Hi Richard,

 

This is Jeff Senge here at Cal State Fullerton.  We recently provided a braille accommodation for a student who used braille for four semesters of Japanese foreign language courses.  It actually worked out pretty well.

 

Like Ann P. has suggested, when first facing this challenge myself, I first contacted folks in Japan to find out how braille readers in Japan communicated.  I learned there is a Japanese braille code they use but it is different than standard character based written Japanese.  Further investigation of this accommodation with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, yielded a response that requiring the student to learn Japanese braille would fundamentally change the nature of the course because it wasn't a course in Japanese braille.  You seem to be on top of this point already.

 

After meeting with the faculty member and student, we determined the most appropriate way for this student to have braille access to written Japanese was to "Romanize" the Japanese for him.  To accomplish this, we hired a graduate student in Japanese foreign language to Romanize the textbooks and handout materials for the course.  This meant having all course materials in Japanese Romanized using Microsoft Word.  This rendered clean e-text files of the textbooks and other materials.  From these Romanized Word files, we used Mega Dots to translate into uncontracted (grade 1) braille.  We used a textbook style braille format and embossed all the written Japanese course materials this way.

 

If you are interested, I can furnish you with the textbook titles and perhaps even the Romanized e-text and braille files we created for these textbooks.  Please let me know if you are interested.

 

All for now...

 

Jeff

 

Jeffrey C. Senge

Information & Computer Access Program Coordinator

California State University, Fullerton

(714) 278-7253

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-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Jones [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2003 8:02 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Japanese Classes

I have been researching a bind student studying Japanese.  The student is at a community college and  plans to attend ASU.  He would like to  learn Japanese.  I received the following note from a senior lecturer in the foreign language department.

"I have to admit that I do not know anything about Japanese Braille.  If that is based on rooma-ji (one of the Japanese writing systems based on English alphabet), he may be able to learn Japanese only in that capacity.  In other words, students must learn hiragana, katakana and kanji (Chinese characters), three writing systems, in order to read and write Japanese materials.  So, I regret to say that I do not think a blind person will succeed in our current curriculum.

Miko Foard
Senior Lecturer in Japanese"
My first reaction was that they must accommodate, but upon reflection, I am not sure that if it an essential skill for the class is to read and write Japanese in its original form that this student can take Japanese.  I am very interested in learning if anyone who has had experience with blind students in Japanese or Chinese post-secondary classes.  I believe the only way this student will be able to get into these classes is if there is a history of accommodations at other post secondary institutions or a legal precedent specific to languages. 

Richard Jones
Assistant Director
Disability Resources for Students
Arizona State University, Main
480-965-6045

"Our first belief is that "disability" is a rational concept.  It does not reside within the individual.  Our second belief is that electronic technology can alter environments in such a manner as to allow people who have various functional deficits to operate without any disability what so ever."  Richard Reed, CCD Newsletter, Fall 1988, v (2), EDUCOM Software Initiative, 1989.