BALTIMORE — Jordan Gilmer has a degenerative condition that eventually will leave him completely blind. But when he was a child, his teachers didn’t emphasize Braille, the system of reading in which raised dots signify letters of the alphabet.
Instead, they insisted he use what little vision he had to read print. By the third grade, he was falling behind in his schoolwork.
“They gave him Braille instruction, but they didn’t tell us how to get Braille books, and they didn’t want him using it during the day,” said Jordan’s mother, Carrie Gilmer.
That experience is common: Fewer than 10 percent of the 1.3 million legally blind people in the U.S. read Braille, and just 10 percent of blind children are learning it, according to a report to be released today by the National Federation of the Blind. Instead, teachers ask students to rely on audio texts, voice-recognition software or other technology. And teachers who know Braille often must shuttle between schools, resulting in haphazard instruction, the report says.
Using technology as a substitute for Braille leaves blind people illiterate, the federation said, citing studies that show blind people who know Braille are more likely to earn advanced degrees, find good jobs and live independently.
One study found that 44 percent of participants who grew up reading Braille were unemployed, compared with 77 percent for those who relied on print. Overall, blind adults face 70 percent unemployment.
Gilmer, now an 18-year-old aspiring lawyer, worked on his Braille in a summer program when he was in middle school and can now read 125 words a minute, up from his previous rate, an excruciatingly slow 20 words a minute.
