2013-10-09-Braille Exchange
Seminars@Hadley
Braille Exchange: It’s Never Too Late to Learn Braille
Presented by
Jennifer Ottowitz and Sharon Howerton
Moderated by
Doug Anzlovar
January 30, 2013
Doug Anzlovar
Welcome to Seminars@Hadley. My name is Doug Anzlovar. I’m the Dean of Educational Programs and Instruction here at the Hadley School. Today’s seminar topic is our Braille Exchange seminar, It’s Never Too Late to Learn Braille.
We have a panel presentation this morning led by two of our Hadley braille instructors, Sharon Howerton and Jennifer Ottowitz. On the panel we have Hadley students, Darrin Cheney, [Pat Kingwell, Clarice Coco and Judith Hawley].
I’m going to go ahead and turn the presentation over to Sharon Howerton, who will make further introductions.
Sharon Howerton
Good morning, everyone. This is Sharon Howerton. I’ve been a Hadley instructor for the past eleven years and teaching the Braille Literacy 1 and 2 courses—we’ll talk about those in a little while—for about six or seven years.
The panelists that we have today are students that I have had or people that I have come to know through our office hour chat. We’re going to ask them to tell you a little bit about themselves and their vision and then Jennifer will be able to tell you a little more about herself and get the panelists involved in some other questions.
I’d like to ask Darrin Cheney if you wouldn’t mind talking about yourself a little.
Darrin Cheney
Sure. My name is Darrin Cheney. I live in Weiser, Idaho and I am 48. I am retired due to blindness and health-related issues. My eye condition is retinitis pigmentosa, or kind of a disease, and I am in the process of losing what remaining vision that I have left, which is about less than 3%.
Sharon Howerton
Okay, thanks, Darrin. I didn’t say I am totally blind and have been all of my life so the perspective that I appreciate from my students is the fact that they have learned braille as adults, which I did not.
Patricia Kingwell, would you mind introducing yourself, please?
Patricia Kingwell
Hi, this is Patricia Kingwell. I’m 76, almost 77. I live in Ocala, Florida. I have developed a wet macular degeneration, which means that I’ve lost the central vision in my right eye. I have dry macular degeneration in the left eye, which is progressive. I’m learning to read braille. I’ve finished the four courses and still have more to learn.
Sharon Howerton
Thanks, Pat. Judith, would you mind introducing yourself, please?
Judith Hawley
Thank you. Hello, everyone. This is Judith Hawley. I live in Independence, Missouri, which is right next to Kansas City, Missouri in the middle of the United States. I’m 72 years old and my eyesight problem is this: I had normal sight until I was eleven and in the sixth grade I became legally blind with macular degeneration. Of course, that’s very rare for children.
Over the years, my eyesight has decreased progressively, but slowly, until in the last two years I’ve lost a lot of vision and I just have light perception and can see a little bit, but not much. I have really enjoyed the process of learning how to live with blindness, and yet there have been struggles, but I want to say that there have also been a lot of joys.
Sharon Howerton
And our last panelist, Clarice Coco.
Clarice Coco
Hi, everyone. This is Clarice Coco. I live in Austin, Texas. I’m 87 years old. My eye problem is due to macular degeneration and glaucoma. I have 2400 acuity, no central vision and limited peripheral vision. I’m so enjoying learning braille.
Sharon Howerton
I’d like to turn the microphone now over to Jennifer Ottowitz for her introduction and then she is going to ask the panelists some additional questions.
Jennifer Ottowitz
Thank you, Sharon. My name is Jennifer Ottowitz and I am a fairly new instructor with the Hadley School. I’ve been working with them since March of this year, but I have been teaching braille for over 20 years and have been using braille myself that long, as well.
I had some partial vision growing up, was able to use magnifiers, but then as my vision progressively got worse I found that not only was I learning braille to become a teacher to work with people who had vision problems, but I was using it more and more myself for my own personal needs, as well. Like many of the panelists, I truly enjoy braille and I’m so happy that you all joined us today.
I want to ask our panelists, and I’m going to again start with Darrin, if you could please tell us a little bit about when you learned braille, how you learned braille and what your experience was like. Was it easy? Was it challenging? If you could just share a little, that would be great.
Darrin Cheney
Thank you. Learning braille has been a challenge, but a rewarding one. I started losing my sight when I was a teenager and by the time that I got into college my retinitis pigmentosa was pretty prevalent.
I ended up spending a summer at the state’s Commission for the Blind learning how to do a variety of different things. One of the classes that I had to take was braille and I hated it. All it was was pretty much, “Here are the letters and write them out with a slate and stylus.” There was no reading, there was no connection, no purpose, any reason for that.
I decided at that point that I wasn’t ready to accept being blind and I wasn’t ready to do braille. I pretty much went back and lived in the sighted world for about another 25 years or so until I got sick and I started losing the rest of my sight. Then I started working with a rehab teacher about six years ago. She figured out she could teach me braille simple enough by using a method and a book that she had created. Again I struggled with it and it just didn’t make sense. There was no connection.
About a year or so later I decided to look into Hadley courses and I found the connection that made the most sense for me. The Hadley courses take you through the basics of hand placement to dot recognition to tables to learning letters to reading to creating labels, all those things that make the connection that you use in daily life. I have worked hard with it. I’ve just completed Lit 4 this summer and I am enjoying the opportunity of learning braille.
One of the things that I have learned in my life, though, is you have to be ready for it, not only emotionally, but psychologically to be able to handle it. The other thing is that you have to be able to learn braille that makes a difference or a purpose to you, which I have, so I’m glad that I’ve had the experience working with Hadley.
Jennifer Ottowitz
Great. Thank you so much, Darrin. Pat, how about you? What was your experience like with learning braille?
Pat Kingwell
My macular degeneration came on very suddenly; at least I didn’t realize anything was going wrong with my eyes until one day and then I started getting the injections, which was to slow down the progression of it. You can’t stop it.
I never thought about learning braille at that point, and then about three years ago I heard about Hadley from someone who had started taking lessons. I sent in my information and got started with Sharon, who’s been such an inspiration. She took me through Braille Lit 1 and 2.
Like a lot of people, it was one of those things that you see braille throughout your life and you think, “I could never do that. I could never learn to read braille,” and people say that to me. “I could never do that.” I think we feel that way about a lot of things until we try it. They start you out slowly at Hadley. You begin to learn how to feel that there is a dot on the page and there are a line of dots and now there’s something different. Once you get the concept and you learn your first few letters it becomes quite exciting.
When you get to be older like I am, a lot of people say, “Oh, I’m too old.” In fact, I have a sister that says that because she has the same condition. But you would be amazed what your brain can do. That’s one of the things that has really surprised me is that I’ve been able to learn to read contracted braille.
I went through Braille Lit 1, 2, 3 and 4 with Sharon and with Susan Fisher. I’ve taken to using raised markers, which has helped me a lot. I’m going to next take a course in experienced braille reading.
Jennifer Ottowitz
Fantastic. As you said, you’re never too old to learn, right?
Pat Kingwell
Right.
Jennifer Ottowitz
Alright, Judith, how about you? Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with learning braille, how and when you learned and how it was for you?
Judith Hawley
Yes, thank you. I was able to stay in public school until the end of my sophomore year with my teachers helping me. In those days long ago, you didn’t have large print in public schools, so then I went to the Kansas State School for the Blind my junior and senior year.
It was the philosophy at that time that if your vision problem would probably in later years be such that you’d be going blind, that you would learn braille. So in my junior year I took a year of braille. I only learned to read braille and I learned even the contractions and I learned to write it with a slate and stylus.
After I left school and went on to college, I really never used it much until finally in my adult years I began to need it. A state rehab person came out and began to help me. I realized that what I had learned so long ago was still in my brain. When I picked up the slate and stylus everything came back to me, but I did not know how to write braille on a braille Perkins writer. So I learned to do that and then used it a little bit, but never really used it much until the last few years when, again, the vision was bad enough and I needed it.
I’ve taken the Hadley course Using Raised Markers and that has been a tremendous help to me. I also am in Independent Living because I’m trying to learn how to use the braille and how to use things as a person who’s no longer low vision, but pretty much getting blind.
It’s been a wonderful, wonderful experience for me because it’s opened all kinds of avenues for me of using braille. That’s why I say I have a lot of joy because even though there’s sorrow in it, there’s a lot of joy because of the avenues that braille and reading braille has opened for me.
Jennifer Ottowitz
Fantastic. Thank you for sharing. Clarice, how about you? Can you share with us your experience?
Clarice Coco
I certainly would be happy to do that. I had no previous experience with braille. I’ve been dealing with my loss of vision for over eleven years. After we moved to Texas—we’ve only been here four years—the case worker that I had from the services for the blind during rehab with me suggested that I might like to learn braille.
Of course, I was not at all ready to hear that. I told her I’m much too old to try to learn anything like that, so she left it at that. I thought about it for a while and then one day came to the conclusion that I would like to. She said to me, “You’ll never know if you can learn it until you try.” I had not heard about Hadley and she helped me to send in the information.
So in July of 2011 was when I was enrolled and now I am finishing the last lesson in Lit 3. I’m enjoying it so much. I’m just fascinated by the process. I’m amazed that these fingers can still do this. I’ve been so pleased with the instructors that I have worked with. They’re so encouraging. It’s been a challenge, a very great challenge, but it’s been worth every moment that I have been working at it. I’m just so thankful to Hadley School and all their fine people.
Jennifer Ottowitz
Well, thank you so much and congratulations on almost finishing that class. I’m going to turn it over to Sharon to continue our line of questions for our guests.
Sharon Howerton
Clarice, I’m not going to let you get off that easily. How about if you continue with telling people how you are using braille at this point in your life. Would you mind, Clarice?
Clarice Coco
No, I wouldn’t mind at all. I’ve used the braille labeler quite a bit and that came after completing lesson four in Literacy 2. I’ve used it to make labels to put on hangers. I have trouble with color perception so I made these labels and put them on the hangers. I’ve also used it in the kitchen.
Another place that I’ve used it is in the mailroom where we live. There are 172 apartments in this building so we have a lot of mailboxes. I put my apartment number on our mailbox and we also have little banker boxes. I put my apartment number in that banker box so I can detect it. In the building, the signage is all in braille throughout the building and in the elevators, so that’s been very helpful.
I’ve also done quite a few cards. I’ve loved to correspond and because of the loss of vision it’s getting more difficult, but to those that I know who understand and can read braille I’ve done correspondence with them. I sent get well cards to a young blind person that I know who had been hospitalized several times and he said to me, “Your cards are the only ones that I can really read.” That was very satisfying.
Jennifer Ottowitz
You use a slate and stylus for that or a braille writer?
Clarice Coco
I had the braille writer here for a while, but I knew that I would not always have one so then I decided to concentrate on the slate and stylus so that’s what I use.