Published: November 24, 2007 11:10 pm      

RFB&D organization serving learning need in West Virginia

To some students, that’s what the text of a school book looks like. Others may see the lines in a wavy effect. Some see letters that appear to seesaw. And some don’t see at all.

As many as 16 percent of students in West Virginia have some form of print disability that can make learning an exhausting and frustrating challenge, said Dave Bell, state director for an organization called Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D).

Blindness, dyslexia or some other form of print disability affects many students who are genuinely intelligent. In many cases, it can be a lifelong problem. Dyslexia, for instance, is not a deficit in the visual system; it is a deficit in the brain’s language system, in the neurons that are used to process the distinctive sound elements that constitute language.

Still, many of them don’t know that it can be easier. Bell and the nonprofit organization he represents want to get the word out to those students and their educators that help is available.

Though it has been in West Virginia only two years, RFB&D began in 1948 on the top floor of the New York Public Library. Members of the library’s Women’s Auxiliary began recording, on 78 RPMs, textbooks for World War II veterans who had been blinded in battle but still wanted to fully enjoy the benefits of their G.I. Bills.

These days, the organization records on CDs and will record for iPods within the next year and a half, Bell said. Seven thousand volunteers across the country record texts for more than 185,000 people in kindergarten through post-graduate school with blindness, a visual impairment or a learning or physical disability.

“It makes a difference in people’s lives,” said Bell, a former principal. “We’re serving about a sixth of the students in this state that we could be serving. There are so many more students in this area who could use our help.”

Bell points to testimonials from as close as Mercer County, where a Shott Foundation grant made it possible for schools to use the recordings and the special devices that play them in the classrooms and at home after school with children in need. At the end of the 2006-07 school year, students, parents and teachers who used the devices reported improvements in grades, better pronunciation and recognition of vocabulary and comprehension, and students showing more willingness to ask for help.

Bell explained the special devices that play the RFB&D CDs allow students to navigate just as they could through a book. They can skip unassigned pages and even hear descriptions of pictures. Students in Mercer County who said they followed along in their textbook with the recording said they finished their work faster and understood it better.

“And students who use them aren’t labeled,” Bell added. “They look like the tech devices of today, so they don’t really stand out.”

One teacher in Nicholas County said that for one student with a reading disability, he puts the device to speakers and allows the entire class to benefit from it, according to documents provided by Bell.

“We just try to make the printed word available to everyone,” Bell said. “We want to get this equipment in the hands of students.”

But doing that isn’t inexpensive. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, RFB&D has no guaranteed sources of income, so donations are welcome. It costs $57 for RFB&D to master, duplicate and ship one accessible textbook to a member; $145 pays to distribute the average number of accessible textbooks that a student needs for one course; $580 pays for the average number of accessible textbooks that a college student needs for one semester; and $2,096 covers the cost of recording a new digital textbook.

Unless schools or school systems provide the equipment to them, membership fees for students diagnosed with disabilities are $100 for the first year and $35 after that, plus the cost of the special navigational equipment on which to play the recordings, Bell said.

“We are about people,” he added. “We want to help them realize their potential.”

Further information is available online at www.rfbd.org, or call the Hurricane office at 304-380-2430.

— E-mail:

bnaudrey@register-herald.com