Braille reading in blind and sighted individuals: Educational considerations and experimental evidence

Abstract Braille reading is a crucial literacy skill for blind individuals and an important model to study non-visual modes of communication. All Braille letters, symbols and digits are derived from a basic 6 raised-dots template creating various combinations of multiple or single raised-dot patterns. Although the Braille code is uniform and reading procedures are standard for all languages and Braille teaching approaches are often quite similar, the specific language taught can make the process of acquisition more complex. Many studies have addressed Braille reading speed and accuracy in English, but no study targeted the speed and accuracy of Arabic Braille reading. Here we report our findings on Braille reading accuracy and speed in three different age groups of Arab participants in Israel: 10(±2.5) year-olds attending elementary schools (N=20), 16(±1.7) year-olds high-school students (N=13) and young adults (23±2.6 years) (N=24). All participants read vowelized and un-vowelized word lists and vowelized and un-vowelized texts printed in Arabic Braille. The results showed that as in studies of English Braille reading, Braille reading rates in Arabic improve as a function of the readers' age, reflecting the accumulation of reading experience. However, Arabic Braille readers in all age groups were consistently slower compared to English Braille readers. In addition, Arabic Braille readers were prone to read less accurately, with participants of all age groups committing more phonetic reading errors in the unvowelized words and texts compared to vowelized reading tests. On the other hand, the older participants did not commit mirror-image errors nor letter-skipping errors, which were noted in the younger participants. We propose that while the accumulation of experience with the Braille template leads to an increase in vowelized Arabic reading accuracy and speed, specific characteristics of Arabic diglossia and the ambiguity of unvowelized Arabic result in a marked slowness in Braille reading. Keywords: Arabic, blindness, Braille reading, Braille template, tactile discrimination, reading proficiency, reading speed and accuracy, visual impairment