Surprising fact: blind schoolchildren aren’t learning Braille

This per The Economist:

In 1970 more than half of blind American schoolchildren could read Braille. Now, only about 10% can.

and

Only a quarter of blind Americans of working age actually have jobs, and it is surely no coincidence that almost all of them can read Braille.

With respect to first item, The Economist attributes this to mainstreaming, teaching blind children alongside sighted children, without any pull-out time for instruction in Braille.  One could imagine that a further reason might be if the category of “blind” includes a fair number with marginal vision, sufficient for reading heavily-magnified texts, but if that’s so, the second statistic is all the more shocking.

A small item, a distracting item, but, well, what do you make of this?