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Author outlines research into blindness, Braille and assistive technology used to shape her novel's blind protagonist
Summary
At a Missoula reading, author Jeanette described interviewing teachers and students, visiting the Montana School for the Blind and Deaf, and learning braille, orientation and mobility techniques and assistive technology to ensure accuracy in her novel's portrayal of blindness.
Jeanette described the specific research she did to portray a blind protagonist in her novel Mandy, saying she interviewed teachers and people with lived experience and visited institutions that serve people who are blind or have low vision.
"One of the first people I went to was a man named Fred Bischoff here in Missoula who used to teach orientation and mobility to blind people," Jeanette said, crediting Bischoff and other teachers, counselors and students for passages that deal with blindness.
She summarized basic braille mechanics for the audience: "Braille is just a code...A braille cell looks like the number 6 domino. Okay? And it's got 6 possible positions for dots on it." She explained that the number symbol uses dots 3, 4, 5 and 6 and that grade-2 braille uses contractions and shorthand patterns for common words.
Jeanette also described orientation and mobility instruction in the book — trailing a wall, listening for a fountain, searching carefully for dropped items — and quoted a passage in which an instructor, Mr. Burkhart, asks practical questions to build the student's independent travel skills.
She demonstrated assistive technology she encountered in Missoula: a speech synthesizer that reads screen text aloud, a braille keypad for input, and a closed-circuit television (CCTV) magnifier that enlarges printed pages on a monitor for people with low vision. She noted that some people labeled "blind" retain usable sight and use monitors as a visual cue for commands and messages.
Jeanette said much of the sensory detail in her book came from that research; she emphasized the effort to make the fictional portrayal "as true as you know how to make it" by combining lived experience with factual research and institutional sources.
