Learning languages alone changed what I could get out of travel as a blind person. Being able to have conversations in another language, or knowing a few words in the local language truly changed my experience. Often, when sighted people can point at things, I am restricted to speaking. But it wasn’t without challenges. Even today when technology comes to the rescue, there still are challenges a blind person may have to face when learning a new language. But just like in so many cases, it doesn’t have to be that way. In a few instances the lack of vision can be a limitation, but in most it is the lack of accessibility.
But let me start with a personal story. When I studied at the Overbrook International Program in Philadelphia when I was sixteen, we had a chance to learn Japanese for a year.
We had braille Japanese books, a native Japanese teacher, and nobody once thought that blind people won’t be able to learn Japanese. Knowing a few words and expressions, when I returned to Hungary, I called the Japanese department at the university and asked them how I would be able to start the major. At least those years, each student was expected to learn the language after starting the Japanese major. I explained that I was blind, and immediately the professor told me that there’s no chance, they cannot work with blind people, because I will not be able to read or write. Though it was back in the 1990’s and we didn’t have all the technology, I explained that I learned the language for a year and I believe most Japanese blind kids learn to speak and read and write, and I’m looking for a solution so I could do the same. The conversation was cut short, it was a no, and it wasn’t going to change.
I won’t get into the details, but I was turned down in so many instances just because I was blind, but today I know it wasn’t an obstacle.
So, I took another approach. I took the class catalog of the university, OCR-ed it for myself, and walked in the language departments one by one, and asked if they would be willing to teach a blind guy. I know, I know. I didn’t do a service with this to the other blind students, but allow me that I was 20 years old in a Central-European country and I didn’t know any better. So, the outcome, the Portuguese and Swahili teachers were willing to work with me. And you know what was fascinating about it? My first childhood readings were travel narratives, taking place in East-Africa and in Brazil, and the Swahili and Portuguese languages completely resonated with me, I even knew a couple of words. And that’s where the journey began. In the meantime, I learned 4 languages besides my native tongue, and I studied at least another 10. I can still get around in Portuguese, but I didn’t have a chance to use Swahili and since I have forgotten it.
But when it comes to language learning as a blind person, I certainly have experiences, good and bad.
The aspects of language learning
Language learning has four aspects:
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Reading
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Writing
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Speaking
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Understanding
Each require a varying ability to see or coming up with alternative solutions.
Reading
Depending on the popularity of a language, reading materials can be found, some online, some in libraries, certain languages have an extensive amount of braille literature. For lesser used languages online materials are limited, and often only local materials are available, which can be hard to obtain.
Writing
Writing is one of the easiest aspects of language learning, in an ideal case one would learn the braille alphabet of the target language, but if that isn’t available, one can still learn to type it on the keyboard and unless it is a very rare language there is at least an acceptable way of reading the results with speech synthesis. At the moment, there is braille and speech available in hundreds of languages.
Speaking
Theoretically, speaking is easy, you just have to speak, right? Which is always a way to practice, but speaking to yourself doesn’t get you any feedback. Speaking is best when there is a group or a teacher available. When I started out it wasn’t all that easy, this is why I forgot Swahili, but now with the availability on the internet, one can join language groups, work with a teacher remotely, etc.
Understanding
It has about the same implications as speaking, ideally speaking and understanding is done at the same time, but can be separated, for example when listening to radio programs, youtube videos, movies or audio books. I was able to find materials for rare languages when I just wanted to have a sense of what they sound like or wanted to learn to pronounce some words before a trip. When learning a near extinct language, the situation maybe much more difficult.
Using braille to learn a language
The first thing I do when I get acquainted with a language is to figure out the braille system. The first step is easy, the Perkins School for the Blind publishes the World Braille Usage book, which contains the braille writing including punctuation in over a hundred languages. It attempts to list all available braille systems. While individual braille codes may be updated over the years, it is a great start, and unpublished differences won’t be an obstacle.
It is interesting when it comes to languages using a different alphabet or a more complex writing system from English, or even a different writing direction maybe easier when it comes to braille. Many alphabets borrow a lot from English, for example in Hindi and Russian there is much more overlap in braille than in print. Also, many languages maintain the left to write approach to writing. In case of other languages, like Chinese or Japanese, learning braille after English has a much bigger learning curve.
What is not included though, is braille abbreviations of individual languages. Many languages use abbreviations, it means that a string of characters are identified with a few braille signs or characters, making it faster to read with fingers. While it is not necessary to learn it only makes sense, because many books are published using abbreviations. For example, most books are abbreviated in English and Portuguese. Learning the abbreviations definitely takes some research, I often contact blind people who use my target language or local libraries for materials. In case of Portuguese, for example, I contacted the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, where they had a thorough overview of the Portuguese braille abbreviation system. However, this book is only available in Portuguese, so I needed to know the language well enough to take advantage of this book.
Once I am armed with the basics of reading braille, I can borrow books from different libraries, or subscribe to braille publications. In case of more rare languages, or where braille publications weren’t so advanced, the task seemed to be next to impossible.
But why reading in braille when electronic materials are available? I simply like the traditional way of reading, especially when learning a language. There is just something special to reading a paper book that can’t be replaced with anything else. It also makes it easier to slowly study a new language word by word, or letter by letter.
There is another approach I can use to read braille electronically. There are braille displays, which can be connected to a computer, and with the help of the screen reader program, one can display one braille line at a time. While it is a great solution, it has to be noted that the electronic text is converted to braille automatically using the braille transcription rules of a language, and in some instances it may not be fully accurate. This is important when starting to learn a language. However, major screen reader programs support dozens of languages and the braille transcription is quite advanced. The other obstacle is that braille displays are very expensive, most of them cost thousands of Dollars, and in some countries paying this price is simply not feasible. In North America or in the European Union one can receive help from the government or foundations to obtain a braille display.
Using speech
Another approach, which I prefer to use side by side with braille, is using speech. Screen readers these days can be set up to read dozens of languages using speech as well, actually this is what they do primarily. Text to speech systems are so advanced that sometimes they are almost comparable to human speech, which allows to learn proper pronunciation, it can greatly help learning to understand. Once I know enough in a language, I can read books and articles which almost sounds like a native speaker. However, in some instances certain words are pronounced incorrectly, which can be remedied with an exception dictionary, but when you are learning a language, you may not know if it is the case with a particular word. Generally it is not a big problem, but it is worth being aware of.
Many years ago when text to speech was not so advanced and not so many languages were available, we had to take shortcuts. For example, when I started learning English, I didn’t have access to an English speech system due to finances, I could only read in Hungarian. So the way I learned English was by reading it with a Hungarian pronunciation. This didn’t mean that this is how I spoke English, I learned the correct pronunciation in class, but this is how I was able to read books. This greatly helped me with spelling though, because Hungarian is mostly read as written. But that was 30 years ago, and today I would probably struggle with this shortcut. Later there was a time when I didn’t have access to Hungarian speech, and reading Hungarian with English pronunciation is much harder. Then I switched my screen reader to German, which was able to read Hungarian much better, though with German pronunciation. But those days, this is all we had.
Using language learning software
One would think that with all the latest and greatest language learning applications, learning is a breeze, once I figure out speech and braille. Not so. Actually, in many instances I have to go back to the old methods and come up with workarounds, because many learning applications are not accessible, and are hard to use with the screen reader and keyboard. I still do a fair bit of learning reading books and articles together with grammar books. More and more grammar books are available online, but sometimes I have to get it from the library, and turn it into electronic text using a scanner and an optical character recognition program. Lately I can do the same using the phone’s camera and a few apps.
Over the years I tried to use a number of software. One I started with was Duolingo, about 10 years ago it was very usable. But as years went by with each update, they broke the accessibility features, and today it is in such a bad shape that I don’t even touch it, it is usable to some extent but it is not worth the effort.
One application I found was Innovative Language, which is not very accessible, but usable enough to get by. They have great written and spoken content in about three dozen languages.
I tried many other apps, with more and less success, but often what it came down to is finding one that is accessible and teaches the language I wanted to learn.
However, when a language learning application is accessible with a braille display and a screen reader it can be very useful both on a mobile phone or on a computer.
Learning with people
Remote learning
With the rise of meetups and remote education there are new opportunities I can take advantage of, though there are some limitations. Once the meetings are organized, one can use Zoom or Google Meet which is very accessible. However, finding a private language tutor proved to be quite difficult. I tried the most popular apps to find language teachers, but they weren’t too accessible. I either had a hard time browsing teachers’ profiles, or scheduling the meetings inside an app was so difficult that I had to give up. However, one thing that worked well for me is WorkUp. Though it is primarily not for finding language teachers, I posted jobs, and this is how I found Spanish and Hindi teachers. WorkUp was accessible enough to post a job, read through the responses and negotiate the contract, and the rest I could do with any online meeting software. Probably the biggest disadvantage here is that the teachers I could choose from was much more limited than in an app which is specifically made for this purpose, but ultimately I was able to find wonderful teachers at a great price.
In-person learning
Of course, the best way to learn a language is by emersion, with teachers, in-person language groups, or visiting a country where they speak the target language. But this is also not without any difficulties. Finding the right teacher or the right event is easy, but one has to get there. But it also depends on the location and the target language. Finding a Spanish teacher nearby in the USA is much easier than finding a Swahili meetup in Hungary. Recently, in the USA, I found a local Swahili meetup group I wanted to join. Unfortunately, public transportation wasn’t available, and attending the monthly meetup would cost so much taking Uber than weekly lessons with a private teacher. Often times I need to miss great opportunities due to the lack of acceptable public transportation.
Artificial intelligence
This post couldn’t be complete without mentioning the use of artificial intelligence. The advantage there is that it is a text based question and answer system, which is very accessible. But how accurate is it? Mostly it depends on the language. I am finding that with large languages, I can get very accurate translations, exercises, examples, grammar explanations, etc. But in case of other languages the accuracy is much lower, and the downside is that you don’t know what is inaccurate when you are just starting to learn. I found for example that translating from Hungarian to English is much more accurate than the other way around. I could get accurate explanations for Spanish or Portuguese grammar concepts, but it totally got some Swahili explanations wrong.
Ultimately, it just depends what you are learning and how much you trust AI. But depending on the level of trust, there are still some ways to use AI for language learning and avoid inaccurate explanations. For example, you can get a list of the most frequent words from a language then you can use a dictionary to learn them. It may not be a hundred percent accurate, but in the worst case you end up with the wrong order. You can tell AI that you are learning a new language and ask it to give you easy to translate sentences in your native language, which is a great practice. You can copy paste the new words you are learning and ask AI to quiz you. So, even if you don’t trust it yet, there are ways to take advantage of it.
Conclusion
As you can tell, learning a language without any vision does have its challenges, but it is not at all impossible. For that matter, I would advise anyone that no matter which language you want to learn, don’t let blindness stop you. It maybe a little more research, but it is certainly worth it.
For those who are teaching languages or create learning apps or dictionaries, I would suggest to think about accessibility from the beginning. With little effort, your application may just be the one that blind people will benefit from, or people with any disabilities for that matter.
