RFTB&D

That’s Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic. Used to be just RFTB, but they realized that there are more reading difficulties than lack of vision and now almost anyone with difficulty reading printed text can qualify for the program. In fact they have more dyslexic clients than visually-impaired clients. Maybe it should be RFTD&B.

Anyway, I’m volunteering as a reader for this organization. It stems from the “Westover plus One Percent” initiative that our Spiritual Formation minister, Rick McCall has called for. One percent of your income – apart from your church contribution – slated for a cause that exists outside the church “box” and then getting involved in the program itself (someone who shall remain nameless asked Rick if she could give 2% and skip the personal involvement part. He didn’t buy it). Mom is working with Meals on Wheels, and I chose Reading for the Blind. Sounds like a no-brainer, for my part.

Actually, I volunteered for this organization once before, a number of years ago, and they rejected me. I don’t remember the exact reason, but somehow I didn’t meet their standards as a reader. I personally think I was too good for them. Maybe that was part of the problem. But I’m back and thus far they have accepted my efforts. Maybe that’s because I have yet to read. I have been “in training” as a director. The way this works is that there are two copies of each book to be recorded and the reader sits in the recording booth and reads while the director sits outside, listening on earphones, following along in the text and controlling the recording.

It’s a computer-based recording system – digitally recording the voice as well as formatting the recording into pages and chapters. When the reader makes a mistake, you use mouse clicks to stop the recording, back up a sentence or two, play forward until you reach a good starting place and then start recording again. When you reach the end of a page, you electronically “mark” that point and the software starts on the next page unit.

The first couple of sessions I sat with another director, watching the process for the most part with just a little hands-on. Then I graduated to directing alone. After 11 – 15 hours of directing, I can take a reading test and if I pass, I can sit in the booth and make my own mistakes. I’m content to direct at the moment, because I need more experience in how various printed conventions are handled verbally. It’s not like reading fiction or even the Bible; most of the books are school texts, and you have to deal with things like graphs, charts and pictures. Or footnotes. Last week I worked with a text that had more space devoted to the notes than it did the text. Really. And in addition to the ibids and op cits, there were the eds. and vls. and pps – not to mention the ffs and pdqs. Okay, I made that last one up, but you get the picture.

Today I worked with a Math Reader. If you are a Math Reader they start bowing when you walk in the door and they throw flower petals on you and go out and wash and polish your car while you read. Good math readers are rare and hard to come by. We read from a 7^th grade text, and you’re probably aware that the current books are full of charts and diagrams and pictures and illustrations – not to mention the formulas themselves. There’s very little actual text. It goes something like this: “A. Find the approximate area of the shape in illustration B.” Then the Math Reader spends most of the time saying things like, “Illustration B is a grid, made up of 12 squares across by 9 squares down with each square representing 2 square feet. In this grid is an indiscriminate blue shape that completely covers 21 squares, covers half of 7 squares and covers less than half of 3 squares.” And if you’re good, you work this description out on the fly!

You work in 2 hour shifts – that’s about all a reader can do before they get tongue-tied – and it takes many readers to complete a book. You don’t read an entire text, because most volunteers come in only once a week and it would take two years to do a single text. Speed is of the essence; they are reading texts that have been specifically requested by someone – usually next semester’s text. That makes for a lot of variety. Thus far I have “directed” an Economics text in a section dealing with Karl Marx; a Social Studies book dealing with treatment of slaves in the South before the War, the book that was all notes (so boring I don’t even remember the topic) and the Math book. When you get good, you “self-direct.” You go in a booth, control the recording yourself and edit your own mistakes.

Of course, if you don’t make any misteakes…