suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Don Osborn" <dzo@...> wrote:
>
> Have you looked at the Moon system? It is also British but predates
> Braille. It is a 'full' orthography like Braille - simply put, an
> alphabet that correspond to alphabetic orthography. It also has
> grade one and two.
>
> Because of the similarity of the shapes to letters of the alphabet,
> it has some transfer from the roman alphabet and is considered
> easier for those who become blind later in life to read. Somehow it
> is supposed to be harder to produce. However, there is a moon

Why "supposed to be"? For both a publisher and an individual author,
making a dot in card is a lot easier and cheaper than embossing a shape,
especially at the small sizes necessary for finger-reading.

> windows font from RNIB and the Moon system is being taught in
> England.
>
> I understand that Braille is quite hard to learn except, of course,
> by children. I have seen a blind 8 year old girl, Chinese - English
> bilingual, who could read faster in Braille than her sighted
> classmates could read from a book. We had a teacher aid who typed
> out all the stories in Braille but the girl read so fast it was hard
> to keep her busy. However, she also wrote competnetly as well.
>
> In contrast, one of my special students this year who is severely
> hearing impaired, but has hearing aids which are supposed to
> approximate normal hearing, can only read at a grade two level, at
> 11 years of age. She has a high IQ but is just learnig now the
> phonological, syntactic and semantic skills which are prerequisite
> to reading.
>
> She is a great srtist drawing maps with contour clearly showing,
> cartoons, and computer animations better than most adults.
>
> Her chances of catching up in a hearing world are considered quite
> good now so she hasn't learned sign. She may learn it as a social
> skill later.

That's child abuse. Is there no Deaf community in Vancouver?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...