The Braille Literacy Committee

Juliet Stone

It was in the early 1970’s that a group of teachers got together to discuss the lack of reading materials that were suitable for children who were learning to read through tactual methods.  At that time, apart from The Family Books which had been produced 10 years before, there was no reading material specially produced for the child who had to grapple with tactual discrimination and the complex Braille code.

Reading schemes for sighted children were transcribed into Braille but these, mainly based on the ‘Look and Say’ method were not appropriate.  These schemes naturally did not take any account of the ease or difficulty with which individual Braille letters could be felt. In addition, reading schemes for the sighted included such words as ‘aeroplane’ as these were easily discriminated visually.  However, for the child reading with his or her fingers and reading letter by letter, long words caused too much of a memory load, as the ‘a’ was likely to be forgotten long before the final ‘e’ was felt. Finally, reading schemes for the sighted reader cut right across the learning of Grade I or Grade II of the Braille Code.

The group of teachers formed three working groups to discuss how this lack of appropriate reading material for visually impaired children could be addressed. One of these groups produced the still used scheme ‘Braille for Infants’ and from these three working groups, the VIEW (then the AEWVH) Braille Literacy Committee was formed.  This committee meets three times a year, but individual members put in a lot of work between meetings planning, writing and editing new material.   The amount of reading material produced by the Committee has been prolific. The following is a list, not exhaustive of material produced;

The committe was first chaired by Pam Lorimer, then by Juliet Stone and is currently chaired by Alison Arnold.  Other members of the committee are Marjorie Adams, Catriona Beckett, Linda Fox, Anne Hartland, Pam Hindle, Julie Holford, Peter Lumley, Margaret Pike, Claire Wilson and Peter Hooker.

The aim of the committee is still the same, that of producing reading material which is exciting and stimulating, yet suitable and helpful for the child learning to read via Braille.