CHENNAI: Almost two centuries after its invention, Braille, a script for the visually impaired, is navigating turbulent waters to stay relevant. On World Braille Day, stakeholders highlight potholes in the system, offer suggestions and discuss its importance
The fingers of a 14-year-old Sumathi trace across a set of raised dots on the page of a booklet. She pauses and crinkles up her face. Confused, she calls out to her mother, Vasudha M, a tailor. ‘Amma, idha padichu kamikariya? (Mom, can you read this text?)’, asks Sumathi. ‘Kudu Suma (Give me the booklet),’ says Vasudha, stepping out of her room. Picking up the booklet, she closes her eyes, traces her calloused fingers over the sheet and reads, ‘Enyenba enai ezhuththenba ivvirandum Kannenba vaazhum uyirkku’. She opens her eyes and looks at her daughter, who is now intently focusing on her mother’s voice.
“This Thirukkural loosely means that letters and numbers are the two eyes of human beings. This is the sight — of knowledge — I wish to provide my daughter. But I am worried. She has limited exposure to Braille. Most special educators and general teachers in these integrated schools themselves aren’t adept in Braille. I teach her whenever I get time. However, it’s not enough. She struggles to read the texts. Although there are assistive devices, they aren’t accessible or available to everyone. Isn’t Braille learning the first step towards literacy for a child like her?” she asks.
Restrictive expression
Braille, a tactile script system invented in 1824 by Louis Braille, a visually impaired French educator when he was 15 years old, has enabled those from his ilk to read, write and type for several decades. However, now, here in India, the Braille literacy rate has plunged to a mere 1 per cent, raising concerns about the limitations on education, equality, and independence of people from the community.
Sumathi was born with congenital glaucoma, and after early intervention, she enrolled into a government-aided school in the city. School lessons, the adolescent says, are rarely taught in Braille. “We listen to audio lectures in our classrooms most of the time. But I want to read the Thirukkural myself! I love literature, and I want to be able to read books.
Amma won’t always have the time to read it to me, will she? I want to be self-reliant,” says Suma, her tiny fingers trying to feel and decipher the dots. This lack of independence, due to deficiencies in aids such as focused Braille training and inadequate books, has become a cause for restrictive expression for students in the state, it seems.
K Raghuraman, an English professor at the Government Arts College in the city and a disability rights activist explains that not fostering reading and writing skills at a young age will confine the students’ creativity. “When you listen to audio, your mind creates imageries of merely what you hear. But reading something yourself opens possibilities...you understand punctuations, pauses and the flow of words. It’s not restrictive,” he explains.
Experiencing equity
A nessential step in fostering the development of the alpha-numeracy aptitudes of students with visual impairments, traditional Braille, today, is slowly being superseded by audiobooks and screenreaders such as NVDA and JAWS, and other assistive devices.
“Technology has propelled people with disabilities to explore a new world — of computers, virtual reality and even augmented reality. But that doesn’t mean we can skip the basics. In Tamil Nadu, government schools provide study materials in Braille only up to Class 8. However, even during this time, the children are exposed to audio lessons, and they tend to prefer them over Braille as the tactile method requires long hours of training and consistent practice. But this curbs their learning,” shares Manoharan of the National Federation of the Blind.
Namita Jacob of Chetana Charitable Trust, which has been tackling print disabilities with its handmade and illustrated tactile books, weighs in. “A child receiving good Braille instruction takes up to at least grade 4 or 5 before they reach reading or writing fluency — reasonably equivalent to their sighted peers’ ability to do so. So here, we are looking at an entire primary school education before there is equity and capacity,” she explains.
Pupil-Teacher Ratio
India is home to the largest blind population in the world — an estimated 4.95 million blind people and 70 million vision-impaired persons. There are 1,27,405 visually impaired people in Tamil Nadu and over 2,000 visually impaired students in the state. Despite the sizeable digits, several systemic and societal issues continue to plague the structure around education for the visually impaired.
For instance, the Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) in schools is vital in determining the educational quality and performance of students and teachers. “Here, government-run schools have unfilled vacancies and an alarming PTR. With fewer trained teachers, it becomes harder for children to learn and benefit from what a school is ideally supposed to offer. Moreover, the usage percentage of Braille is high until a child completes school education and a very critical skill for a child to become articulate. But with such gaps in the grassroots, how can learning happen? “ asks K Raghuraman.
In October 2021, the Supreme Court directed the Central Government to notify the PTR for special educators who can only teach children with disabilities in inclusive schools. The PTR, in a stop-gap arrangement, was notified by the Supreme Court as 1:8 for children with visual impairment.
“Adequate staffing has always been a problem. But when educators who have cleared the Teachers Eligibility Training (TET) exams have little to no knowledge about Braille, it furthers the chaos. Teachers need to be sufficiently trained,” says Manoharan. Corroborating, a special educator who wishes to remain anonymous shares that general educators are hardly given any training in Braille. Special educators too are overburdened with the volume of students they have to teach, completing the syllabus under a stipulated time, among other issues.
Pedagogy for posterity
A good pedagogical approach, and a fun and innovative learning method are the need of the hour, especially when it comes to learning a foundational skill, say experts. “We should look at how lessons in Braille are taught in our schools. Are there programmes curated to make children with visual impairments interested in reading and writing? Is it prioritised? There needs to be an attempt to make understanding subjects fun. Literacy is a series of exercises and learning is an incidental process. We need to make the process interesting for these children,” asserts Namita.
It is perhaps this thought — to breathe fun and innovation into classrooms and make Braille learning a pleasurable process that led Thinkerbell Labs, a tech-driven organisation to create Annie, the world’s first self-learning Braille device. The organisation has been working with the Tamil Nadu State government’s Commissionerate for the Welfare of Differently-Abled (CWDA) to make all government-run schools for the blind smart class enabled.
Jointly, they have established Annie Smart Classes in 10 district schools (Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Dharmapuri, Salem, Cuddalore, Tiruchy, Sivagangai, Puddukottai, and Thanjavur) on a pilot basis. “Traditionally, Braille is taught through a method where a teacher hand-holds each student and helps them learn using tactile tools. Teachers often feel overwhelmed as they have to teach the student by handholding them, and in a class of 10 students that lasts for 50 minutes, they can only give less than five minutes of attention per student. Annie solves these problems by making learning intuitive and fun for students and needs little intervention from teachers,” says Saif Shaikh, co-founder and director of Thinkerbell Labs.
The pilot project went live across all 10 schools in Tamil Nadu in November 2022. “After seeing a clear value in its intervention, the schools have requested Tamil Nadu’s CWDA to help take the project beyond the pilot so that all students can effectively be catered to,” he adds.
Innovations and imperfections
W hile innovations such as Annie are revolutionary and important, the road to its availability and usage becoming a norm is long and demanding. “People from the community have always welcomed new tech. But what irks us is that they are short-lived, or lack a strategy to make them an accessible affair,” opines Manikandan, a special educator.
The Orbit Reader, a refreshable Braille display which also acts as a book reader and note-taker, is offered by the government at a subsidised rate. However, it hasn’t been made available for everyone. While the device is touted to be language-independent through which it can be localised, the students using it share a concern — the Braille reader gives a different meaning to a text if there are spelling discrepancies in the source file.
“To use the device, the text has to be fed in a specific file format through an SD card. The output is often inaccurate. This incompatibility makes even an innovation such as the Orbit Reader challenging for people from the community to use. And besides, even to use the Orbit Reader, one needs to know the Braille script! Technology without foundational skills is pointless. During Covid, we faced neglect in the online education space and cannot solely rely on assistive tech. These aren’t available to every student, and the supply is minimal. This scarcity furthers our dependency on readers and scribes, who are also not easily available,” laments Selvi A, a BEd English graduate who owns an Orbit Reader.
Price of a dream
I f inadequacy is an issue, the increasing price of Braille books also burdens the community. The price of the books is over 30-40 per cent higher than regular editions due to the high cost of printing. With the state-run regional Braille printing press defunct, books are purchased from private players on a grant basis. “I am currently preparing for the National Eligibility Test (NET) and rely solely on audio lessons like many others. Although books covering certain titles and for competitive exams are available in Braille, they aren’t enough,” tells Barghavi, a BEd English graduate.
Muniyappan, a History professor and member of the College Students and Graduates Association for the Blind (CSGAB), explains how a lack of Braille books can determine a visually impaired person’s future.
“There are subjects and careers that people from the blind community have traditionally chosen. That doesn’t mean they lack other ambitions, it means they lack resources that will help them realise these dreams. When we lack Braille books for school-level subjects, imagine wanting to study Engineering but having to learn the voluminous syllabus through audio lessons. That is why most students take up Arts and Humanities and do not branch out to other professional streams. The failure to provide access creates barriers for education and employment, and even undermines an individual’s capability,” he elucidates.
Being the primary means to literacy, Braille is the language that provides private autonomy for people from the community. “It is a form of expression that matters. With more intentional efforts from all stakeholders to promote Braille literacy and an effective plan of action, all aspects of our lives can be empowered,” he adds. Braille is personal...political even. And when all fails, people from the community believe the traditional strengths of Braille will anchor them.