For those of us who design experiences for differently-abled visitors, Braille can sometimes be a puzzle. What percentage of visitors are blind, versus partially-sighted? Of those, how many of those know Braille? And of those, how many would actually make use of Braille in an exhibit? A fascinating article in the New York Times today discusses the decline in Braille and the rise of audio techniques.
A report released last year by the National Federation of the Blind, an advocacy group with 50,000 members, said that less than 10 percent of the 1.3 million legally blind Americans read Braille. Whereas roughly half of all blind children learned Braille in the 1950s, today that number is as low as 1 in 10, according to the report … Braille literacy has been waning for some time, even among the most intellectually capable, and the report has inspired a fervent movement to change the way blind people read.
