The Dotless Braille Philosophy

Disclaimer

This site does not address the question of the best approach for teaching braille to blind persons—although it might help a sighted teacher to get started. Obviously such an important task requires careful training based on well-tested methods.

We've all had experiences where bad habits, acquired when we first learned a new skill, took a long time to get rid of and tactile reading is no exception.

It is our belief that the way that braille is ordinarily taught to and displayed for sighted persons makes braille seem much more complex than it, in fact, is. The standard teaching methods also requires an unnecessarily severe committment of time and effort on the part of the sighted learner. This situation has the potential to negatively impact:

braille users—if they are made to feel that braille itself is some sort of problem
braille readers—if they experience a shortage of braille materials
braille learners, including children—if they pick up negative attitudes, especially from sighted people
sighted people, including parents and teachers of mainstreamed blind children—if they get discouraged
sighted colleagues of blind persons—if they would like to help provide braille materials but don't know how
print-literate adults who are having vision problems—if they feel that braille is just too hard to even find out about
computer scientists and persons in related disciplines—if they might enjoy working on some of the challenging problems in braille transcription or print displays of braille

Here are some of the places—in addition to the home page—where related philosophical issues are discussed on this site.

Teaching contractions. Link.
Top-down learning. Link.
Braille and computer concepts. Link.