Braille Reading Accuracy of Students who are Visually Impaired: The Effects of Gender, Age at Vision Loss, and Level of Education

Abstract

Introduction The present study assesses the performance of students who are visually impaired (that is, those who are blind or have low vision) in braille reading accuracy and examines potential correlations among the error categories on the basis of gender, age at loss of vision, and level of education. Methods Twenty-one visually impaired Greek school-aged children participated in the present study. The students who participated were enrolled in different educational settings; that is, special schools and mainstream educational settings. The research tool was a subset (three subscales) of a standardized instrument (Test A, Padeliadu & Antoniou, 2008) that evaluates reading accuracy in Greek. All interactions between researchers and students were videotaped, and the analysis of the obtained data was focused on phonological and nonphonological-type errors. Results Significant differences in performance were found between male and female participants— t(19) = 2.12, p < .05—as well as between students who attained primary and secondary education: t(19) = 1.96, p ≊ .05. The average number of errors in the three subscales correlated very highly, signifying that performance was very similar. Positive correlation was found between replacement and subtraction types of error ( p < .05), and replacement and recognition ( p < .001), and the total number of errors was positively correlated with replacement ( p < .001), subtraction ( p = .001), and recognition errors ( p < .001). Male participants made more replacement errors: t(19) = 2.09, p ≊ .05; participants in secondary education made significantly fewer errors of recognition: t(19) = 2.49, p < .05; and students who were congenitally blind made significantly more errors of addition: t(19) = 1.96, p ≊ .05. Regarding the recognition type of error, there was a significant interaction effect between grade and age at loss of vision: F(3/17) = 3.09, p = .05. Discussion Participants did not benefit exceptionally from semantic information, and it is unclear whether a higher school level leads to the improvement of braille reading accuracy. “Reading the entire word” seems the most effective decoding strategy. Nevertheless, further research is needed to obtain relevant data from longitudinal studies. Implications for practitioners Listing and analyzing braille reading errors systematically may reveal error patterns. Based on these patterns, teachers would be able to differentiate their instruction to improve students’ performances in braille speed and accuracy.

A comparison of sighted and visually impaired children’s text comprehension

“…Hence, the Greek braille readers may be better suited to concentrate on comprehension monitoring rather than accuracy of word reading (Yuill & Oakhill, 1991). As noted in Veispak et al (2012) and Argyropoulos and Papadimitriou (2015) the children with VI seem to adopt an effective decoding mechanism early in their school years and rely upon it. Thus, they may be in a position to understand the text better, which would subsequently help them to answer the questions.…”

“…The Greek braille code includes 63 characters, seven of which are called diphthongs (i.e., combinations of two vowels) and occur as contractions . Characters do not carry accents in the Greek braille code, so the child with VI must know where the word is stressed when reading (Argyropoulos & Martos, 2006;Argyropoulos & Papadimitriou, 2015;.…”

Functional hierarchy for tactile processing in the visual cortex of sighted adults

“…The reason why female subjects were exclusively recruited was related to the gender distribution in the special education student population in Poland, wherein such studies are primarily undertaken by women. It is important to note that previous work has demonstrated the existence of gender differences in the Braille reading abilities of visually impaired subjects (Argyropoulos and Papadimitriou, 2015). Thus, it is possible that the inclusion of only female subjects modulated either the Braille training's behavioral outcomes or the overall performance in the TMS experiment.…”

The association between tactile, motor and cognitive capacities and braille reading performance: a scoping review of primary evidence to advance research on braille and aging

“…New or less proficient braille readers must retain each successive symbol in working memory to build a representation of the word in question [23,[28][29][30][31], initially placing a greater emphasis on working-memory [17,32]. Conversely, more profficient or experienced braille readers with greater reading fluency are able to draw on lexical, perceptual and contextual cues to facilitate faster reading and comprehension [33][34][35].…”