(bright music)
Welcome to "Hadley Presents."
I'm your host, Ricky Enger, inviting you to sit back, relax,
and enjoy a conversation with the experts.
In this episode, Hadley learner, Mark Andrews,
and Co-Director of Research and Development, Kim Walker,
join us to discuss braille for everyday use.
Welcome to the show, both of you.
Thanks, Ricky.
Thank you.
It is so good to have you here,
and I am delighted to have the chance
to talk about this project,
which I think literally every person at Hadley
has had a hand in in some way or another,
which is pretty appropriate considering where we came from
and why we're here in the first place.
So yeah, looking forward to talking about that.
But before we do,
why don't we just get a quick intro from each of you?
Kim, we'll have you go first.
I'm Kim Walker, and as Ricky mentioned,
I am part of the research and development team at Hadley.
I've been in the field of vision for over 30 years now,
taught children braille, adults braille, and love braille.
My whole being and whole career is about braille.
Love it.
Anyone who has a passion for braille
is certainly welcome on the show anytime.
Mark, how about you?
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I used to teach photography and I used to
drive a truck.
Let's see. Undergraduate, I would read for the blind.
Wow.
So you had a connection with the blind
well before you had a more personal experience with that.
That's true.
I'm not fully dark. I have low vision.
I am unable to drive any longer.
I am, however, able to navigate, for example,
I can walk into town and do grocery shopping.
It's a little different for me.
I use my earbuds and Seeing AI
and it reads me the prices of things and I can get home.
Fantastic. It's great to have you here.
And yeah, thanks so much for that intro
and thanks for being here.
As I sort of alluded to in the introduction here,
we're going to be talking about
Hadley's Braille for Everyday Use.
It's interesting because Hadley has always been known,
I mean, literally for a hundred years,
we've been known for teaching braille.
So it's been at the core of what Hadley does.
Taking a look at how we deliver braille
and how we teach braille,
making any changes to that is not a decision
that would be made lightly, I think.
So what was the thought process behind reexamining that?
Hadley truly has been known for teaching braille
for over 100 years.
And you know, when William Hadley started Braille
at the time, Braille by Mail,
that had to be very revolutionary and unheard of.
And I'm sure there were some skeptics.
So we feel like this new approach to teaching braille
is just as revolutionary.
We were having some dropout rates and wondering, you know,
why weren't people completing our courses?
We were seeing people come in.
Sometimes they would start the course,
maybe get a few lessons in, and stop.
Sometimes they would get the material and never even start.
We went directly to our learners and said,
"Hey, you know, what's going on?
What did you feel about these courses?"
And we heard some very distinctive things,
and we heard something like,
"Well, you know, I'm overwhelmed.
There's so much here. I don't know where to start.
I feel like I'm learning alone."
And then when they found out
that they were gonna need to take a test
and they would need to turn an assignment in,
they just simply said,
"That just does not fit into my life at this time."
And another component was sometimes they would have
an NLS player to play the cartridge on,
and sometimes they had one
and had no clue about how to work it.
And they felt like they were just alone.
Thinking about that, that's certainly not the way
we wanted to be presenting our braille courses.
That really started our research, you know,
looking at how does the adult population
learn to read braille?
Yeah, 'cause I would imagine it's a lot different
for somebody who's an adult
than it is for a school-aged child
learning the literacy for the first time.
If you're an adult,
maybe that's not where you're starting, right?
Absolutely. And you know, I taught c
hildren for years.
You know, we're building those reading skills.
But when we were looking at our adult learner,
they already know how to read.
They have that prior knowledge of reading.
They know the letters, they know the sounds of letters,
they know words.
How could we approach it from that prior knowledge
of our adult learners?
Of course, our content is always based on
sound, research-based methodology.
You know, what is the best practice in teaching?
What does this adult learner want?
You know, I want it quickly.
I want small chunks of learning.
I want to be able to use it as soon as I do it.
I don't want it to feel like it's I'm reading a book
and I'm having to learn on my own and it's boring.
So we looked at those things
and took a truly different approach.
That makes a lot of sense.
And you just made me think about something, actually,
when you mentioned reading a book or looking at a book
to try and get through how to learn braille.
But that got me thinking about
why adults might learn braille.
I would imagine that reading a book or a magazine
is part of it,
but maybe that's not the motivation factor for everybody,
at least initially.
Mark, what was it for you?
What made you even consider taking a look at braille?
I am not stationary.
I'm not stuck in the house.
I go to doctor's offices, I go to various places,
and frequently I can't read the signs.
But there is braille there, like in an elevator.
In an elevator, there doesn't seem to be a standard.
The numbers don't always go left to right.
Sometimes they go vertically.
So I can't get the little color numeral every time.
So if I can feel it, it's helpful.
Doctors' offices have placards outside with the name,
but again, sometimes it's not really,
without shoving my face into the wall,
I can't really be sure of where I'm going.
And that's a, you know,
braille would be a big help for that.
That's an awesome practical example
of something that you would do.
It doesn't have anything to do with reading literature,
as wonderful as that is.
It's something that you could find use for immediately
in your daily life.
Kim, you do a lot of communication
with our learners as well.
Are there some other practical examples
of why somebody might choose to learn braille?
We heard exactly what Mark was saying.
We heard that from other testers also.
They're like, "Well, I really don't want to read a book.
I want to be able to use the elevator.
I want to be able to read a menu.
I want to be able to read room signs."
We knew that we had some learners
that that was their end goal.
You know, we did look at,
what is the end goal for this learner?
Not that it's gonna be
I'm gonna teach you to read a book or a magazine,
but you're gonna be able to be very practical
with this braille.
So Mark hit it spot-on. We heard that so many times.
"I just would really like to read the elevator."
And we actually built it into our books, you know,
teaching an elevator panel.
Of course, exactly what Mark said,
they're not always the same,
but we have all of the components there
so that someone will be able to feel that,
learn how to scan that panel,
and then of course, learn the braille that's on that.
So we heard lots of reasons for braille
as far as practical use,
everyday usage that I can immediately use.
What does that design look like?
So like what's the delivery method?
What is somebody going to get when they start with this?
You mentioned that we do have the adult learners.
Something that we did find out is that
we had over 80% of our learners had usable vision.
So we decided to take a multimedia approach to it.
We decided to do a large print on the top of the workbook
so that if someone had vision
and they wanted to look how the braille cell was set up,
how the letters are set up, what's the dot configuration,
and then there's a middle line on the pages
and below the line it's only braille.
So we wanted to give that person a chance
if they wanted to look at it,
but then go below that middle line
and have that experience of taking what you saw
and putting it to your fingers
and what are your fingers telling you?
Now, we also, in the design,
it is designed for someone who has no vision.
You know, some of our testers had no vision.
They didn't use the large print. It didn't matter.
They still had the braille.
There is always a braille component
in the top left corner of the page.
So we made it very easy to navigate.
We decided to deliver some of the audio on the computer
for those who have access.
You can go on the computer. It will have the same page.
It will show how you're scanning.
And then we have telephone access
for those who are offline and don't use the computer.
The really cool thing about this audio delivery is,
hey, you're on a page and you're like, oh my gosh,
I really can't tell that D from that F.
What do I do with that?
Or I have a question about something.
If you're online, you select the Help button.
It immediately connects you to one of those braille experts
that can help you answer any question.
And if you're on the phone, you'll just press the zero
and that will automatically take you to a braille expert
that's there to help you at any time
to answer any questions.
So, you know, we really thought,
what a cool way to get immediate help,
because in our research,
we knew that when an adult learner's learning something new,
if they have a question, they don't want to wait a week.
They want their question answered immediately.
So we really like those features being built in.
Knowing that you're developing braille
not necessarily for school-aged kids
and not necessarily for someone who is totally blind,
did that alter how you approached developing the program
that we're using now?
Absolutely.
Of course, we looked at those bite-size pieces of learning.
So what we decided to do
is to teach three or four letters or numbers at a time
and then give the learner a chance
to engage with those few letters or numbers and have fun,
sort of a game-like.
We knew we needed to keep it simple
and to build that confidence in,
because we heard some people say,
"I'm afraid I can't learn it.
I'm just so afraid it's gonna be so hard.
Looked at braille on buildings,
I just truly can't figure out what it is and how it works."
We wanted to keep it simple.
We wanted to build that success in.
And I can remember one tester started into the book,
and she got to page five and she said,
"Oh my gosh, I already know how to read some braille
and I'm only on page five."
So she was just so excited
that she was successful from the very beginning.
So we really wanted to build that in,
make it very conversational.
Some people said, you know, "I felt like I was all alone.
No one called me. I didn't have any support."
So we wanted to build in that conversational tone
to make it feel like someone is sitting
beside of the learner where they're with you,
we're teaching you the braille.
Those were some very specific components
that we built into this new design.
So when you built it
and you're kind of all patting yourselves on the back
and going, "Wow, we did great,"
I don't think it made its way out into the world just yet.
What happened once that initial prototype was built?
We had our best guesstimate.
We tested it on spouses, our neighbors, you know,
to say, does this make some sense?
Can someone navigate this?
We put it together. We built a prototype.
We were like, okay, we have the prototype,
we have the audio, and now we need people to test this.
And that's where Mark came in and many others.
And it was such valuable information
we received from the testers because we would test it,
we would take notes, we would go back, we would redesign,
we would push it back out with the new design,
we would test it, we would push it back.
Even the audio parts, we felt like we had a nice booklet
with the braille and the presentation,
but then how are we gonna deliver that audio?
So we tested that.
So those are all of the components, many, many months,
many, many testers going in and having that experience
and saying, "I like this.
I don't understand this, don't like this."
And we would always go back to the table and do a redesign.
So that was our approach to this new design.
Yeah, and I think it helps a lot with that feeling
of aloneness that a lot of people had
trying to learn braille on their own
when you know you can reach out to somebody
and get that help, then you're not doing it all by yourself.
So, Mark, after there were a couple of prototypes,
you were able to get a sneak peek at this project
before it was available to everyone else.
So what did you think when you first got your braille book
and kind of started diving into the testing?
I thought it was amazing.
I've never used anything like this.
It's accessible.
I was never stymied by any part of it.
I had received a letter from the IRS
asking me if I wanted my 1040 in braille,
and they sent me a braille form,
and it was really intimidating.
And so that was my introduction to braille.
But the book took away all of that intimidation,
and in conjunction with the narrator
was very calming and very soothing.
Nothing was rushed.
You could move at your own pace.
It was a tremendous learning experience.
It's not a one and done.
Learning takes time,
and especially something like this where it's multisensory,
but I found it to be wonderful.
I can't say enough good about it.
What was it like emotionally making that step
and deciding to learn braille?
It was certainly, you mentioned intimidating.
Did you have other hesitancy besides,
"Oh, gosh, I'll never be able to do this,"
and kind of what changed initially?
How were you feeling
about whether braille was for you or not?
And did that change at all?
Braille is extremely helpful for me in a
practical sense.
You know, the elevator, the room placards,
the finding the hotel room,
that's a very practical use for me.
The National Library System is so great with books
and everything else,
and with the assistive technology of my equipment,
I get along very well.
But there are times when I really need something different
and braille is that something different.
I looked at it as, yeah, intimidating,
but more of a challenge.
It wasn't necessarily scary, it was just a challenge.
And it sounds like once you dived in,
it became a lot less about,
oh, yeah, here are these bumps that I'll never figure out.
And now it's gonna be another tool
in the toolbox for you, right?
Absolutely.
Again, it lines up
with all the assistive technology that I have.
It's just one more thing to help me get through my life.
I can't say enough good about it.
It was a wonderful experience to learn it.
The learning process in it was great.
I like to learn, and this was so well-done, polished
that I was so impressed.
I was disappointed when I ran through the book.
I don't need a lot of braille.
I need some, but I wanted to keep learning.
It was such a positive experience.
Again, the voiceover was great.
Didn't sound ever impatient or pushing you.
Warm and accepting and worked with you, it seemed.
It was great.
So, Mark, listening to you
and listening to what you're saying about the program,
I can't tell you how we as the research team,
we were holding our breath.
You know, we did our research.
We felt like we had a really good design,
but as we were pushing it out to our testers,
we would be so nervous.
We were truly almost holding our breath
to hear how a person interacted with it.
So it's just so wonderful to hear how you interacted with it
and how pleased you were.
So that really kept us going.
We took your information,
we took the other testers' information,
and we moved forward.
So we really appreciate you taking your time,
and it did take a bit of time,
and looking at this and letting us know,
are you on the right track?
You could do better here.
I like this. You know, improve this.
So we really want to thank you.
There are so many places
where people have tried their best
and really fallen short.
There was a library thing,
and they were trying to give you the help section,
and I'm trying to read it and it's a blur,
just so frustrating.
And it was clearly put together by someone
who was not vision impaired
and had no experience in teaching it.
And then you compare something like that
to the braille learning system that Hadley has
and it's night and day.
There's no comparison.
You know, one, you're just struggling to select the text
and get it to read it.
And as opposed to sitting down with the book
and the online portion of it and working through,
so simple, so easy.
I've only looked at the Hadley experience as being positive
and I wanted to do more.
Wow. This is such a great testimonial.
And just hearing from each of you, Kim,
you along with the research and development team
really working hard to try and build
what was going to be a successful project
and then to have someone giving feedback.
And it's just this continuous loop
of you learned from each other and ultimately created
what is going to be a very successful project.
And I'm looking forward to hearing from
so many people like Mark who were able to just dive in
and learning braille is not a chore, right?
It's nothing to dread. It's fun.
So if somebody is interested in doing that,
because for sure, this sounds like amazing and positive news
for somebody who's looking to read braille,
how do they get access to this?
They certainly can call our Hadley 800 number,
800-323-4238, for our help desk.
They will totally get you set up.
They'll go over the program.
They will get your book mailed out to you
and tell you, you as the adult learner, you decide,
do you want to do it on the computer?
Do you want to do it online?
And they'll totally get you set up.
You can also go to this really long address.
We'll have that in our show notes.
Okay.
We encourage everyone who wants to learn braille
in a tactile manner, please contact us.
This is so exciting.
Any final thoughts that we didn't cover from either of you?
Just things that you would leave someone with
who's thinking about learning braille,
still may be a little bit on the fence
because I'm not sure if this is for me
or I'm not sure I can do it.
I would only recommend it.
There should be no hesitance about this.
It improves your life.
There's a lot more to having vision impairment
than just being vision impaired.
There's a huge emotional impact in this.
You don't need to be feeling like you've been sidelined.
Learning this with this system
brings you back to a more full life.
It's very well-said.
Kim, anything from you?
Exactly what Mark said.
We had people that were a little hesitant.
They thought, maybe it's not for me,
but some of the comments we heard is,
it made me want to learn braille.
And then another person said,
"I'm beginning to accept the fact that this is for me."
There's a use for braille even for those with low vision.
Our feedback, as we were testing and redefining our product,
it was overwhelmingly positive.
We encourage everyone to give it a try.
Thank you both so much for stopping by
and discussing braille.
It really is an exciting time.
Having just this way to learn braille
is an excellent tool in the toolbox.
Thank you both so much for dropping by.
Thanks, Ricky.
Thanks a bunch, Mark, for everything you've done for us.
I can't thank you enough for what you've done.
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