{"id":2655,"date":"2010-05-07T19:06:19","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T19:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2655"},"modified":"2010-05-07T19:06:19","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T19:06:19","slug":"reading_is_fund_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2655","title":{"rendered":"Reading Is Fundamental"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <i>Maclean&#8217;s<\/i>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.macleans.ca\/2010\/05\/06\/the-braille-crisis\/2\/\">Braille is a dying form of communication<\/a>. Its decline is attributed to the twin force of strained public budgets and technological innovation. Braille materials are expensive to produce and schools and libraries simply don&#8217;t have the resources to convert every book into Braille format. And new technologies like audio readers are cheaper and can be used without any prior instruction. The article points out that people who learn Braille do better on reading comprehension tests and are more likely to find employment. Braille advocates also point out that to not teach Braille to blind kids is to leave them functionally illiterate.<\/p>\n<p>Without learning Braille, most blind people would be living in a strictly oral culture. Is that a bad thing? I&#8217;m not sure. Technology that can scan and read printed materials will only get better. These devices will offer a versatility that Braille simply can&#8217;t match. At the same time, technology can create unnecessary dependency. Take away the technology and the person truly is illiterate. A familiarity with a written language might not make us better thinkers, but it does fundamentally alter how we perceive and describe the world around us. And it doesn&#8217;t require batteries.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?w=600\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Maclean&#8217;s, Braille is a dying form of communication. Its decline is attributed to the twin force of strained public budgets and technological innovation. Braille materials are expensive to produce and schools and libraries simply don&#8217;t have the resources to convert every book into Braille format. And new technologies like audio readers are cheaper <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2655' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-GP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}