Testimony to the Uniform Type Committee (text)
Helen Keller’s letter to A. Emerson Palmer Esq. Secretary, Board of Education.
My dear Sir:
I regret that I cannot appear at the hearing before the Board of Education of New York City on March the 24th. I’ve been deeply interested these many years in the question of raised types, not so much for my own advantage (I read all the systems) as for that of the large number of blind persons who may not share my good fortune. I understand that you are to consider the relative merits of American Braille and New York Point. Between these two systems, it seems to me, there can be no question when the facts are all properly presented to you.
I’ve always found New York Point a difficult, unsatisfactory system. I object to it as it appears in most books which I have seen because it does not use capitals, apostrophes and hyphens. This sometimes spoils the sense for the reader, but it has a worse effect upon the young pupil. He is liable to get an imperfect idea of capitalization and punctuation. I have received letters written on the ordinary ink typewriter from blind persons which contained errors significantly like the defects of New York Point, and I can not but believe that this illiteracy is traceable to their habitual use of a defective mode of punctographic writing during school years.
It is true, the makers of New York Point have devised capitals, but it is noteworthy that this very winter, the State Library at Albany was trying to decide upon a suitable capital sign. Forty years after the system was supposed to be “perfected,” it is still in an undecided state!
The capitals when they are used are not always unequivocal. I’ve often mistaken D for j, I for b and Y for double oo in signatures, and I waste time looking at initial letters over and over again. I am not satisfied with the signs for hyphen and apostrophe that I have found because they are cumbersome. It is possible to mistake the apostrophe for ou, especially in proper names.
New York Point is much harder for me to read than American Braille. It wears my reading finger more to travel over letters three dots wide and two high as they are in New York Point than over letters two dots wide and three high as they are an American Braille. Also, it is the most trying task to decipher many letters which I get in New York Point. The writers evidently have trouble either with the system or the machine. Of the letters I receive in the two systems, a far larger proportion are well-written in American Braille.
I note too, that in the world of the blind New York Point is a provincialism. The machines for it are made only in New York, and write only in New York Point. On the other hand, machines for Braille are made in Germany, France, England, and America. I have owned American and German Braille writers, which placed me in communication with people all over the world.
I am sure that in all important respects, American Braille is superior to New York Point because it meets completely the needs of capitalization, punctuation, legibility and physical use of ease of reading.
With high regards, I am respectfully yours, (Signed) Helen Keller.