One catalyst for braille literacy's decline is screen-reader equipped smart phones. Why poke paper with a slate and stylus when you can dictate documents and hear books on your iPhone?
The answer is that braille remains the only means through which blind people attain literacy -- the ability to read, write, and read what you have written.
Designers of the Perkins SMART Brailler hope bringing braille into the digital age will make it easier to learn and expand tactile literacy.
I hope it does, but fear it won't. Here's why. Audio feedback can help students self-correct keystrokes; a visual display can make the braille code transparent to non-braille readers; and a USB drive can make files easy to save, transfer, and print. The SMART Brailler demystifies braille and pulls more people into the teaching process.
But increasing readers who use embossed text as their preferred format -- whether in printed books or on a refreshable display -- is the deeper challenge. That Rubicon separating letter knowledge from language use remains.
The Mountbatten Brailler seemed revolutionary, but its talk and tangle of computer cables quickly reduced it to a LeapFrog-like learning tool, not a driver of literacy.
The Perkins SMART Brailler is sleeker and holds the promise of mobile device integration. But that may actually hurt braille literacy. The iPhone lightens the device load for blind users. It's becoming their computer and constant companion.
How compelling can a case for learning braille be if its ultimate use is to control an iOS device with a BraillePen?
Bringing braille into the digital age only underscores the latter's ease and immediacy.
At the same time, it also reminds us of the eternal elegance of Louis Braille's raised-dot language -- a system no technology will ever replace or improve on -- and the enduring efficiency of the Perkins Brailler.
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