Braille Reading Accuracy in Chinese Students with Visual Impairments: The Effects of Visual Status and Braille Reading Patterns

This study explored the effects of visual status and braille reading patterns on the reading accuracy of students with visual impairments in China. The sample consisted of 121 students aged 10-19 years: 48 were students with congenital visual impairments, 25 were students with adventitious visual impairments, and 48 were sighted students. Students with visual impairment read braille and sighted students read printed materials, whilst both reading materials have same content. The participants' reading accuracy was measured by assessing the number and range of errors. The types of error identified included mispronunciation, omission, repetition, substitution, self-correction, and insertion. The study had two main conclusions. (1) Type of vision status had a significant effect on reading accuracy. More specifically, the reading accuracy of the sighted students was significantly higher than that of the students with visual impairments. Furthermore, repetition was the most common type of reading error made by the two groups of students with visual impairments, whereas self-correction was the most common type of reading error made by the sighted students. (2)Braille reading patterns had a marginally significant effect on reading accuracy. The participants who used cooperative and one-handed patterns were more accurate than the students who used the other braille reading patterns. Specifically, the participants using cooperative and one-handed patterns made significantly fewer mistakes in the repetition category than the students using marker and parallel patterns, but this difference did not exist for the other types of reading errors. These results are analysed and discussed in the discussion section of this paper.