www.writingcenters.org, International Writing Centers Association, 12 April 2016 Blindness and the Writing Process:
Implications for Writing Center Practice
Melanie Long, Colorado State University1
Abstract
While visually impaired students have become increasingly capable of participating in and contributing to
the traditional college class due to advancements in adaptive technologies, it is less clear whether they learn
and write in the same way as their classmates. In particular, recognizing any broadly observed differences
between the writing processes of sighted and visually impaired writers is a crucial step in developing
writing center tutoring styles that will be beneficial to all students. This paper uses both existing empirical
research and insights from the researcher’s work with a blind undergraduate student to explore the two
most commonly observed areas of difference: macro-level revision practices and micro-level writing
errors. The discussion concludes with recommendations for writing center practice that encourage the
recognition each writer’s individuality and autonomy while incorporating the surveyed empirical findings.
Increasingly sophisticated adaptive technologies for the blind seem to have made the inclusive
college classroom a more realistic goal: speech synthesis software, refreshable braille displays, and
other devices allow blind students to participate in many or even most class activities (LeyenbergerPfohl 3). However, the fact that blind students have the technical capability to participate in the
sighted classroom does not necessarily mean that traditional writing pedagogies apply to blind
students. My research considers whether writing techniques unique to blind writers may in fact
contribute to a disconnect between blind students and the sighted writing curriculum. Although
disability staff members provide the blind with adaptive technology and other day-to-day assistance,
writing centers can augment these services by providing writing tutoring adapted to the specific
needs of blind students when and if such needs exist.
Although the existing research presents mixed results, the most commonly observed
differences between the composing practices and completed texts of blind writers and
those of sighted writers involve revision practices and spelling, grammatical, and
mechanical errors. I’ll first focus on the current research regarding these two points and
then use this to construct a foundation for better serving blind writers at writing centers.
Revision and Writing Technology
Most of the studies I considered in the course of this research explored revision practices
and their relationship to adaptive technologies, which seem to introduce important
cognitive and mechanical variables into the writing process. Mechanical Perkins braillers,
1At
the time she composed this paper, Melanie Long was an undergraduate peer writing tutor at Westminster
College.
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www.writingcenters.org, International Writing Centers Association, 12 April 2016 for instance, are essentially braille typewriters that emboss braille characters onto a sheet of
paper advanced through the side knobs. The original machines were fatiguing to use due
to the force required to press each of the six keys, and they produce text that is difficult to
edit, requiring transcribing on a word processor to produce a final draft. Empirical studies
from the 1980s found that students using these kinds of devices were less likely to revise
their writing than other students, due, at least in part, to the mechanical obstacles posed by
producing text with a brailler (Ely 249; Koenig 235).
Of course, these empirical studies are largely outdated; speech synthesis software like
JAWS®, digital braillers, and laptops with refreshable braille displays are replacing
challenging mechanical braille devices, although these latter devices are far from obsolete.
The disincentives to revise may then be less prevalent than they once were for blind
students (Sugg 51). Still, even these more recent technologies may have their own adverse
effects on blind writers’ visual access to text. With braille, syntactical units are reduced to a
few letters, and in the case of speech-synthesis, writers are limited to the most recently
spoken words (Ely 249). By contrast, a sighted reader can examine more text at a time and
can register larger units at a glance. Due to having a limited amount of text at hand, blind
writers often need rely on long-term memory of a text’s global structure to a greater extent.
The obstacles that may arise due to the physical mechanics of writing, text access, and text
permanence are of particular importance for writing centers because they also affect how
blind writers will revise collaboratively, as indicated by my experiences with one blind
college sophomore whom I will refer to pseudonymously as Ann. I guided Ann through a
peer editing session while working with her in her introductory English composition
course. She was expected to listen to the paper of a classmate and then provide
commentary.
To begin the peer editing session, I read the entire paper out loud to Ann, announcing
paragraph breaks and quotation marks as I read. We then reread and discussed each
paragraph. Throughout our discussion, Ann remained relatively quiet; she primarily
contributed if I provided leading questions like “Do you think that there might be too
much going on in this paragraph?” Ann’s performance in the class was comparable to that
of her peers. Consequently, although a general unfamiliarity with what characterizes
standard academic writing may have influenced her difficulties during our peer editing
exercises, her visual impairment may have also played a role: Ann’s behavior and her
answers in interviews conducted after this activity confirmed that she sometimes struggles
to retain multiple elements of a text when they are presented verbally. Ann reported that
during in-class exercises, she often has to ask her classmate to repeat the material that was
read to her and faces difficulties similar to those that she encountered during our peer
editing session.
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www.writingcenters.org, International Writing Centers Association, 12 April 2016 Due to these challenges, blind writers may be more comfortable with local rather than
global concerns. A 1992 case study by Sushil Oswal describes how a blind executive
collaborated with his assistant to divide revision into macro-, mid-, and micro-level
concerns. After the executive—named Paul—dictated a document to his assistant, the pair
would review the printed document together. Paul addressed sentence-level issues while
his assistant addressed macro-level concerns (7). Oswal does not propose an explanation
for Paul’s revision practices, but we can reasonably posit that the burden placed on Paul’s
short-term memory in the process of dictating and then listening to the text prevented him
from comfortably working with global revisions, corroborating some of my experiences
with Ann.
Despite these findings, increased demands on short- and long-term memory may not
always be as problematic as sometimes suggested: many researchers have found that blind
writers often compensate for their visual impairment by developing impressive memory
capabilities (Gere 55; Ely 249; Enjelvin 267). During our interview, Ann seconded these
conclusions based on her personal experience. Moreover, writers with strong memories
and advanced writing skills may do extensive planning and then write a single draft, often
with great success (Gere 64). These mixed findings on blind writers and revision
complicate our efforts to come to definitive conclusions, and indeed point to the need for
writing centers to consider the interconnected effects of blindness, text access, and
memory on a case-by-case basis.
Spelling, Grammatical, and Mechanical Errors
Although we, as consultants, often focus on so-called “higher-order” concerns, sentencelevel issues clearly also arise among all subsets of writers, blind writers included; in my
research, I found that some blind writers struggle more than their sighted peers with some
mechanical elements of writing, such as spelling. Empirical studies exploring this further
have found that the spelling errors that blind writers make are most frequently those that
do not affect the pronunciation of a word, reflecting the use of verbal communication
instead of written texts among blind writers (Argyropoulos, Martos, and Leotsakou 183;
Enjelvin 270). The increased use of speech synthesis technologies instead of braille texts
has also contributed to the rates of blind writers’ spelling errors. Although acoustic reading
is indeed significantly less time-consuming than braille, a reliance on recordings can cause
the textual images of words to “fade” in the mind of the blind reader (Argyropoulos,
Martos, and Leotsakou 183).
By extrapolation, the same effect may apply to other mechanical issues, such as
punctuation. Ann stated that both due to the speed of acoustic reading and the scarcity of
class materials transcribed in braille, she must often rely on recordings, speechsynthesizers, or live readers. Importantly, Ann also described struggling with comma usage,
suggesting that punctuation also appears very differently in acoustic readings than in print
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www.writingcenters.org, International Writing Centers Association, 12 April 2016 texts. Pauses often indicate some manner of punctuation, but commas, semicolons, colons,
dashes, and periods cannot always be distinguished aurally. Blind students reliant on
acoustic reading could consequently be expected to exhibit greater rates of grammatical
and mechanical errors than sighted writers of similar skill levels.
Recommendations for Writing Center Practice
This research on the macro and micro level effects of blindness on the writing process has
immediate and fruitful application to writing centers, yet such an application must first
consider blind writers’ attitudes towards the writing process and collaboration. Not
surprisingly, some blind students feel confined by their disability and the way that it limits
their ability to express themselves in writing, a feeling that is compounded by certain
methods of accommodation. For instance, Ann described the occasions when she had to
dictate her writing as oppressive, lamenting her lack of control over how her thoughts
would be transcribed to text. By bringing their writing to the writing center, blind writers
would have an opportunity to take an active role in shaping their writing, potentially
alleviating some of the frustration described by Ann and others.
But then writing consultants are tasked with navigating two extremes: while the goal of
consulting with blind writers is to help alleviate some of the potential obstacles posed by
their disability, which may require a somewhat more directive approach, a consultation that
is overly directive may leave blind writers feeling disempowered. With this in mind, I
believe that the consultant should act as a “mediator” of sorts between the text and the
blind writer, a third party that can provide a macro-level perspective to help the writer
overcome text access issues. Of course, the goal should be the same writer-driven
consultation that has long characterized writing center practice; I propose a balance of
directivity and non-directivity that can in fact empower blind writers who may otherwise
find it more difficult to work with higher-order concerns.
To develop the expertise necessary to for this project, writing center staff should first
consult with individuals in the university who work with blind students. Disability services
staff are valuable sources of information on the current adaptive technologies being used
by blind students and on the broader experience of these students in the university. For
instance, these staff members can describe how blind students use refreshable braille
displays or mechanical braillers, informing a discussion among consultants about how
these technologies might affect a consultation.
In terms of developing appropriate tutoring techniques for blind writers, consultants must
acknowledge the differences between individual blind students; a problem area for one
blind student may not be problematic, or may even be a strength, for another student.
Profiling students based on disability and dogmatically applying theory are obviously not
the goals of this research. Consultants should gauge how effectively a blind writer has
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www.writingcenters.org, International Writing Centers Association, 12 April 2016 internalized macro-level elements of his or her paper, for instance, before concluding what
kind of approach is necessary.
If the writer appears to have difficulties visualizing the global structure of the paper or has
significant organizational problems, consultants should consider an approach like that
described in Oswal’s study, in which the blind executive, Paul, addressed local concerns
and his assistant focused on global revisions. As is, this division of responsibilities is too
rigid for the context of the writing center, because it does not encourage writers to
improve their abilities in the long run: however, Oswal’s model can be fruitful if combined
with a more collaborative consulting technique. Consultants can, like Paul’s assistant,
provide the macro-level perspective that some blind writers may have difficulties adopting
due to text access obstacles. When organizational or logical problems arise, consultants
should point them out to the writer, emphasize where that problem fits in the context of
the paper’s global structure, and begin a dialogue to resolve the problem. Like sighted
writers, blind writers will very likely be able to engage in productive discussion about these
concerns and provide many of their own solutions; the role of consultants is to help
visualize the paper in terms of those higher-order concerns.
If micro-level concerns are more evident, the consultant should encourage the writer to
spot issues like punctuation errors by adopting a non-directive, minimalist pedagogy. Such
a situation offers an ideal opportunity to bring the blind writer’s auditory and speech
proficiencies to bear. Students benefit from interacting with their text directly, as writing
center theory has long recognized and encouraged. So, a pedagogy that asks blind writers
to make connections between the visual markers representing punctuation and their
acoustic images will consequently strengthen students’ writing skills in the long-run.
Instead of stating the convention that governs the use of a given form of punctuation,
consultants should prompt the writer to consider the sound and effect of the punctuation.
If a comma is out of place, reading the related sentence out loud with and without the
incorrect comma could prompt the writer to notice the error. Questions like, “What would
a comma sound like in this sentence?” and “How does that choice seem to change your
meaning?” are particularly well suited to writers who are used to focusing on the nuances
of speech.
However, as I discussed previously, some punctuation is not easily heard as a distinctly
different type of pause, such as the difference between semicolons, dashes, and colons. In
this case, an approach focusing on the meaning communicated by different kinds of
punctuation is appropriate, as with sighted writers. Possible spelling errors that do not
reflect the acoustic image of the word may simply require a more directive approach.
Adapting writing center practice to the characteristics of blind writers will allow us to
better serve an additional subset of writers, but the recommendations that are emerging are
also valuable in terms of broader writing center theory. The use of both directive and non-
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www.writingcenters.org, International Writing Centers Association, 12 April 2016 directive approaches for global and local revision with blind students, depending on the
specific writer’s needs, speaks to the on-going debate over the techniques that should
characterize writing center practice. Although pedagogy in the 1980s and 90s promoted
minimalist tutoring styles (Brooks; Satre and Kay), writing center tutors and directors are
increasingly combining directive modeling and guidance with non-directive deference to
students’ own thinking (Truesdell; Shamoon and Burns; Kopec). Consultants working with
blind students will often need to adopt a less strictly minimalist approach. The benefits
offered by positioning the consultant as a mediator between writer and text suggest that
some directive strategies can actually promote, rather than diminish, writers’ participation
in the revision process by helping them visualize their text in new and productive ways. I
believe that further research on this topic as well as a discussion within the writing center
community at venues like this will take us a long way towards achieving this balance, both
for blind and sighted writers.
Presented at the 2012 Rocky Mountain Peer Tutoring Conference and Revised and Edited for
writingcenters.org
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