Literacy & Controversy: Focus- Group Data from Canada on Proposed Changes to the Braille Code

groups throughout Canada to assess the perceived advantages and disadvantages of Unified English Braille (UEB) for teachers and students. UEB (which was known as UEBC--Unified English Braille Code--at the time of the research) brings together literary, mathematic, and computer notations into one braille code. In the United States, Canada, and New Zealand, UEB would include the rules and symbols of English Braille, American Edition 1994 (EBAE), the Nemeth Code for Braille Mathematics, and the Computer Braille Code. Because there is opposition to instituting a new code, as well as differences over the form it should take, the research presented in this article explored both the barriers to and benefits of UEB as seen by Abstract: Focus-group research conducted on Unified English Braille highlights the diversity of views about the desirability of the new code and its proposed changes. Many features seen by students as positive were the same features deemed undesirable by other students. In general, teachers were more amenable to the changes than were students. Nearly all participants expressed serious concern about the effect of the new code on current students and on adult braille readers. Issues were raised about the feasibility of instituting the new code as well, and about how closely braille needs to be wedded to print. With many constituents opposed to altering the braille code, this research explores questions associated with the controversy over instituting the proposed changes