Should Blind Kids Learn Braille?

You’ve no doubt heard that braille literacy is slipping world wide and that literacy has been statistically tied to employment. It’s always seemed to me that blind kids should certainly learn braille.

But a new article in the New York Times quotes some people who actually think of braille as a methodology of the past. Laura J. Sloate, a blind adult, considers braille to be “an arcane means of communication, which for the most part should be abolished…. It’s just not needed today.”

I’m still a proponent of braille literacy, but I had never even thought of this other side of the argument. It’s something to think about.