Why Braille is so Important

May29

Why Braille is so Important

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Translation

Recently, we’ve gotten involved in a few interesting situations where even able bodied people have reacted negatively to issues we have begun to bring up in very public forums.

We think the open hostility we have received on this front, comes in part from just good old fashioned ignorance if not prejudice, a failure to understand the distinction between HAVING a disability and BEING “disabled”, not to mention apparently have never heard of the multiple civil rights bills that are supposed to protect this community and are usually deliberately uninforced.

Not to mention, unfortunately, the remaining stigma that exists around disability in general, if not an also very common human trait, the desire to humiliate or abuse PWDs (we refer to this population in sum as people with disabilities because it is a usually far more accurate description, if not one that begins to show the able bodied where their prejudices are (even if unintentional).

Having helped pass the ADA in my early 20′s in DC, been surrounded by high functioning PWDs all my life (including my “adopted” uncle (my father’s best friend) by the name of Richard Ballantine, son of publisher Ian Ballantine (as in Ballentine Books) and the man who singlehandedly reinvented the book industry if not created the concept of a “trade press” with his introduction of paperback books and his refusal to ignore copyright law. The fact he protected it, made Ian Ballantine the man who put Tolkien on the map. As in J.R.R. And the “Lord of the Rings” guy.

But as smart and very rich as my “uncle” Richard’s parents were, they never realized he was deaf until the age of 11. Until then, they thought he was “retarded.” Or in PC language we usually violate with impunity on this issue, just like Chris Rock does with the “N” word and for the same reasons, “intellectually challenged.”

We attach the video below because it is both unbelievably cool, is a very good primer on the topic, and of course is just a hint of what we have in mind (because we are not only reaching out to MIT, but have been working on similiar issues ourselves.

So….take a look at these vids attached.

It will, excuse the pun, literally open your eyes to a whole new world, why technology and access to it is so important to this community (often called adaptive technology) and why in both the “real” and cyber worlds, ADA compliance is so necessary, mandatory, and creates a very interesting blueprinting process if not perspective for holistic sustainable development that includes everyone.