A Dollar's Worth of Braille:

Numismatists, take note! A new coin is aborning. Congress has passed legislation authorizing the minting of a commemorative silver dollar to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille in 1809. The Treasury has been authorized to produce up to 400,000 of these coins. The coin will be available in 2009, but I did not learn its price. However, I did learn that there will be an additional $10 surcharge per coin which will be donated to the NFB who will in turn match it dollar for dollar for a potential of $8 million which will be used to promote the use of braille; no doubt, thru NFB's NAPUB division.

Personally speaking, I couldn't agree more. Braille is vital and the majority of employed blind people use it. I regret not having had the opportunity at the residential blind school I attended in The Stone Age to have learned and been given high school graduation credit for Grade 3 Braille. I suspect mastering this extremely contracted form of braille would have been a tremendous help in college classes where good note taking skills were a must. This was before the time of ADA-sponsored Disabled Student Services and its hiring note-takers for blind students. I would have felt lazy and guilty using such a person. I have often wondered if there is a braille equivalent for stenography where perhaps each braille character--and there are 63 potential dot combinations--might represent a unique syllable of English?

However, I vividly recall the blind author of Planet of the Blind taking offense at being termed illiterate for not using braille. He opined that he could manage well with his text-to-speech adaptive equipment and software. He compared braille books to sofa cushions and pointed out that he was a published modern poet and used language. (I won't go near modern poetry.)