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From: Marda.Anderson@f9.n393.z1.fidonet.org (Marda Anderson)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: handwriting
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Date: 19 Nov 90 22:00:25 GMT
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[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

I was interested in your comments on handwriting.  As a totally blind 
person who has never seen, I found handwriting to be one of the most 
difficult skills to learn and I don't think I ever really mastered it.  
It was taught without the use of tactile aids.  The teacher would take 
our hands and move them in the shapes of the letters.  In a year of once 
weekly instruction, I accomplished the goal of the class, learning to 
write my name.  Besides that, I had started to learn other letters.  But 
I was always self-conscious about my writing and always hated to sign my 
name.  A couple of years ago a friend of mine who is a rehab teacher and 
who is sighted offered to teach me to write.  She gave me a sheet of 
paper with raised letters on it and some other learning aids.  But after 
a few weeks of instruction, I could tell she was discouraged.  Now I'm 
worse off than I was before because I know my writing is terrible but I 
don't know how to fix it.  The raised letters didn't help.  Neither did 
drawing in flour, another of her teaching aids.  I don't be any means 
want to say that a congenitally blind person couldn't be taught to write. 
 I am just recounting my experience. 
marda

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