Can a person who is blind learn biblical languages? Some people ask this question because they are blind and they want or need to learn biblical languages in order to prepare themselves for a particular kind of ministry. Others ask because they teach in the field of biblical studies or provide staff support to students with disabilities who are planning to take language courses, and they need strategic help in learning how material in these languages can be made accessible to a student who cannot read print. The lack of an answer to this question leads to decisions that have serious negative consequences for the lives of people who are blind and for the people whom they serve as ministers.
Many people who are blind have been exempted from language courses and have never enjoyed success as gifted biblical scholars. If a person who is blind happens to be one who has great difficulty as a language learner, and that person is exempted from language study, that person has not enjoyed the empowerment that comes from overcoming their struggle with patient guidance and instruction. the ability to succeed in this area is a benefit of seminary that all language learners should experience.
What Is Possible
People who are blind have long studied material in Greek and Hebrew as scholars. In the past, this was accomplished with the aid of readers. Today, people who are blind read texts independently in many ways. Ancient language texts have been transcribed into braille. It is also possible to scan them into the computer and use optical character recognition software that converts images captured from written pages into text. Other programs then read the text aloud or feed to braille displays. The same programs that read text aloud and feed it to braille displays, called screen readers, can interact with web browsers, word processors, and sometimes Bible study software, to give the user who is blind information about what is on the screen. In this way, a person who is blind can read a vast amount of information that has been unavailable in the past.
it is possible for a person who is blind to learn any language that a sighted person can learn given the availability of accessible texts and tools. Language learning success or failute is not inherently related to blindness. Language learning success and difficulty are traits that sighted and blind people have in common.
Because languages are often taught using visual elements like charts and pictures, a teacher may need to think outside the box when communicating in the classroom with a student who is bline.
It must be stressed that while some characters are shared between foreign language systems in braille, braille is neither a language nor a transliteration system. It is a writing system and has been carefully configured to represent numerous languages in their own manner. If a person is learning to read a language using braille, it may be helpful for the professor to ask some questions of the person regarding how the language is presented. In most non-English languages, accented letters are represented as individual characters that the reader must memorize whereas the sighted reader must memorize only the visual accents that appear over the letters. In Greek, therefore, the braille reader does not have the advantage of recognizing the circumflex accent every time it occurs. Each vowel symbol must be memorized for both its vowel value and its accent vlaue.
The professor is not expected to know these braille signs; but a general understanding of what the student is memorizing can be helpful in understanding difficulties that a student is having. Note that these discussions may be challenging at first if the student has never studied a foreign language. the student may, in fact, respond to the new braille system as if they are learning gibberish.
The State of Access to Language Materials
Scholars who are blind are working continually to make improvements regarding access to biblical language texts and tools; and I post periodically to this site as things improve. As of 2019, it is possible for a person to study Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac. transcription of a Coptic text into braille is in process.
The JAWS screen reader provides the most comprehensive access to Hebrew when used with a braille display. It is configured for use “out of the box” with modern Greek, as are all other screen readers. A braille table is available on this site for use with ancient languages. This table is only available for JAWS.
Current Needs
There is great need for improvement in the ways that screen readers and Bible study software work together. Access to Bible study software would allow us to use lexicons and other reference material that is otherwise not easily accessible. Scholars who are blind and who have successfully studied biblical languages advocate strongly for the development of more accessible software, accessible language content online in Unicode format, and quality audio resources.
There is also great need for funding for the production of additional language materials in braille. The lack of accessible grammars and reference materials is the greatest barrier to successful study of biblical languages for people who are blind.
While access to biblical language materials continues to improve, people who are determined to succeed in this field continue to use resources that are available in order to learn and to succeed. The greatest predictor of success is not the tools available but the strength of determination and the willingness to work that a person brings to the task. If Didymus could succeed as a scholar who was blind during the fourth century, others certainly can today.
Are there benefits to the community for going to such expense to make it possible for people who are blind to study biblical languages? If one holds to the philosophy that God calls whom God chooses, then it would follow that to make possible the study of languages by a person who is blind is to equip another whom God has called to serve God fully.
Getting More Help
If you are looking for resources for accessible language study, please see the submenu under “site navigation.” If you need help, For questions about software or web site accessibility, accessible language teaching, screen readers and foreign language characters, or to suggest a resource or link, please email me.
JAWS 2019 provides support for synthetic Hebrew speech using the same Hebrew voice that is available in IOS and Voiceover on the Mac. A specialized braille table is available to JAWS users via this site (not officially from VFO) that enables support for the full range of pointed Hebrew and polytonic Greek. Use of Hebrew with speech require some fairly good understanding of sound-letter correspondence, ability to understand synthetic Hebrew speech, etc. More information is available on other pages on this site.
If you are highly determined to learn biblical languages, in particular Hebrew, do not give up because of such bumps in the road. It is because of these types of barriers that you must increase your determination to be diligent. It is because of these kinds of access problems that Night-Light exists.