then that I wanted to teach.

Got a little sidetracked along the way, decided that I couldn't do that as I got older, you know you have these thoughts, "Oh my gosh, no, I can't do that; I cannot go into a classroom with all these sighted kids, or you know, whatever the situation may be, I cannot do that. Tracy you're crazy, you don't want to do it," then you start thinking, "Well, yes, that is really what I wanna do, why can’t I do it? And then, when I hit high school, my senior year in high school as matter of fact, I took Teacher Cadets cuz I was still on that track. I was scared to death, but I still wanted to teach, and I really wanted to teach braille, but then I decided no maybe I want to teach English, no maybe I want to teach history, you know, I was wavering all around on what I wanted to teach, but teaching was still there.

And then I met Marty McKenzie. He was doing his student teaching at the same time I was doing Teacher Cadets; we did it with the same teacher as a matter of fact. And I started looking and I was like "Wait a minute, he can't see much better than I can. He's doing exactly what I want to do, well why in the world can’t I do it?", but then I still had those little doubts, so I went on to Newberry College after high school, and I got my degree in history with a minor in political science. I said, "I’m going to law school. I don't know that I can do this teaching stuff, but I can stand up in front of a court room and run my mouth all day long." Then I went as far as to taking the LSAT to get into law school now I said, "Tracy, what are you doing? That is not what you want to do, you’ve wanted to teach braille since you were little. If all these other people," and by that time Marty was doing it, and I was like "if he can do it I know I can."

So when I moved back home after I graduated from Newberry, went home told to my grandparents I'm moving to Columbia. They said "Nooo you're not, you'll get lost, you'll get hurt." I looked at my granny and said, "No, I would try my best not to get hurt, and yeah, I might get lost, but I had mobility lessons all my life, so I would try to find myself." And so I did. I came back up here, I moved up here in '96 and did not go to USC that first in August, I moved in August, so I didn't start USC until the following January in '97, got my Master’s in vision.

While I was still going to school, I got a call from Richland School District One, asking me if I was interested in teaching in the vision program there as a long-term sub. They desperately needed a vision teacher. And, I said "Yes! I am definitely interested." So, while I was finishing my Master's degree at night, I taught during the day as a long-term sub for almost two years. I took off long enough to do my student teaching and that was it. And, I was lucky enough to be allowed to stay on in that position as a full time teacher as soon as I got my degree. And, I have been there since. It's awesome!

I love my job, and I am so glad that I went back. And now I get to teach braille. The only bad part is a lot of times, when we don't have a braille kid, I love teaching the low vision kids, too, don't get me wrong. I love what I do, but, I love the braille. I always said my dream job would be to teach nothing but braille to whoever out there in the world wanted to know how to do it. I've always loved it. It's just so cool to be able to do it and to, you know, know it. And to be able, there should be not be a person out there for any reason that cannot read this stuff, you know.

What is it about braille that you like so much?

I think it is just the ability that I know I can do it. I tell kids that one of the fun things about it is that you can always get at trouble at night like I used to when I was little. I would always get in trouble because I used to take my book to bed with me because I did not need the light on to see it. And, so, it wasn't until my grandmother came in there and I was still wide awake that she figured out that I had my book under the covers reading [Laughing] when I supposed to be asleep. So, I tell them all the time that they can read in the dark and nobody will notice. They think that is cool. They think it's hilarious.

How is it that you were in an environment growing up where there were braille resources available from such a young age?

At home, there was not until I started school. No one in my family knew braille. No one knows braille now in my family. They were encouraging in that they wanted me to do the best I could in education. That was it. My grandmother, I remember her telling me that I did not have a lot of chores at home, but I better have good grades. That was just the expectation that I was going to do this. And I did. But, once I hit school, when I started, Project Share had just started up in Florence. And,so, that was a new program and they had braille. I was forever getting...they had little bit of braille books in the library (that) I could bring those home. My beginning braille reader books. And I always had, even papers just that we had created when I was learning braille. I remember having little stories, about an elephant, and they had cut out a picture of an elephant, the shape of it, so I could have that tactual feel. (The elephant) was at the bottom. And I saved all those papers. And that was what was all over my grandmother's living room floor all the time.

What do you remember being the hardest thing about reading braille?

I don't. I don't remember. It is going to sound strange, but, I just got certified as a braille transcriptionist. And, it was not until I went through that course, that I realized that there were parts out there that I did not actually remember. Because it has always been just a part of my life. I don't remember going, "Oh, my gosh. These rules are hard," ‘cause there’s are a lot of rules pertaining to braille. I mean, there’s lots of them. And each rule is broken down into lots of different parts and sections.

And it's only recently that you thought about that?

Because I was looking at it and you had to name the rule and the section that errors were found in when you are taking this whole transcription course. And, when looking at it from that point, I was going, "Oh, my gosh. I didn't have a fit when I was school. I don't know how I ever remembered these rules." But, it was not taught to me in a way that, 'This is the rule. This is why we don't do this'. It was taught to me; 'This is the way it is done in braille'. I don't remember 'Section 45a, Rule 10.' We didn’t do it that way. That was the hardest thing for me. When I was taking my transcription course,going, "Oh, my goodness. There are specific rules as to why we do this." I know that I did not do it. Or you did it. But, the rules, I did not remember all that. [Laughter.]

When you read for pleasure, what do you like to read and how do you read?

I like to read mysteries. I like to read romance novels. I like to read. I'll read a lot of the kids' books because I have two children. I have a five year old and a ten year old. I have several different ways that I read. When my children were very little, I was determined they were going to be saturated with reading material. And, trust me, my house is and my kids' running joke is that we could open our own children’s lending library with no problem. And, what I did was, I bought a lot of books that were already produced that had the print and the braille in it ( both of our children are sighted. My husband and I both are blind) But, I wanted these books for my kids. So, I bought some that were already produced; had the braille and the print. Then, what I did, I took and bought regular print books and had somebody read them to me. I brailled the stuff on sticky labels and stuff myself and put it in there; for other books that I couldn’t get or either just some I picked up here and there and everywhere.

And now I do use the Victor Reader Stream, I listen to books, I have my kids listening to books, my kids are, can read, well my 5 year old's not there, he will be five soon, but he is not reading yet. My nine-year old reads, is in 4th grade, reads on 6th grade level. I was kind of hesitant at first about him listening because I wanted him to read but then, we realized that when we were pairing the reading out loud, listening and the reading of the print, I give him a print copy of the book and make him listen, he was doing a lot better because he had both feedback orally and visually. And I read books, I have my braille books, some of them in braille. A lot of them I download, and I read using the braille display. I have a computer with a braille display at work, and I use a braille display at home.

Do you prefer listening to books or reading them in braille? Do you prefer a human voice reading or is it the same as with a computerized voice?

It really depends on, and it is not because I don’t like braille, because I do, but a lot of times I will listen to something before I read it in braille. Now if it is something I've really got to glean information from and think about, then I do want it written. And I because you know, listening you can kind of, "Yes, I am focused on my book but ,yes, I can also focus somewhere else at the same time" and I fully don’t have my mind on it, but if I really need to glean information from it, then I do want the braille. Can I listen to both? Yes, I have no problem, but given my preference, I want a person to read it. Now I am bad about; I drive everybody insane because I have been doing it since I was little. I do not like to listen to it in regular speed. My mother has always called it my "chipmunks" because even the regular human voice that I prefer I speed it up. So I love with the recording devices from the library here when I get the books here I can just zip, hit the button and make them go faster, and it sounds like a chipmunk. Don’t ask me why I prefer it, but I can understand it and I have taught myself over the years. I can read a book faster, too. [Laughter] It works great.

Do your children read braille?

No. I have often been asked would I teach them or was I gonna make them learn was the question I was often asked, and no I decided I was not going to make them. If they wanted to learn and they ask "Mama, Daddy will you teach me?" then yeah, I would’ve. But neither one of them have asked, they don’t know… I think my nine-year-old can recognize a couple of letters just because he has been around it all his life and--for almost ten years, he will be ten in April--and he actually can understand JAWS on the computer, a lot better than lot of people. My mom and everybody, they don’t listen to it all the time. They come in and say, "What is the computer saying, blah, blah, blah, blah! It's too fast! It's this! It's that!" My kids can understand it, and it is because they have listened to it since day one, and we have so many computers going in my house. I have a computer, I'll be reading one thing on my computer, my husband has another computer, and we have JAWS loaded on my son’s computer, in case one of us has to help him with something. And so, you know,there is the possibility three different computers are reading three different things with JAWS at the same time. So they have been around that all their lives.

When it comes to whether or not listening to books should be considered an example of literacy or if reading braille is necessary for a person to be considered literate, what's your opinion?

I would say listening to books is all good, but if I can’t read something that you handed me in some format, then I don’t think I am literate. If I can know my print, reading is not going to get me very far but there is an alternative, it’s the braille. And if I can’t read that then I don’t consider myself literate. How am I going to write something, how am I going to communicate? Yes, I can listen to something but I have no means about listening to something other than my mouth to tell you something back. Where is my writing, where is my, you know, putting thoughts down on paper and some… No. You can’t do that. I mean I can talk to you all day, but if I can’t read, I haven’t seen how that is supposed to look, how words… I cannot spell worth two cents, never have been able to and that may not be the case with all blind people who are braille readers. I know a lot of that spell beautifully, but you know once I have "seen" in braille how a word looks, I am more apt to spell it right, but if I have just heard that, I'd have no clue how to… Think about the way our language is. We don’t write the way it sounds, and I think looking at it in braille, in print, however we want to look at it, I think it helps us.

With so many electronic devices that read information aloud to us, is there a reason to keep teaching braille? to preserve braille?

We have so many devices, they are great. They are awesome. What if they are broken? How many times have we walked into a classroom as teachers, our computer does not work, and we can still pull our pencils out. You can write stuff down. If you don’t have braille, then what are you going to do?

Does braille benefit the way you think? Are you a smarter person, a more capable person if you can use braille instead of just listening to texts?

I think you are because you have another tool in your toolbox. If for nothing else, you have a tool that you have in there and it gives you choices. You have the choice of listening, you have the choice of brailling, or reading braille. If you only have one way of doing something, you’re limiting yourself. You’ve got every available option out there, then your opportunities and your choices are that much more open.

When you write, how do you do it? Would you describe what tools you use, what steps you take?

I used to do it, I used to do everything on a Perkins brailler. That means, I would take my braille writer, I would braille in college. Braille takes about twice as much paper as print, you have about two pages of braille for one page of print. I would braille everything out because erasing in braille, I could just scratch it out with my fingers or with a braille eraser, you’d just push down the dots and fix it, I would get it just like I wanted it in braille and then I would go through the whole process of typing it. It has just been, probably within the last five or six years, that I can, I will sit down at a type--, at a keyboard and type up a paper I need to type. And I did it that way so long because I wanted to see "how it looked." And it really wasn’t until I had a braille display on my computer, that I could see it and edit it using that, that I really quit writing everything out.

Was it difficult to make that shift?

Once I got a braille display, no, it was awesome, because I thought at first, when we first got our braille display, in Richland One, when Marty brought it out I was like, "What in the world am I going to do with this? I don’t need this." He’s like, "Yes you do, it’s cool, you’ll like it. Just learn how to do it." And I said, "Okay, whatever." I started playing around with it and I was like, "Oh cool, I can just, yes, I can see, I forgot the comma here, I need to put my cursor back over here," instead of trying to listen, and I would, let me make sure my thing, my little cursor’s where it needs to be so I can put my comma, I could actually reach up there, put my finger where I needed my comma and make sure my cursor was there, then put my comma. And it made life so much easier and now, it was not until then that I would not put everything in braille.

Aside from Marty McKenzie, were there other visually impaired adults you saw as role models when you were growing up?

Honestly, no. When I was growing up, I was, at the very beginning stages of Project Share in Florence, so there was a couple of other kids, but no adults that I ever remember until I met Marty and he’s, you know, Marty’s not that much older than I am, but he was still, he was ahead of me in this whole process, but it was, I never doubted, I think that came with, you know, just my personality, with my family’s personality and pushing me to excel in education. But I never doubted my abilities, except to go, "Oh my gosh, can I do this? I know I know the information, but can I function and do this in a sighted world out there as a career?" But it wasn’t until I was in high school that I met Marty and saw that, yes he was, he was going and trying to do the same thing I wanted to do. And then once I moved to Columbia, there was a whole group of college kids and older people that I met and I started hanging around with and I was like, "You know what, they’re doing it, they’re living, they have lives just like everybody else, they have good careers," and it was, it was really not until I was out of, in college and beyond that I had more role models.

Do you feel like you are a role model yourself for young people you know?

I hope so. I mean, that is, that is, I see that as part of my job as a teacher. You know, teachers, in my opinion, are role models anyway. I think my kids have an added advantage when they walk into my classroom, and I can’t see either. A lot of my kids honestly see better than I do. And I get, like Clay was saying earlier, I get the questions, how do you do that? They were totally amazed when I had my children, you would not believe the kind of questions I got: how do you do this? How do you do that? Because they’re in the same boat that I was in. They didn’t have role models. And I’m really honest with the kids that I run into, the kids I see, my kids I teach, about how to do things. Because I figure, when I tell them, I may be the only person that will tell them at some point how to do things or how another blind person does it. Now that doesn’t mean my way’s right, by no means, may not be right, it’s right for me. But it may not be right for them. And as long as they see that there are ways to do it, and they realize there are more than one way to do things, then I feel like yes, I have been a role model to them.

Well, I’m Harriet Davis, and I went to bed one night seeing everything and woke up seein’ nothin’. It turned out to be ischemic optic neuropathy. Some of the sight came back. Since then I have been hit three times with it. And, I still have some sight. My eye is gone, but I do have some sight. And, I like to read. And I truly could not imagine myself not being able to read my bible. I decided to try to reach out for Braille. And I feel very, very fortunate because being a member of the Federation of the Blind allowed me to know about this course. Braille, to me, is a lifeline. I can’t imagine not being able to read. Of course now I can read with the CCTV. But what’s gonna happen tomorrow? And if I’m too old to learn? And by that I mean if I’m too old for somebody to want to teach me. It’s, it’s rough. You have to really work at it when you get older, for the simple reason that your fingers don’t pick up the dots as easily as they do when you’re younger. And, I’m very grateful for the privilege of learning it.

When did you start learning Braille?

Actually, I went to the Commission for the Blind, and as an older person, they wanted me just to come a couple hours a day and learn what I needed to maintain being around home and I said no, I want to know what there is out there to know. But the classes were larger, and of course we did not get to cover very much. I did remember some of it, but not using it, I lost it. So, I mean, I found out the hard way, if you’re going to use Braille, you have to do it often, and stay with it.

When was that, that you first had that experience?

When I first-

How long ago?

Probably ’92.

Really?

No, excuse me, 2002.

2002. That’s a good bit of time ago.

Yes, yes. I became blind around ’92.

Mm-hmm. And so what- from that, what did you move to, from that original, just sort of functional Braille literacy? How did you move in to doing the kind of courses that you’re doing now? The kind of learning that you’re doing now?

Just jumped into it when I heard about it. I realized that I really wanted it, and I think you really have to want it to do it.

So, when you, as a sighted reader, the things that you read the most were what sorts of things?

Hmm. I just liked to read. Actually I would read almost anything I put my hands on. Couple of books a week and of course, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve read my bible a lot. You can get, you know, you can get books on tape and all that, which is nice, but I can’t imagine that replacing reading.

In what way, like, in what way do you read the bible? Do you read it a little bit every day? Do you read according to a particular schedule?

I read it every day, not necessarily on schedule. It’s just been a lifetime habit, and it means a lot to me. And, the bible on tape would be difficult to look up things and, and enjoy it. You know.

So, what has been the hardest thing for you about learning Braille?

Picking up the dots with my fingers.

Just the sensitivity of your fingers?

Mm-hmm. The sensitivity of my fingers. And, of course, this time, getting over into the contractions. It’s, can be difficult.

Yeah.

It’s a challenge, let’s put it that way.

Do you remember when you were younger and first learning to read as a sighted reader? some people don’t remember when they learned to read, they just know they’ve always read. Do you remember when you were learning to read as a sighted reader?

No

It was just something that was always there.

It was just something that, yeah.

I can imagine...

You know, if you like books, you just grow into it.

That's what it was like for me, my parents liked to read and we always had books around the house and I don't remember not knowing how to read, so. Aside from the bible, what are some of the books that you like to read most?

Mysteries, fiction, I like fiction. I just enjoy reading. Magazines--but see, now, with the the print, it’s just very difficult to do it, so I use the [x].

And where do you get it? Do you have one at home?

I do.

OK.

It's a separate black and white because there are times that I read white, white on black easier than I do the black on white. If I pick up a paper and read it, even with the fair size magnifier, you know, hand-held magnifier, pick up a paper and read it, within about three or four minutes everything goes to gray and I lose it, but with the [x] I can put it under there and, put the mode on white on black, and the contrast helps.

I would think so, yeah, and all that white would be, if you had black on white, all that white could tire your eyes out.

The contrast is, yes.

Sorry, I keep fiddling with the equipment. I just want to make sure that everything is working ok.

It’s ok.

So, you’ve mentioned, the hardest thing about learning braille has been just the tactile sensitivity.

Yes

What has been the most fun thing, a fun thing about learning braille, would you say?

The challenge of accomplishing some... you know, just being able to read a word. And when you think about it, someone who could take six dots and design a whole language, a whole English language that you can read. It’s amazing, and if he could do that, surely I can read. [laughter] Or learn to read!

Do you braille in everyday life, aside from...

No, the time will come that I probably will have to. And I'm sure now, in order to hold onto it, I'll have to use it to maintain it.

How do you see yourself eventually using braille in everyday life? For not just reading books and for pleasure and things like that, but other things?

Actually, this will probably seem strange, but I hope I'll don't ever have to use it. I hope I just simply use it because I want to. In other words, I hope what sight I have stays. But your eyes get tired, and when they get tired, you know, I’ll need to use it, so then I'll use it in everyday life. I'm retired, I won't be in an office, you know, or anything like that, so I would just use it for personal use.

I think that we'll all at some point in our lives, I mean, I'm getting to the point now, I'm 43, and I'm getting to the point now where I used to be able to look and something and just read it, and now I find myself going like this and I'm thinking, "Oh, I got to get some reading glasses--and I know that my grandfather lost his vision, his sort of central vision, late in life. And, so, I started to think about, Ok, so you know, if when I'm in my 90's say or 80's, and my vision isn't what it is now, should I be thinking now about braille literacy to, you know, try to anticipate that sort of thing?

Well, now, I don't know about that. But I will say that I firmly believe, anybody who has an eye problem, that might ultimately turn into blindness, needs to do it as soon as possible. And they don't need to do what I do, they don't need just to drop it when they first start it, they need to hold onto it and use it. It seems to me like it will be nicer and more comfortable to know it and not need it, than to need it and then have to learn it. See, I think that would be hard.

I think you're right. So, your advice would be, one thing that you would say. . . for advice for somebody learning braille is, use it. Don't just, like, learn and then put it aside.

Use it everyday.

OK.

I know from trying to learn it. If I don't use it everyday, it's very difficult to learn.

That's true of a lot of things, isn't it?

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And I've also found out that, you know, for me, I can't sit down and study a full hour or two hours. I found out this week that it's easier for me to learn it if I do, say, maybe 15 minutes, six times a day which gives you a hour and a half--or eight times a day. Then you have the time in, but your fingers don't get quite as sweaty and . . .

Hmm!

. . . you know, it just makes it a little easier on you.

So, your fingers get sweaty when you're reading?

Oh, yeah.

[Laughter]

You get kind of, you know, you get antsy wanting to know, "Now, do I have this right; this right?”

That's interesting.

Like when I, when I shook your hand tonight, I told you my hand is wet.

I didn't even notice.

But--and that kind of goes and comes too, you know.

Do you know anyone else or have you known other people in your life who are braille readers?

Oh, yes, yes. I'm a member of the federation, and a lot of friends, many, many, people read braille. Although there are people who don’t. They rely on talking books and all this [sic] things.

Some people say that listening to books, listening to other forms of writing because there are so many technologies now and it's so easy to get books on tape or these things . . .

Yeah.

. . . some people say that, that's not really literacy, that unless somebody's reading with, you know, reading braille, reading the letters with braille, they shouldn't really be considered literate. What's your opinion on the subject?

I think it's an individual choice of what one does. I don't think anybody should criticize anybody or even form an opinion of someone else who is just working their life the way it suits them best. I think it's a personal matter. And while you may wonder, well, why won't they do that or the other, I don't think that it should be voiced among people. Y’know, we think of blindness as coming from childhood. And I will say that I think that when you do lose your sight after you're old, that it's more difficult. It's difficult to adjust. As a child it just comes natural because you've never had your sight or if you've had it, you don't really remember that much. So, I just think that that's a personal matter.

So, if somebody were to say "well now that I have all of these, you know, I can have my books on tape; I can have a computer read things to me; why should I learn braille?” What would you say?

Learn braille.

[Laughter] Why?

Why? Because what if your computer--if something happens that you don't have a computer? What if something happens that you don't have talking books, you know? If you know how to read braille, what if you need to write braille? You need to write something down. If you don't know it, you can't do it. [If you] can't use a braille or you can't do it. If you can't use a stylus, you can't do it.

Do you write braille?

I'm learning to use the brailler. And I know a little bit about the stylus, that I remember from being at the commission and the classes there.

What kind of things have you been learning to write? Like, what sorts of documents do they have you practice with?

Words, sentences, not really documents.

Gotcha. OK.

Not far enough into it yet.

OK.

And I found myself wondering--I think, you know, you're not doing so good. You're doing this. You're doing that. But according to the teachers I'm doing well.

Good.

So, hopefully, they're right.

[Laughter] Well, they're the ones whose opinions should matter, right?

[Laughter] No, my opinion should matter. I’m going to be using it.

That's true too. I keep losing this one question I want to ask you from our, from our list. I'm sorry. [pause] Maybe that's it. I thought I had one more in there that I hadn't gotten to. We were just talking about you, you writing. I apologize. [pause] I think, okay, so I will just finish with one question, which would be- for somebody else in your situation, you know, if you knew somebody, if you just met somebody who was having the exact same experiences you are with their vision, and with braille, what would your advice to that person be?

Learn as much as you can to be independent. They, with my situation, they truly don't know that much about it. When I became blind, they didn't know much at all about it. There seems to be no cure for it at this time. If there is, I certainly don't know anything about it. I think if there would be, it would come through fetal research, which I don't believe the government's going to turn loose and allow ‘em to do, cause mine involves the nerve. Once the nerve is destroyed, then it's gone. But my advice would be to anybody, whether they have macular degeneration or anything, because you never know.

What is it that you’re experiencing? Your condition?

I said my experience with my eyes would make me advise anybody who has an eye problem that they could lose their sight to go on and get as much as they can get so that they can maintain their life independently.

If, now that you've been both a sighted reader and a braille reader- this is the question I wanted to ask- you've been both a sighted reader and a braille reader. Do braille readers have any advantages that sighted readers don't enjoy?

[pause] I can't answer that question. I'm not far enough into braille to feel qualified to answer that question. However, I enjoy working with the braille. I'm looking forward to being able to sit down and read a book in braille, a magazine in braille .

That's great. I'll tell you what the kids all say. They all say they get to, after their mom and dad have put them in bed and told them, "Okay, turn off the lights. Time to go to sleep,"

They can read?

They read under the covers. [Laughter]

The one thing about reading braille, if you were reading something that, you know, you didn't particularly want everybody to know you were reading, well...

That's your way.

They wouldn't know about it.

Is there anything else you would want to say that I haven't asked you about?

Not really, except that I'm very grateful. I'm grateful for the Federation; it's through them that I found out about this. I'm very grateful to my instructors. I'm grateful for the grant that was written, that I could have this class. And to me, it's a challenge that I'm enjoying, and it's a reward I'm looking forward to.

Very well said. Thank you very much for taking the time to [here’s where the video stopped, for proofreading] talk with me.

You're welcome.

I really appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Mark Mauer: I am Mark Maurer, and I’m the president of the National Federation of the Blind. I’ve been the president since 1986, I have been a blind person all of my life, and I’ve been a member of the National Federation of the Blind since 1969. I am a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University Law School, and I have been a lawyer since 1977.

Pat Maurer: And I have been blind all my life, and Dr. Maurer and I have been married for, I don’t know, thirty-some years now. We have two children who’re grown, and I think that there are many many parents across this country today who have raised children, sighted and blind children. But there was a time when it wasn’t very often the case, and so we feel very blessed that we’ve been able to have our own family and raise our own children. I’m a former school teacher. I taught elementary school as a blind person. The first teaching job I got was to teach sighted kids to read. It was teaching third and fourth grade in a small school system in Iowa. I used Braille, and the children used print. I went from that job into some teaching when [while?] we lived in Indianapolis, and then running a rehabilitation program in Baltimore, Blind Industries and Services of Maryland. And then for the last twenty years or so I’ve worked at the national headquarters of the Federation at the Jernigan Institute now, and managed the committee relations program there. I like that very much. So that’s a little bit about us, I guess.

How do you use Braille in everyday life?

MM: I use braille every day. I read reports that people give to me in braille. I make recordings of events that are happening within the national federation of the blind. And in order to make recordings about those events I expect the people who are conducting those events to give me a notice about them in braille. I look at financial documents for the organization and for some other organizations and in order to get a comparison of financial performance I use braille statistics so that I can have my fingers on the Braille performance for different years or maybe more than two years. I give speeches and in order to do that I very often want the text of the material that is going to be included in the speech under my hands. And I read Braille for fun. I read books. Some of them are non-fiction. I have recently read one about the financial circumstance of the United States in the 1980s which said that the possibility of a bubble in the housing market was remote. It might have been in the 1980s but in the first decade of the 21st century we experienced such a bubble. But I also read material in braille for enjoyment. Things like Huckelberry Finn and the like.

PM: My use of braille is some different in that a lot of the fiction and non-fiction books that I read I use audiobooks. But I use braille everyday in my job for a variety of things. I produce some documents that we use that we use at the Federation or that we take to conventions and give to people so, including the menus at the national conventions, so I proofread a lot of materials and produce a lot of materials in Braille, but every day one of my jobs is to take calls from people that call in and they want literature, they want our suggestions on things, so I have a great deal of compu. . . of material that I’ve produced over the years that I’ve put together and kept so that I can look things up for people including names and addresses and phone numbers and that kind of thing, and then of course I write their information down so I can send things out to them and I do that in Braille and I don’t think I could be without my Braillewriter to get that stuff written down or my slate and stylus– you know, once I’ve got it written down, I may put information into the computer and I may not keep the card that I wrote the information down on because I’m done with it. So it’s not a permanent record that I’m keeping, but you know an individual name and address that I need right now and I want to write down quickly.

Another thing that I would do in Braille and probably wouldn’t do any other way is recipes. I can’t imagine cooking from information on cassette tape or in any other way than from a Braille recipe book.

At Christmas time the Federation does the Santa Letter Program. We have letters to blind and low vision kids in Braille and large print that we send out. They can go to the NFE website at NFE.org and just type in their information their families can do it or the children can do it and get a letter back from Santa. So we’ve been doing this for three or four years and have learned about a lot about families this way who have blind or low vision kids. Also, don’t tell the kids, but of course, the letters come from Santa with our help.

[Laughter]

MM: She is also in charge of proofreading our braille letters. We got lots of letters from people. And a lot of times they come in braille. When the letters come in braille, we respond to them in braille. And just as we have a proofreading requirement to send out printed letters to people, we also have a proofreading requirement for braille letters. We never send anything out unless it’s been through the proofreading process. And Pat is our braille proofreader for that part of our effort.

How did you learn braille?

PM: I learned braille at sixteen which is kind of late opportunity for braille. I grew up in a rural area in Iowa and I wasn’t close to where the school for the blind was. And, I had quite a bit of residual vision, not a lot, I mean, but I had something I could read large print as a small child. So, nobody knew anybody that could teach me braille, nobody ever really considered teaching me braille. And, people read to me, my parents read to me, my friends and, you know by the time you get into middle school and you’re trying to do mathematics just by somebody reading to you and then you doing the problem in your head and then getting somebody else to write it down because you can’t really see to write it down anymore. This is the time when you realize that you have got to find another way. And I sought out the Commission for the Blind in Iowa. And Dr Kenneth Turnigan(sp?) was directing the, the programs there and I called him on the telephone. And I was about fifteen when I did this. And said, I need to find a way to learn braille. And he said, you know you’re not, this program is for adults, but he said, we can find a way. So he got the braille teacher to, during the summer, teach me braille in her spare time; I just went in in the morning at eight o’clock, stayed all day, and she taught me braille all day long and I learned it in a summer. You know, I learned all of the alphabet, all the contractions, everything about braille and then I could use it the next fall when I went back to high school, and my first braille textbook was a French textbook, which I didn’t learn much about French because… but I learned a lot about braille that next year. And I think my real memory of all of that was that finally I had a way to read and write. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t, before that I hadn’t ever read much by myself because I couldn’t. By the time I was in second grade I couldn’t see any of the print anymore. And so, I was finally able to read for myself and she taught me with a slate and stylus so I was able to write things down for myself. And I, I didn’t get a braille writer ’til I graduated from college. So I took all of my notes in college with a slate and stylus which is a real good way to get good and fast on the slate. So, those are I guess my memories, and, and really it just has meant a great deal to me to have braille all these years.

MM: I first met braille when I was in the first grade. I was sufficiently blind that the notion that I might read print was an impossibility, so everybody knew I would be a braille reader. And, I sat in the first grade in a classroom with sixteen students. there were eight of us in each row. I was the sixth person back in the first row. We got our Dick and Jane primers and we were told to open the cover of our primers, and to look at page one. And the first kid in the first row was asked to read page one And as the lesson went forward the teacher corrected the kid. And the second kid was asked to do the same, so by the time the teacher got to me and we had been over page one 5 times. I put my fingers on the page and recited the words on page 1. The teacher to my astonishment called me to the front of the room. She said that I was a magnificent student and she put a gold star on page one of my book

I did not object of course the teacher was the person who was supposed to be in charge and I was just a student

She told me that weekend. I was returned from the school for the blind that weekend but not all students did, but I did

She told me to take my book home with me and show it to my mother. My mother is a suspicious woman. She took the book. She had already learned Braille herself because she thought she might need to know it. And She watched me doing the reading of page one she asked to borrow the book and she took it away and, she came back later with a piece of Braille paper that she asked me to read I could not read it and she told me that it was an exact copy of page one of my book

When summer came after my first grade experience she sat me down again in the living room of our house for an hour every day and she required me to study Braille. And she taught me. I found this annoying because my brothers and….. didn’t have to learn any

They were not in school in the summer time. I was the only one. But by the time summer was over I knew Braille and I went back to the School for the Blind and between the beginning of second grade and the end of fifth grade, when I left the School for the Blind, I had read everything in the library that the librarian would give me. She said that some of the books were too old for me. Made me curious about what was in them, but I read everything else. I would take the book out of the library and I would take it back to the dormitory and I would slide it under the bed, and then the house parent would walk by and I knew the house parent’s shoes. When the house parent went by to check the rooms to see that we were all sleeping, then I reached under the bed and got out the book and I began to read. And I read until I fell asleep. And this happened every night, which is how I got through the books. But I, I learned that reading braille is fun. A lot of people don’t think of braille as a thing that can bring fun to your life, but I still know that it can. So, I read poetry and I love to read the cadence of the words in such a way that I can give them voice, and if they’re under my hands, I can do it. It’s not somebody else’s voice, it’s mine. I can give them the kind of rhythm that I think they deserve. And I read prose and I read nonfiction, all of that. It is a joy to be able to get at words and to make them readable. And then if you’re on a plane and they tell you to put away all your electronic devices and you’ve still got your braille handy, then no problem, you can keep at it.

PM: Still got your book. [Laughter]

What’s the hardest part of learning braille?

PM: I think for me it’s the amount of practice it takes to build speed. I don’t think there was anything for me that was hard to learn. But, its just, you know continuous practice to build speed and I think that’s what makes others maybe get discouraged when they’re reading at twenty or thirty words a minute and they’re learning to read with both hands really helps with that. But I think that is one of the things that makes it hard for people, is just that building speed. The time it takes to build speed.

MM: There’s a technical and a nontechnical answer for my point of view. If you want to gain speed in learning braille the objective is to learn with more than one finger. Some people read with one, either on the right or the left hand and its usually the index finger. If you could use three on one hand and two on the other maybe. The first three on the right hand is the way I do it, and two on the left hand. These five fingers make it faster for me to get the material under may hands and to get it soaked up and into my head.

The second thing that I would do is this: I would expect students to read out loud. Part of learning braille is to get enough speed to make it practical to do it for the public things that need to be done. And at the beginning of reading, everybody reads slowly, so if blind kids read slowly in the first and the second grades this isn’t a problem because they fit right in. By the time they get to be eighth grade/ high school if you expect a blind kid to read its so embarrassing to the kid, the kid’s so shy about the inability that you can’t get it done. But if you expect the blind student to read aloud that will give enormous encouragement to build speed and with speed comes the enjoyment of it. You stop learning to read and you start learning by reading. And the reading becomes an incidental matter. At the beginning everybody who is learning to read is learning to manipulate the symbols that are reading material. And after a while, you learn what’s in the book from the reading rather than learning to read from what’s in the book.

Looking back now, what’s your opinion of how you were taught braille?

PM: Well, I loved my braille teacher. She’s no longer living. She was a wonderful person. She would sit with her… I don’t know… usually have 3 or 4 students in there I think. And, you know, I was an extra because I was… and I was still in high school, and, of course, all the other people were adults in the program.

So I would come in, and she would sit down, and she’d get her book out, and she’d be reading her own book and just let people read out loud from their textbooks. So she had… Sometimes she’d have to stop and show us our place or give us an explanation of a braille rule or a different letter or so on. But she was very relaxed and she was a little past middle age when she was working with me so, you know, I really was very comfortable with her and I loved her and I really enjoyed learning from her.

So I don’t know if there was anything about the way that I was taught that was unusual, but it certainly was relaxed and, you know, I didn’t feel nervous or pressured or any of that kind of thing. So it was very enjoyable.

MM: Well, my braille teacher was my mother, and loving your mother is not too hard [laughter] although being annoyed with her while she was teaching you braille is certainly possible [laughter].

I don’t remember the lessons nearly as well as I remember the reading afterward. The lessons were there, and I was annoyed by them, but then they were gone, and the books were there, too. And my hands were giving me the chance to explore exciting worlds that would never have been a part of my life except for the literature that was under them. So, how I was taught was a very brief part of my time. That I was taught has made the possibility of using Braille such an enormous benefit to me. I have taken testimony from people in court; I have made arguments to courts of appeals; I don’t dare walk into a courtroom without a sheaf of Braille in my briefcase that tells me what the legal arguments are going to be, what the testimony will consist of, and how I am to go about the process of defeating my opponent. There’s no way I know how to do this unless I’ve got written material that I can touch. If I were to try to listen to it on some recording device, sitting in the courtroom, it would distract me from knowing what’s going on and I couldn’t afford it. This is an enormous benefit, one that makes it possible for me to do the job that I like and to expand opportunities for me and for others.

The statistics show that something between 80 and 85 percent of people who know Braille well find a way to get meaningful employment. They also show that about 70, somewhere between 70 and 74 percent, of blind people who are seeking employment are unemployed. In other words, Braille is so valuable to getting a job and becoming a part of the society in which we live, and not only that, reading it is fun.

Some say that listening to books is not an example of literacy/and that only by reading Braille can a blind person be considered literate/ What’s your opinion?

MM: I think there are different kinds of literacy and that you could not assert that a person is uneducated by listening. But, the fullness of literacy comes on with the ability to manage the written word. To read it and to write it. How do you create the language that will pass from generation to generation unless you know this word? So, I think braille is a vital part of literacy for the blind.

PM: If you take an example of a person who has never written anything down or read anything, because they couldn’t see the print well enough to do that, then its gonna be very hard for that person to remember how to spell things or to be able to spell things. And of course this is one of the things that happened to me is that, you know, I learned my spelling words along with everybody else and after, I guess, around fourth grade or so, what they decided to do was to teach me to type so I could use a regular typewriter. And I could write them down, but because I didn’t continually see them (one way or another?) a lot of them I just forgot how to spell. So, spelling has always been an issue for me and I’m always either asking somebody or looking stuff up. And spell check is a help, but it doesn’t solve all these problems, you know you have to know which word to use and there’s different spellings for the same words and things like that. Really, to be literate you really do have to have a way to literally read and to write.

With so many new technologies for listening to the written word do we still need braille?

MM: I could not do my job effectively today without braille. I could not give the kinds of speeches that I do that last sometimes as long as an hour without having the written under my hands. I could not comprehend as much information without braille. I know that I can listen to material and learn from it, I do it all the time. I listen better when my hands are on the words that I’m trying to absorb. I know the material more thoroughly when I do it that way. Does everybody learn the way I do? Of course not, but that’s one of the most important for me to learn. And its also important for me to transmit information. Sometimes I teach classes in writing, in order to do that I have to have the written material in braille. How can I do it without that? In other words, braille is important and technology can help with it. It’s easier to produce braille today than it was thirty years ago. And I have technology that provides braille to me in refreshable form, which is to I’ve got a display and when I want to understand braille I can hit a dot on the display and move to another portion of the braille that’s in the electronic file that is there. So, sometimes you can get braille using this kind of advanced technology. In other words, you don’t have to use the technology of former times, but the braille is no less important to me.

PM: I can’t imagine making any kind of a presentation without some kind of notes to remind me what I’m going to be talking to people about, and I’d have those notes in braille. I’ve seen people who can stand on the platform with the earphone in their ear and listen to their own voice in their ear, reminding them about what they’re going to talk about, but I just can’t imagine doing that. I don’t think I could do that. Of course, I have another option, I know braille.

What tools do you use to read and write?

PM: I use them both. I use a brailler, I use a slate and stylus, I use the refreshable braille display on the PK, which is the Humanware product. But, it takes all of those for me and if I had to give up something, … I hope I don’t ever have to because I don’t know what I’d choose.

MM: This is my braille slate and I used it today to give some of the blind students who where here telephone numbers. I wrote them and handed them over, one of the students who came could read them and one could not, so he took it in a different form, but I use this to write things. Tomorrow, I’m going to be on an airplane. I need to be able to figure out what the number of the flight is and what gate I’m leaving from. I will get that information and put it on a card and put it in my pocket so that when I want to be reminded of this I just reach into my pocket and there it is. And, at the moment I have here some notes that I keep in my pocket. These particular notes I give very brief inspirational speeches to individuals in chapters of the National Federation of the Blind. And this is a set of notes for one of those speeches. I keep it in my pocket because I don’t know when required to do that and if I have a prepared speech ready in note form I don’t have to worry about whether I’m ready. I’m always ready, I’m ready at the drop of a card you might say. With braille on it. [Laughter].

Once you have a first draft, how do you edit what you’ve written?

MM: When I want to create a speech, I write some of it and then I braille it; it is prepared on the computer and then I braille it, and then I read it aloud because part of writing is to get the ideas on paper and part of writing, especially for public presentation, is the sound of the language. And the sound of the language, if it is to be as impressive as it can be, would hope to have the right meter in it, anapestic meter, or iambic meter, or whatever it might be. And I want to look at the words to make sure that they come out with the right emphasis on the right syllables, and I have to read it aloud in order to know whether I think that the sound is good enoug. If it is, I can leave it alone. If it's not, then I revise it on the computer.

As a child, did you have any adult role models who were vision impaired?

MM: I didn't know anybody I admired as a child until I reached the age of 18. At the age of 18, I met a man, Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, who was the president of the National Federation of the Blind, and he startled me, challenged me, demanded that I be educated, urged me to exceed my own expectations, urged me to consider that limitations that I had regarded as part of blindness could be discarded, and demanded that I go and find the most exciting part of a life that I could. He was a tremendous teacher, and he had great generosity, but he had a magnificent mind, and he demanded that I use mine.

PM: It's really the beauty of the National Federation of the Blind that we have 50,000 members, and we all are out there to help each other, so we all can find, you know, through all of our programs friends and role models, and the children's programs. All the kids, many of them come to conventions, and they can meet and they can meet blind adults, you know, who are traveling through the convention who have jobs, who can answer their questions, and can talk to them. And, one of Dr. Maurer’s favorite things at the convention is to get together with the kids on the first morning of the parents meeting and talk to them about the things that they want to talk about.

MM: I get the little kids who are four and five and six years old and I sit on the floor with them and they, sometimes, show me their stuffed animals and I talk to them about what they’re going to be doing at the convention. One time I said to them at the convention, “you know, a lot of times when you’re a blind person you’re going to be lost. And this can be scary, but if you understand it, it isn’t scary, it’s a chance to find out new things. Don’t worry about being lost. I’ve been lost many times and I found my way to where I needed to go. And sometimes I learned some important things that I didn’t know and it was lots of fun to be out there exploring,” and as I left the room I heard one little kid talking to another little kid and one of ‘em said to the other, “Are you lost?” And the other one said, “Yes. I’m lost, but Dr. Maurer said it’s OK.” [laughter]And I just have great fun talking to these guys. Don’t be afraid of your life. Look at your life as an adventure and it will become an adventure for you. Lots of people can talk to you about being afraid of your life but don’t believe in that. That’s not where your life is exciting. Your life is exciting because there are many things to do in it, and lots of ‘em can be just plain good times.

PM: We have a Braille carnival, too, at the convention where the kids come and play all kinds of Braille games, and they love that. And then we had a Braille book flea market where people bring all their Braille books, and we just put ‘em all out there and the kids come and get them and you know, they trade books and it’s a– we have ‘em, we send ‘em all to the hotel before convention and then we have volunteers come in and lay ‘em all out and then the kids just come get their books. They get like- the only kids like to get the recipe books and things and the younger kids like the Twin Vision, the print Braille books and it’s a lot of fun to see ‘em come in there and find books.

MM: She was 28, I believe, when I was born and she learned Braille because she thought it would be very important to be able to help me with my work. So, she became a transcriber for the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress runs a volunteer program in which you can learn to hand transcribe books. You take Braille paper, you roll it into a Braille writer, this is the way it used to be, I think it’s done on a computer now.

PM: Yes it is.

MM: But you roll it into a Braille writer and you Braille each word of a book and when the pages are correct then you send them in. They are sent off to a bindery and the bindery makes Braille volumes. My mother Brailled two different books for the Library of Congress program in order to become expert in Braille. And she did it before I was five years old, so she did it by the time she was 33. I don’t know how long it took her to do that. By the time I began attending the school for the blind she knew enough about Braille that she could write to me letters in Braille, at least she could after I learned Braille, which she taught me. And she still knows Braille fairly well, probably ten years ago now she decided to write me a Braille letter. There weren’t very many mistakes in it, but there were a few. So her capacity to maintain Braille- she hasn’t written it for a long time- has deteriorated a little, she’s now in her mid 80’s. We have two kids, one who’s 26 and one who’s 22.

And are they sighted?

MM: They are sighted.

Did they learn Braille growing up?

MM: They always said that they were thinking about it [laughter] but they never did.

PM: I think we started working on the alphabet with ‘em and they usually- you know, they could get so they could go maybe A through L or something, you know, but they never got beyond that. They never finished and they never used it.

MM: Sometimes your kids get to liking the same book, and after a while they know it as well as the book knows it [laughter] so you can’t ever skip any pages. We discovered this in reading Twin Vision books to them. We read to our kids after they got to be old enough to know words almost every day until they got to be old enough to read their own books.

PM: And you know, we, as they got older they, you know, they were interested in reading their own books and then of course they were doing their homework and you know, we would say to them, “well if you want help all you got to do is read to us what you need help with and we’ll try to help you.” Our son was like never mind, I’ll do it myself. It took too much time. But our daughter she was right into, especially getting her dad to help her with some things, and she would read to him and discuss things and she still does that with her job and stuff. But our son is, he’s a little more anxious to get things done. He’ll discuss, but he’s not gonna read much to us. He will read menus to us in restaurants though, he does that. [laughter]

MM: Well the National Federation of the Blind is the connection we have to South Carolina. The vice president of the National Federation of the Blind, when we joined it, or at least when I joined it in 1969 was Dr. Donald Capps, and he remained the vice president of the organization into the 1980’s and he helped to build the National Federation of the Blind. The first national convention that I attended was in Columbia, South Carolina in 1969, it was at the Wade Hampton Hotel, which I understand is no longer there, but it was a delightful convention and it taught me that my notions about how limiting blindness is were just plain wrong. There were so many blind people having a great time, enjoying themselves, and building their own lives.

PM: We’re very glad to be in South Carolina again and it’s- we see Don and Betty fairly frequently and we’re always glad to see them.

I'm Tori, and I'm in eighth grade, and I'm 14. And I was doing braille since I was three. And, some- It's- Some of the signs are- They're not really hard, but they're not easy either. It's not easy to teach a person braille. Well, just, you know- it's not really easy to teach a person braille. Just like, they're not gonna- a sighted person is not gonna catch on to it like that. It's gonna take a while.

How do you use braille in everyday life?

I read and write in braille every day. I use a braille machine to write in braille. Basically how you read in braille is you have to first learn the basics, and that's how I was taught. I learned the basics first, and then I just worked ahead.

How were you taught braille?

I was taught the alphabet and my previous vision teacher, she- I basically just practiced it on the braille machine.

What are some of the fun things about braille?

Well, it wasn't fun at first. [laughs] Because at first I was used to writing with pencil and paper and junk. And then, you know, when I first learned it, I was like, "I wanna to do this." Once you start using it more then it does start to get fun, actually. And then you get faster, and so that was pretty much the fun part about it.

What are some of the hard things about braille?

Contractions and- [laughs] some of the contractions and some braille Nemeth is hard. Contractions are not what you're thinking about. Not the labor! [laughs] But it's like different ways you can write words in braille. Like, how you write 'street' in print is you know "s t r" whatever and period. In braille we just put- it's like, we don't write 's' and then 't r e e t.' We do the 'st' sound, the 'r' and the 'e e t.'

Nemeth code is similar to writing like the alphabet in braille, except you have to skip over a key or whatever. And like 'I' you would do 'I' like 2 4. Well, in Nemeth "9" would be 3 5. Yeah, I think that's right, 3 5. So that's basically. And it, it can be confusing, 'cuz, you know, some people might mistake 2 4 as "9" and 3 5 as "3." I did when I was young.

What are some of your favorite books?

Fiction. I like fiction. I'm in the process now of reading a story that I actually do like, Gideon's Gift. But I do have other stories that I've read previously that I did like.

When you read for pleasure, do you use audiobooks or braille?

The majority of the time I do read in braille. I don't listen to books as much, but sometimes I do listen to books. But the majority of the time I just read in braille. Because, you know, I like to know what's going on and stuff. I mean, not saying that listening to stories isn't a good way, but I just like to read. The more I read it, the less I forget the contractions and stuff. 'Cuz if I just flat out don't read it, I will forget the contractions. I would probably forget the contractions. So that's why I just read. And the quotations and stuff, you know, where to put 'em. You can ask Ms. Bundy. I have trouble if I- I may put the wrong quotation.

When you write in braille, what do you write?

I do school subjects. I do math. And if I'm writing a paragraph, I would write in braille. Or a journal entry. I would write a journal entry in braille. And a telephone number I would write in braille. Email addresses and all that I would write in braille. I just use the braille machine.

Have you every used a slate and stylus?

I've tried to use that. Ms. Bundy has tried to show me how to use that, but I have to have more practice with it because now that's a little different than braille, than actually writing in braille.

What's your favorite memory about learning braille?

My favorite I think was pretty much learning the alphabet and how to actually write words and stuff. Like how you- when I first learned it, I had to practice writing it as sentences. And at first it was hard, you know, because I wasn't used to it. So the more I did it, the more fun it got.

Do braille readers have advantages that sighted readers don't?

Not being negative or anything. But, you know, if I'm reading something that I don't want nobody to see, I can just read it and no one will know. [laughs] Not being negative or anything, but just-

Do you have friends who read braille?

Mmm-hmm. They don't go to school here. But they are actually in Spartanburg. We call each other. That has nothing to do with braille, but- When my friend used to go here, we used to write the alphabet and see who could read it. And see who could get the most right without making any mistakes in the alphabet. At the time, she was better than me [laughs] and so [laughs]. That was pretty much the first time I'd ever- someone ever used it. Now I could probably- well I know I could do the alphabet and some of the contractions. Probably not better than her because she uses it a little bit longer than me.

What do you want to do for a career one day?

I planned to do nursing, but I don't anymore. I could probably see myself teaching visually impaired students. I don't think nursing's for me. We actually did a- it was something like a survey on the computer and it was a question that came up about nursing. And I told her, "No." I didn't, you know, I didn't want to do that. And [laughs] she was- it's just not for me. Because I can't see no ultrasound. Well, I can see an ultrasound a little bit. But it's not, "Oh, there's there's baby there." You know, I can't do all that.

With so many gadgets that read information out loud, why should a person learn braille?

Well, because if they're like me or worse, then they may need to write in braille. And there's not going to be always everybody around to write for them. So, you know, they got to be independent and write for themselves.

What advice would you give to someone learning braille?

I would tell- if I were giving them a lecture or something, I would at least, you know, tell them, "Don't give up." Because I was really wanting to give up, but my teachers, they wouldn't let me. So, don't give up. Just get through the hard part. Even though it is frustrating don't just say, "I don't want to do this no more."