by Christopher Gray
In this message to the ACB membership, I will share two important communications recently written on different but critical topics in our movement. First, let me share with you a letter I have sent to Guide Dog Users, Inc. for publication in their magazine, “Pawtracks.” Through it, I hope to begin to lay to rest misunderstandings that have been alleged to exist between myself, the ACB board of directors and GDUI. It is a letter that looks forward and begins to lay down concrete, positive plans for today and tomorrow and I hope it is a letter that creates bonds toward mutual goals rather than bones for contentiousness.
Second, I will share with you a brief article I wrote for the “Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness” on the issues surrounding the Unified English Braille Code. It is a statement that I hope encompasses ACB’s position and my beliefs based on experience and work on this project for nearly the past 10 years. I hope “The Braille Forum” readership will find this brief discussion helpful and informative.
Letter to the “Pawtracks” Editor
I’m speaking to you here in “Pawtracks” because I sincerely want to explore ways that ACB and GDUI can work together in the future. Both ACB and GDUI are lucky to have talented and passionate advocates among their membership. Sometimes we all let our passion for an issue override everything else, and we all say or do things that, in hindsight, we wish we hadn’t.
Many words have been exchanged over the past year and much dialogue has been started, much of which has been good in the long run. Some words and exchanges, though, have caused hurt feelings between members of many of our affiliates. While we can’t erase the past, we can learn from it, and in doing so move toward a more productive relationship. For my part, I will work toward improving communication between ACB and GDUI and a clearer sense of our shared issues. As someone who shares his life with a guide dog handler, I can appreciate and have seen firsthand the issues GDUI members face and the importance your dogs have to you. I also care very deeply about the rights of all blind people to lead complete and productive lives. Toward that end, I would like to propose some ways we can work together to further the civil rights of all blind people and guide dog handlers in particular.
GDUI already shares a close relationship with the ACB national office staff. I will continue to support that relationship whenever and wherever possible. I will also strongly encourage and assure that the ACB advocacy committee and other related committees and groups keep in touch with and include members of GDUI, especially when their work involves guide dog-related issues. After talking with Debbie Grubb, president of GDUI, I would like to offer my assistance in setting up a meeting with Joanne Wilson, Rehabilitation Services Administration Commissioner, and GDUI representatives. Melanie Brunson and I would very much like the opportunity to accompany GDUI on this extremely important mission to begin a dialogue with Ms. Wilson on the issue of guide dogs in rehabilitation centers. Working from the GDUI position paper on informed choice and access to rehabilitation facilities, we can demonstrate the rightness of our stance.
The Need for a Unified Braille Code (Reprinted from the “Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness,” February 2004.)
The need for a unification of braille codes in North America is as real and as palpable as is the need to educate blind children to read and use braille as the cornerstone of their literacy. The present situation, wherein a diversity of braille codes drives students’ education in a variety of subjects, can only impede the educational process, particularly for any subject related to mathematics or science. In several resolutions adopted between 1995 and 2002, the American Council of the Blind has supported the idea of braille code unification among academic disciplines.
Problems with the current system
The difficulty in our current systems of reading and writing braille stems from the evolution of the literary braille code. It does not signify an inherent lack in the code itself. As needs have been identified for braille readers, solutions have been devised to meet those specific needs. Today, practitioners and users of braille need to sit down together and synthesize these varied solutions into a code that is more unified and that combines the varied solutions, each very beneficial in its own way, into a more holistic approach to a system of reading and writing. Because math and science are the primary subjects that have led to the current diversity in codes, significant attention must be paid to these disciplines as a part of any long-term, academically viable code unification.
The reasons for diverging from the standard English Braille Code as adopted by the Braille Authority of North America stem from basic inadequacies within that code in reading and writing even the most rudimentary mathematical information. It seems virtually unimaginable that in the 21st century, our basic braille system, the only means of true literacy for blind people, does not contain a symbol to represent the plus sign! Educators, braille transcribers, and readers have had to resort to various alternative codes to the standard literary code to fill the ever-widening gap between that code and the needs of readers, particularly student readers. We find ourselves today teaching and learning to decipher the same symbol in different situations, depending only on context as a guide. For computer material, there is a code. For general mathematics, there is a different and often contradictory code. To learn chemistry, again there is a different code. For general reading, there is yet another code that cannot address many scientific concepts that are generally and widely discussed in commonly available literature and writings, including daily newspapers and periodicals. Such a situation has been and continues to be intolerable when considered as a backdrop to the education of blind children in today’s world. If braille as a system of reading and writing is to survive, these inadequacies must be addressed.
Search for the ideal code
For almost 10 years, the Braille Authority of North America and the International Council on English Braille have struggled to find a model that lends itself to the appropriate unification of these various braille codes. It will be a point of personal pride throughout my life to have made, on behalf of the American Council of the Blind, the original motion that led to the creation of the working committees and the original structure within North America that was later extended to an international venue. It is an equal if not greater disappointment to have witnessed the potential of this work bog down and stall due primarily to political considerations and ideals that betray the potential of today’s blind children.
Too often, decisions have been made based on prevailing personalities, committee turf, and an unspoken set of assumptions about what one or another country might accept, rather than on what is fundamental to any braille code: the needs of its readers. This has not happened due to ill will on the part of those working on the unified code project. Rather, it has occurred through a stubborn adherence to a belief that the oldest aspects of braille codes must drive unification to the exclusion of every piece of progress made in North America in math and science since 1951. Were this point of view reversed, it is my firm belief that we would be on the verge of unifying our braille codes at the upcoming meeting of the International Council on English Braille. Unfortunately, we are further away today than at any time in the past 20 years.
As is so often the case in our endeavors toward change, “the devil is in the details.” Be that as it may, I remain confident that, in time, North America and the English-speaking world will find their way to a more unified braille code than exists today.