To Braille or not to Braille

I don't know Braille. I don't plan to learn it. I think today's technology makes Braille obsolete. That's the excuse I give. I'll get to the real reason at the bottom of the page but let's look at the reasons Braille is obsolete first.

My phone can read text messages aloud to me. And Reddit. And the newspaper. And any book ever published. And any web site. And any magazine. And any blog, even this one. I can point my phone's camera at a sign in Braille and an app will read the English translation aloud to me.

Braille is slower, more cumbersome, and harder to find. Only a few books have been translated into Braille. Even the fastest Braille readers read much slower than people reading words printed on a page. A copy of the Bible in Braille weighs 70 pounds and takes up five feet of bookshelf space. Getting a book in Braille from the library takes weeks. The phone in my pocket wins in every category.

There are advantages to knowing Braille. It offers an escape from listening. I can imagine reading a Braille book on a bus or an airplane and tuning out the rest of the world. That sounds nice. For people doing math Braille is very helpful. Equations aren't necessarily solved from left to right or understood in all their complexity when read aloud. Longer equations like the quadratic formula or the law of cosines or a Pascal triangle would be nearly impossible to work with audibly. For those both deaf and blind Braille is the only path to literacy. There are probably more advantages I'd discover if I learned it, but I can't mention them since I haven't learned Braille.

Still, despite the advantages I know and the others I suspect exist, I'm just not interested. I'm not interested in learning to spin my own thread to weave my own cloth to sew my own clothes, either. Those would be undeniably cool hobbies to have but come on, can you really call them useful today?

I can write in cursive. I know how to drive a stick shift. I can ride a horse. I even know a little bit of ham radio etiquette. Those skills were important once but newer technology has made them obsolete.

There will always be Luddites who whine about the new generation's lack of skill or appreciation of the old ways. That's not going to change. They insist the old ways of doing things were better, and in some ways they're probably right. But when everything is taken into consideration the old ways lost to the new for a reason - the new way is better. Easier. More efficient. Faster. Otherwise it wouldn't have supplanted the old.

So why is Braille still popular in the blind community? Why not just download a couple of apps on our phones and gain access to far more literature than will ever be translated into Braille?

Braille seems to be the blind secret handshake. It's as much a cultural heritage as it is a way to read, maybe even more. I understand the appeal of being able to do something sighted people can't. Braille levels the playing field in that way. We're not disabled, just differently-abled, because you can read in a way we can't but we can read in a way you can't, too. It's not enough for us to have access to the same written works as you, we have to access them in a way you don't. Anything less than that means eyesight is better than blindness, therefore sighted people are better than us, therefore we deserve less than you. Braille isn't just a way to read, it's a way to feel equal.

I get it, but I'm still not interested.

Braille evolved from a French form of military communication called night reading. Night reading was developed so soldiers could read written communications in the dark. Night reading was rejected by the French army because it was considered too hard for soldiers to learn but was picked up by a school for blind children in Paris, the Institution Royale des Jeune Aveugles. A student there, Louis Braille, streamlined night reading into what we know as Braille today.

Two centuries have passed since then. Radio broadcasts have met the military's need for nighttime communication. Text-to-speech software and audio books and phonographs and tape recorders and eight track players and cassettes and CDs and .mp3 and .wav files have each had their season in the sun. Braille, the hardest to learn and the least versatile of them all, has outlasted the rest. Why?

Because it's part of blind culture, and cultures endure.

This is the real reason I don't want to learn Braille  - it's not my cultural touchstone. Blindness isn't my identity, my personality, or my culture, so learning Braille as an initiation rite to join the blind club just doesn't appeal to me.

I'm still the only blind guy I know. I used to think I was part of the blind community because we're all survivors of the same shared trauma, but I'm not so sure now our trauma is really shared. I feel we each went through this journey alone and the only thing we shared is the destination. Our trauma isn't actually shared, it's just similar.

Some people were born blind, went to schools for the blind, grew up with blind friends and classmates and family members. I'm sure their sense of belonging to the blind community is much stronger than mine. I imagine Braille means more to them than to me. In some ways it's their first language and will always hold a special place in their heart.

You might be wondering if learning Braille would make me feel a stronger connection to the blind community. The short answer is not really, no more than speaking French makes me feel I live in Paris or driving a stick shift makes me feel I'm a NASCAR driver.

I want a connection to the blind community based on something more than Braille. We have work to do, misconceptions to correct, and a unique perspective to share. I don't see how Braille helps with any of that.

Add it all together, the ways modern technology kicks Braille's ass in every possible metric and the fact Braille doesn't make me feel more connected to the blind community, and Braille just isn't for me.