Subscribe to our newsletter. Braille links One hundred years ago, individuals who could not write their names were considered illiterate. This illiteracy, which often resulted from a lack of opportunity, relegated many people to life as second-class citizens and sometimes even nonpersons. Literacy was a symbol of intelligence, and intelligence was a symbol of personhood. Literacy involves the ability to acquire information and communicate with others.
Literacy involves the ability to gain access to written information.
Information which is communicated needs to be stored so that it can be refered to again later. This means that for the blind person, literacy involves all methods of acquiring, storing, and accessing information and all methods of communicating one's own ideas, opinions, and needs. Literacy includes the ability to use Braille, print, and computers as well as the ability to use readers and recorded materials to gain access to and acquire the most knowledge from information. This definition implies that education empowers students to direct and control their own learning, to awaken their intelligence. Many tools exist to enable a blind person to obtain, store, retrieve and communicate information.