Beyond the Pencil Part 3

I still remember my elementary school days where braille was a big part and perhaps the only medium in which I accessed and produced information. I remember my hands taking in the words and the way they were spelt, the way everything was laid out on the page which included the way in which paragraphs were split, what was bolded, what was italicized, or where a comma or semicolon was placed. I miss the way my fingers would go numb from hours of reading, the way I would have a physical copy of a book and could flip pages back and forth. By the age of nine however, I was being transitioned to using a computer. Reading too was replaced for me with tapes and audio books. As a child, I fell in love with it and didn’t realize what I would be missing out on.

This soon started to become evident when spelling tests became a regular component of classes. I was still producing my work in braille at the time, regardless of having a computer available to me. However, due to my lack of physical reading and disengagement with the visual world, I was known as the ‘bad speller’ when it came to assignments. When I say disengagement with the visual world, I mean that I was not constantly reading cereal boxes, looking out the window at road signs, not constantly reading the world around me to see the way in which things were written and spelled. Teachers believed I was simply not attentive and my phonetic spelling became a cutesy aspect that people would giggle at. Even if I memorize a spelling list, the words would soon fade from my memory because I was not constantly surrounded by them. So I learned how to pass my tests, but this did not help me in the long-run of being successful.

As I got older, spellchecker was a solution my education team thought would be adequate for me. In my eyes now, though, this was actually a band aid solution. I would use spellchecker for assignments, but when it came down to tests and exams where it was prohibited, I once again felt illiterate. Or, if I wanted to write in a physical copy format for myself, I found myself way below Grade Level with both writing and reading.Why am I talking about all this, though?

Now that I am an adult, and an adult who is in university and holding down a job, I find myself reflecting upon these elements of my past education. I also find myself regretting my resistance to continue reading hard-copy books when audio was introduced to me. But perhaps this wasn’t my fault because I was a child and couldn’t fully realize the ramifications of my actions. Now that I am in higher education, the quality of work that is expected to be produced is something I find myself struggling with. Not in terms of content, but rather formatting, spelling, presentation, all the things that allow your readers to decide if they should take you seriously or not.

When I first registered for Accessibility Services with my institution and asked for braille materials, I did so with the hope of improving my skills. It wasn’t just that, though. Each person has their own learning style and mine (much to the amusement of my friends) is a visual style. I need to physically see things laid out in front of me and physical charts and graphs are my jam. But I was quickly told that my university does not support this, and that I would have to rely on audio and text. This continues to be challenging for me. If I am relying on an audio copy of a book for class, I find myself struggling with the correct spelling of author’s and characters’ names along with my citations. In addition to this, if I want to skim to find a particular section, I can’t flip pages back and forth, but am forced to re-listen to certain sections just for one piece of information.

Similarly, if I am reading a chapter or report in text, I can read the content, but I am unable to tell if there are centered sections, underlining, and other elements related to the layout of the materials. Thus, when I am writing my own chapters, essays, and reports, I have no knowledge of how they are typically formatted or presented and am unable to replicate it as I am not constantly seeing these things when reading. Not only this, but there are also multiple ways to format and stylize your work, and that it is not a set formula. Some Professors tell me not to worry about it while others grade me down for my mistakes. But is either of these approaches just like the spellchecker, actually assisting me in filling the gaps within my learning?

Recently, I have begun asking friends to format my work and glance over it for any glaring issues. I saw this as simply asking a friend for a favour rather than officially going to my accessibility services for someone to take this on for my assignments for fear that then that too will become a band aid and more than just friends doing each other a favour. I constantly worry about this now, because in my opinion, blindness should not be an excuse for producing less than subpar work in a job setting. We will not always have someone to examine our work and not everyone receiving it will understand why it is grossly formatted or why it is full of childish spelling mistakes. In a world where many blind children in the school system are only being given computers and steered away from braille, I find myself even more concerned for their experiences when they too become adults.

It is very uncomfortable that in my upper level of education that I still struggle with citations and formatting, but I believe that this experience and these gaps I find myself struggling with can be learned from and used to eliminate them with younger blind children who are currently in the school system. I want to urge Educators to not let braille die in a world where technology is an easier fix. Just as pencil and paper is a crucial part of any other child’s learning, braille needs to be held to the same standard. Perhaps even more so, due to the limited access we have with our surroundings. Sometimes, it is easy to utilize solutions such as spellcheck as it may seem the best solution, especially when there is not enough time within the fast moving educational system. But if time is carved out for it from the very beginning, then it will be integrated into the learning rather than a tacking on of information. If technology breaks down or if the power goes out, the question we need to ask is will the blind child still be literate and be able to participate with their peers?

by Harjinder “Jinnie” Saran