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Books For Kids: A Holiday Shopping List

November 23rd, 2010

The holidays are upon us and schools and families are preparing to take a break and relax. We believe that books are a great way for families to come together for fun and to learn about each other. These books are all about people with visual impairments and the people around them. Enjoy!

Books for Early Readers

Knots on a Counting Rope, by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
The authors create a touching story about the life of young Boy-Strength-of-Blue-Horses, a Native American child born blind in the old ways of the American West. Boy and his grandfather tell the story together using a knotted rope to signal the memories of the major events in his life. Only by knowing his story and learning to see with his heart will Boy grow strong enough to “cross the dark mountains” of his fear and triumph over his blindness.
Listen for the Bus: David’s Story, by Patricia McMahon
This true account of a kindergartner’s week is a touching tale. David cannot see, and his hearing is not very good. David rides the bus to school and loves participating in class. His teachers have made special accommodations, such as corrugated cardboard and other textures to help him find his own things in the classroom. David learns sign language and rides horses. This is a wonderful story about a normal boy who can’t use his eyes.
Rainbow Joe and Me, by Maria Diaz Strom
Strom’s story is told by a young girl named Eloise who likes to make colors and draw wonderful pictures. Rainbow Joe is an older man who is blind. He enjoys listening to Maria talk all about her colors and pictures. He tells her how he thinks of color and promises to one day make colors just for her. I could tell you how he does it, but that would spoil the mystery. This cute and adorable story provides insight into the experience of color for those who are blind in a cute and adorable story.
The Secret Code, by Dana Meachen Rau
This is the story of Oscar, a young boy who is blind. Oscar explains that his books are not really written in a secret code, but in braille. As he describes braille the book illustrates what braille is like and encourages the reader to go and learn even more about braille. We especially like this book since it shows the reader the braille code and encourages checking the local library for books in braille.
See You Tomorrow, Charles, by Miriam Cohen
In Cohen’s story, a first grade class adjusts to the new kid, Charles, who happens to be blind. The other students do what they can to help Charles in his new class. They work to find a way for Charles to fit in. When a few of the students are locked in a dark boiler room Charles saves the day.
Seeing Things My Way, by Alden Carter
The reader meets Amanda, a second grader who is losing her vision because of a childhood illness. Amanda talks all about her school and the tools they have for teaching those with visual impairments. Learning to use a cane, to read braille, and to type on a brailler are just some of the things that Amanda’s school teaches. Amanda also introduces the reader to several other people in her town who are blind and mentions the things they do, such as a radio dj and high school student who plays the flute in the school band.

Books for Intermediate Readers

Buddy, the First Seeing Eye Dog, by Eva Moore
This true story of America’s first seeing eye dog describes how a German shepherd named Kiss was trained in the German Alps. After getting to her master, Morris, they train together, and she even saves his life. Morris is so impressed by her skills that he renames her Buddy, and she becomes his best friend. This is a wonderful story about the beginning of a great program to help people with visual impairments all over the world.
The Cay, by Theodore Taylor
Eleven-year-old Phillip becomes lost at sea during World War II when his ship is torpedoed by the Germans. His only companions are Timothy, an elderly black islander, and Stew, a cat. During their escape from the sinking ship Phillip is struck in the head and loses his sight. Not only must Phillip learn to live stranded on a deserted island, he must do it without his eyes.
Seeing Lessons, the Story of Abigail Carter America’s First School for the Blind, by Spring Hermann
This is the story of Abby Carter, one of the first American students to attend a school for the blind. Dr. Howe seeks out Abby and her sister Sophie to join his new school for blind children. Dr. Howe and the children must discover new ways to learn the same basic lessons as the sighted children, all while proving to Dr. Howe’s parents and the state legislature that they deserve the chance to learn. Only together will they all succeed.
Through Grandpa’s Eyes, by Patricia MacLachlan
MacLachlan tells the tale of young John as he spends time at Grandpa’s house. This is his favorite place to go; he learns a new way to see while he’s there because Grandpa is blind. John comes to understand how the blind see through Grandpa’s constant reminders to “look through [his] eyes.” John’s relaxed day is filled with exploration of the senses of touch, smell, and sound as he learns more appreciation for the experiences of people with visual impairment.

[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by Karoly Czifra]

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Braille and Dyslexia

November 11th, 2010

When people think dyslexia, they think vision problems. Dyslexics see letters and numbers backwards if they can read at all. That’s the common thought, but only one aspect of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a reading disorder, not a vision or “seeing” disorder. This means that braille readers can also be dyslexic. Anneli Veispak recently published an article in the Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness that discusses this very problem. This is a new branch of research in both the fields of visual impairment and dyslexia. There is very little in the way of information connecting visual impairment with dyslexia. Below I will explain some of what dyslexia is and what to look for in braille readers.

Dyslexia is a series of neurological issues that exist strictly within the brain of the individual who has it. What exactly causes dyslexia is unknown, but there are many theories at work that describe possible causes for the disorder. Part of what makes dyslexia so hard to understand is that the human brain is not designed to read in the first place.

A Little Understanding of Dyslexia

If dyslexia is not backwards reading, then what is it? Current theories claim that dyslexia actually affects the phonological language centers of the brain. “Phonological” means the sound based part of language. This is where the letter “b” makes the “buh” sound. Language is based on phonological constructs that we call phonemes. These are the building blocks of words, which make up our sentences and conversations. The brain of a person with dyslexia has a timing issue with connecting sounds to meanings. This does not cause a major impact on normal daily activities, like conversation, unless really fast speeds are needed. A person with dyslexia may respond just a little slower to their name being called or may speak a little slower, but it is not something dramatic, we would just brush it off as a personality quirk. Reading requires much faster connections to be made. Sometimes this means that the connection isn’t made, sort of like a web page timing out, or the connection comes, but it is really slow.

Reading is accomplished by taking in a phonemic “image,” whether by sight or by touch, and sending it to the brain for decoding and meaning retrieval. Very early in life we are taught to connect sounds to physical objects, remember the See ‘N Say? The brain then pairs the visual or tactual image with a phonological, or sound, tag then moves on to pulling out the meaning as it normally would for the sound. Our brains are set up for language and generally connect sounds to meaning. Dyslexia is a problem with connecting this phonological tag to the meaning and when a word image is added, it causes greater slowdown in the retrieval. There is often even a misconnect with the image and its sound. This is why classic images of dyslexics transpose “b” and “d” or “p” and “q” when reading and writing.

While dyslexia is also not one of those things that can be nailed down to a single cause, all current theories of dyslexia agree on the phonological issues. The reason that dyslexia is so hard to pin down and so difficult to understand is that there is no “reading center” in our brains. We were never designed to read.

The Brain that Reads

In another article on this very site, we discuss the changes that reading braille makes within the human brain, especially within those who are blind. Well, it’s not just the blind that restructure their brains by learning to read, we all do it. In two very good books, Stanlislas Dehaene and Maryanne Wolf discuss just what learning to read does to our brains. In these books, which give similar messages in different levels of detail, it’s talked about extensively how simply learning to read alters the pathways within our brains. Wolf says that we’ve altered our brains to accept reading and Dehaene believes that we’ve created a system of reading and writing that follows the path of least resistance to minimize the changes. Over the course of centuries, reading and writing systems have changed to an alphabetic system in the western cultures that require phonemes and such, as we covered earlier.

Some Differences in Reading in Eastern Cultures

Not only is there not a centralized “reading center” in our brains, but symbol oriented writing styles, such as Chinese or Japanese, use a different part of the brain. That’s right, Japanese kanji uses different pieces of the brain for the sound/image connections to meaning. The symbols of those writing systems often contain the meaning of entire words or phrases in a phonetic system. That means that one symbol could mean “way of the warrior.” These Asian writing systems are read with a different part of the brain, but they are still susceptible to many of the reading disorders that affect our phonetic alphabet, including dyslexia. Forms of dyslexia can affect the regions of the brain that make the lexical connection between symbol and meaning, causing the same types of slowdowns and misreads that occur with words and letters.

Dyslexia and Braille

Now that we have a pretty grasp on what dyslexia is and isn’t let’s talk about how it affects braille readers. Braille is reading. That’s a fact. Many sighted teachers of braille read it visually, and individuals who are blind read braille with their fingers. “But wait,” you say, “doesn’t the touch take a different path in the brain than the eyes?” Yes, but that’s like taking the interstate to your mother’s house. Follow this example:  You and a friend are meeting in a town that is halfway between where you both live. You both take different highways to get there and approach your destination from different directions, but the last road is the same. Now, it turns out the city is doing roadwork at the intersection of the street that you both turn on to, slowing down all the traffic. It doesn’t matter how you got there, the construction still slows you both down. That roadwork is dyslexia.

Braille travels the neural network from the fingertips up to the brain and registers there for the word image to meaning connection that takes place in all reading. In the case of a braille reader with dyslexia, that image information could lag, get misconnected, or get turned around, just like with a sighted reader. The brain doesn’t really differentiate between a printed word that is seen and a braille word that is touched.

How Do We Know if it is Dyslexia?

If a student has, and by student I mean anyone learning to read either print or braille, a good, intellectually supportive home environment or no other obvious signs of mental impairment, dyslexia may be the cause of reading difficulties. According to Veispak, students learning braille have more work in learning to read than sighted students. Generally, they forge better phonological connections than sighted students do. Studies have also shown that braille readers are often slightly behind their sighted counterparts in reading tests. If you suspect your student is having trouble reading, the school has tests they can administer to see if dyslexia may be the problem.

If you or your student is diagnosed with dyslexia work closely with the special education team within your school or school district and emphasize the new work being done to bridge the gap between teaching students with dyslexia and teaching braille. The most important thing for our parents, teachers, and independent adults to remember is that this is a brand new frontier. Let’s all work together to find new and innovative ways to teach and learn.

For an annotated bibliography of the work cited, click here.

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Your Brain On Braille

September 2nd, 2010



Most people would agree that—at a minimum—functional literacy is important. The knowledge of how to spell words and use proper punctuation makes one a competent adult. There are other benefits to reading braille as well.

Blindness reorganizes the human brain, allowing parts that wouldn’t be used to get some exercise. This extra brain use and reorganization could lead to greater memory capabilities and potentially even to mental health benefits. Dr. Harold Burton of Washington University has been doing research for the last several years on the effects of blindness on the human brain. Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) scans on study participants, he has determined that the visual cortex reorganizes itself to accommodate other functions. Dr. Burton’s name is attached to a lot of the studies that I will be discussing here, so feel free to check out our resources page for an annotated bibliography with all of that information on it.

So, what does being blind do to the brain? Without the eyes being active, the optic nerves begin to atrophy, or weaken, from disuse. It is the same as having to get physical therapy after an extended hospital stay because your legs don’t work quite right. Now it is just the nerves that atrophy not the muscles or the eyes themselves fortunately. The portion of the brain that processes the visual information (the neuroscientists call it the visual cortex) does not atrophy either. Even though it is no longer receiving any stimulus from the optic nerves, it doesn’t quit working, it simply gets a new to-do list. One of the new tasks on this list is the processing of auditory linguistics or word-related functions that are heard. Many of Dr. Burton’s studies involve having the participants sit with their eyes closed and listen to a series of words and then make a connection quickly after the series is finished. There are two forms to the tests; one is phonological, or rhyme-oriented, and the other semantic, or meaning- based. The phonological test is a series of words with a rhyme scheme to them that the participant has to provide a similar sounding word for. In the semantic portion, the participants hear a series of sixteen nouns, and they give a verb that connects all of the nouns. The semantic test showed the most outstanding results in the tests.

What is most interesting about the studies is that the blind participants showed a lot of activity in the portion of the brain that is usually reserved for processing the visual information for what the doctors call “normal-sighted” and we will refer to as simply “sighted.” After the initial series of tests when this was observed, the doctors altered the lists to use words that were abstract and had no visual connotation to them. What this means is that if a word like “house” was used, the participant might visualize their house. This could throw off the results for the sighted and late-blind participants of the study because they would be using the visual cortex to recall the image of their house. Even with eyes closed and the vision not being used, if you picture something in your head, it activates that part of the brain. So to avoid this, they chose words that did not have an image connected to them. Given the number of nouns that we use that are concrete, the test also called for the participant to create a verb action not necessarily being an image-oriented kind of thing.

According to Dr. Burton, not all of the reorganization that takes place is devoted to lexical or word-based processing. The visual cortex also activates based on tactile processes. This means that touch-based activities that do not correspond to word usage at all also use a portion of the now jobless visual cortex. What does all this really mean? What does it matter if your brain actually physically rewires itself to accommodate for blindness and uses the otherwise unused parts for other things?

Well, there isn’t really any concrete evidence yet on what all this extra activity does. Understand that all of this research is still in its very early stages, and no one is totally sure to what extent these changes will impact our individual lives. Dr. Amir Amedi and his team of neuroscientists propose that the reorganization of the visual cortex increases storage and retrieval of words heard by the blind. This would seem to enhance the memory capabilities of the blind, making for some amazing memory for detail and events. Dr. Amedi even references the old cultural belief that blind individuals make the best historians, since they never forget anything. Dr. Amedi actually opens his paper with the following quote: “The traditions cited by Rabbi Sheshet are not subject to doubt as he is a blind man.”-Talmud Yerushalmi, tractate Shabat 6b.

Other studies have been performed across the world that conclude mental activity, especially cognitive action, has a similar effect on the brain as getting proper exercise does on the rest of your body. Jogging, weight lifting, cardiovascular exercise, and yoga are all recommended for keeping your body healthy and preventing weight gain and a multitude of heart conditions. The same goes for your brain. While your brain obviously can’t go for a jog or bench press your little brother, it can receive exercise from a lot of different places. One of the most popular, and often referenced in these studies, is the recent surge of brain training video games. If those games activate the brain, visually and cognitively, reading braille should have similar results for the blind.

So now we’re talking long term physical and mental health as well as the skills to further yourself in the job market. The cognitive functions of word association and tactile activity stimulate many parts of the visual cortex of the brain, and cognitive brain activity is good for warding off such nasty things as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Learning and using braille won’t just make you a better writer or more marketable for jobs but may very well increase your longevity and overall mental health for years to come.

Download Annotated Bibliography in PDF Format

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