When 'See Jane Run' doesn't work
Effort by students at UVSC yields fun books for blind kids

OREM -- Unlike most beginning readers in schools across the Wasatch Front, Kirt Manwaring won't learn by sounding out words describing Dick, Jane and their dog, Spot, in playground games.

Why? You see, the phrase "see Spot run" doesn't mean much to the gregarious 7-year-old boy who is instructed at the Utah County satellite classroom of the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind.And now, thanks to efforts by Utah Valley State College business students, sight-impaired children like Manwaring can start to hone reading skills with charming books like "Bees in the Mud."

Although it's not unique for blind children to start running fingers across raised text in early elementary grades, until recently there haven't been many books in Braille for them to read other than textbooks, said Norman Gardner, a UVSC professor and founder of the Braille and Literacy Center.

"It isn't that books aren't available to children in Braille," said Gardner, who is partially blind. "It is the kinds of Braille they are printed in."

A little-known fact about Braille is that there are two types: Grade 1, which also is called alphabetic Braille, uses a character for each letter of the alphabet. Grade 2 uses symbols that mean an entire word or suffix instead of letters to shorten or contract words.

"For several decades now, blind children have been taught to read Braille using grade 2," he said. "Adults always use grade 2, but little kids learning to read were also taught using that contracted form. Then we began to notice that blind children weren't reading or spelling well."

Gardner said research has shown an alarming number of blind people cannot read or spell proficiently because they are rushed into a grade that has characters instead of letters.

"People say that is because they are blind, but it is not that at all," he said. "It is because they never learned to read properly."

Sighted people use the equivalent of grade 1 Braille -- the alphabet -- to learn to read using phonetics and spelling. "It's phonics and spelling. Blind children should have the same chance to learn to read as sighted kids," he said.

Teacher Louise Johnson, a leader in the movement to make sure blind children know alphabetic Braille before moving to the next level, agrees. "Grade 1 is the way to go," she said. "The problem is, it's not a real popular idea" within education circles.