Introducing Braille and American Sign Language as Alternative Communicative Agents for the Disabled

              Communication and deliberate interactions with the natural world is one of the foundational elements of being human. TEXT technologies, defined as constructs of intentionality conveying meaning in a structured or even unstructured format as a means of transferring knowledge, have adapted to best suit human capabilities and their ability to utilize those TEXT technologies. The five senses of touch, sight, taste, hear, and smell have influenced the development of these communication systems. The sense of vision allows one to read and write text and the sense of hearing allows for communication through spoken word, making these two modes of communication effective and well-disseminated. Now, imagine a case where a person has the disability of profound deafness or blindness, what text technologies are available to combat the communication barrier caused if one were to lose either of these senses?

                The most common and widespread TEXT technologies available to people with impaired senses, specifically those who cannot see and those who cannot hear, are Braille and sign language, respectively. This blog sequence will specifically focus on American Sign Language (ASL).  There are over 360 million people worldwide with some sort of disabling hearing loss (“Sign Language” and "Deafness and Hearing Loss”). One million of people in the United States alone are functionally deaf and require the use of ASL to communicate, though sixty-five percent of these people are over the age of 65, with less than four percent of deafness affecting children under the ages of eighteen (Mitchell). In comparison, there are approximately six million visually impaired individuals in the world ("Statistical Facts about Blindness in the United States”). Approximately 59,193 of them are blind children in the Unites States, of which 8.8% utilize Braille for communication and educational purposes ("WHO”). Although both Braille and ASL are alternative modes of communication for those who are disabled, they are often construed as equivalent alternatives with the only difference being allotted to the user base of each text technology. Intrinsic in the very nature of who blindness and deafness affects and the type of communication that is altered,  are the underlying differences between Braille and ASL on the efficacy, communication networks, and inherent implications. The very fact that hearing loss affects mostly an older population embeds the idea that technological advances in. Through the course of this blog sequence, Braille and ASL will be compared and contrasted to reveal its underlying differences in correcting communication deficits caused by blindness or hearing loss. The following blog pieces will focus on major themes such as (but not limited to) history, intentionality, functionality, materiality, and accessibility to Braille and ASL in order to illuminate key differences between the two text technologies.

1.       Mitchell, Ross E. How Many Deaf People Are There in the United States? Estimates From the Survey of Income and Program ParticipationJ. Deaf Stud. Deaf Educ. (Winter 2006) 11 (1): 112-119 first published online September 21, 2005 doi:10.1093/deafed/enj004"Deafness and Hearing Loss."

2.        WHO. World Health Organization, Feb. 2013. Web. 08 Dec. 2013. <http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs300/en/>.

3.       "Sign Language." WFD World Federation of the Deaf. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Dec. 2013. <http://wfdeaf.org/human-rights/crpd/sign-language>.

4.       "Statistical Facts about Blindness in the United States (2011)." Statistical Facts about Blindness in the United States. National Federation of the Blind, n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2013. <https://nfb.org/factsaboutblindnessintheus>