Braille (Printed Word ), Talking Books

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Braille (Printed Word )

The most important medium used to education today is the printed word. Knowledge is preserved in the book and the first step in education is learning to read .But a blind man can not read book . Is he then to be denied opportunities to educate himself ? No, not necessarily so. The blind can get themselves educated , not only in the sense of being able to read and write but even sense of training themselves for a profession. Teachers of the blind have devise methods by which the blind can 'read' books without the aid of the eyes. The most famous of these methods is, undoubtedly, Braille. Braille (named after its inventor) is a system of representation of printed symbols by raised dots of a flat surface. Six dots in various combinations are used to represent latters,numbers, punctuation marks and some common word . The blind person 'read' the book by passing his fingers over the dots. Thousands of blind people all over the world have used braille to educate themselves. Braille, however, has a disadvantage. A book in braille in not so compact or handy as the book you are now holding. A small book in braille may be several feet high. this size makes it difficult for people to use braille as easily as printed books. The physical effort and the cost of publishing books in Braille are two other limitation. In a survey of the blind it was found that less than 15 percent of the users of Braille had sufficient command of the alphabet to make reading useful or entertaining. To overcome these difficulties, a new method has been introduced in recent times. The American Association for the blind made 'talking books' or long-playing discs with recording of readings of books. These can be played and listened to by the blind. A book of overage length can be recorded on six discs which take about twelve hours to play. Another organisation of the United States, called 'Recording for the blind ', prepares, free of charge, taps recording of whole books-some of them elementary text-books and other, advanced books for professional study - for the blind. The popularity of talking books and taps recording is steadily increasing, and governments And private agencies have come forward support the effort to produce them and make them available to people who need them