New experiences at their fingertips

In his “Literature and Disability” course taught last spring, Professor Marc Shell noticed Katie Sevier ’25 taking notes on her HIMS QBraille XL display, a device that connects to her laptop and allows her to type in braille.

A discussion between Shell and Sevier on the importance of the history, theory, and practice of tactile writing systems used by the visually impaired led the pair to create a course not seen at peer institutions. Now the professor and the student are both the teachers. Their class is called “Why Braille Matters.”

“For me, braille is a sign of access, of freedom, of independence,” Sevier said. “Having this course come to life means so much. It is a course affirming a component of the blind experience — braille — which is so integral to many blind people’s experiences.”

On Thursday afternoons, Sevier can be found preparing for a class as fellow students and two trained guide dogs fill a small room at Dana Palmer House on Harvard’s campus. Throughout the semester, Sevier and Shell have prioritized highlighting different experiences by inviting guest speakers from the blind community or those who work with the blind community.  

“This is and is not a course about disability,” Shell said. “It is really a course about reading and writing systems, and that is the main linkage with Comparative Literature.

“The history of reading and writing goes back thousands of years to tactile forms. These forms might be called ‘pre-braille.’ As our research is now revealing, blind people had many methods of reading and writing,” he added.

Sevier and Shell take an integrative dual approach to teaching “Why Braille Matters.” She instructs students on braille code and blindness education, while he leads discussions on the literary, philosophical, and neurological aspects of the raised-dots writing system. For Sevier, the course is deeply personal. The 23-year-old lost her vision at 6 years old due to intracranial hypertension and began learning braille the summer after kindergarten.

During a recent class, students — who come from across the University — discussed the 1980 film “To Race the Wind,” the story of blind lawyer, activist, and author Harold Krents ’67, J.D. ’70. The film documents Krents’ experience navigating Harvard’s complex campus as an undergraduate. Sevier and other visually impaired students also shared their own stories about learning to move through the Yard.

“What was really validating and empowering to see was the way Katie had written out the directions that she used to teach another blind student how to navigate a specific route to the Yard,” said Emma Vrabel ’25, a former white-cane user who now has a guide dog. From this, she said, sighted students were better able to understand “how exhausting” it can be to have to memorize various routes across campus.

“Harvard is a hard place to navigate,” said Vrabel, who is still able to see faces, gestures, and large print. “At the beginning of every semester, I teach my guide dog, Holly, how to find our different class buildings and landmarks. Holly has been super helpful in making that a faster, more efficient process, but it’s still a lot of labor.”

Following class discussion, students break into small groups to attempt to decode different film and literature titles in braille.

“The course started out with tactile sensitivity training, where you’re building up your ability to tactilely distinguish between small differences,” said Sevier, who went on to explain that braille characters include six dots placed in two columns of three dots. Letters of the alphabet, known as “Grade One Braille,” are determined by the number and arrangement of dots. “Grade Two Braille,” or contractions, are characters that stand for parts of words or even whole words.

Alex Waysand ’27, an international student from France with an interest in languages, noted the challenge of learning to read braille.

“This is a commonly shared experience among students in the class, but I was struck to discover how insensitive the tips of my fingers were and how hard it was to decipher braille characters,” he said.

Beyond animated, philosophical classroom examination on the writing system and Sevier’s lessons on reading braille, students visited Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown. There they were given a tour of the library and museum and had the opportunity to use a giant tactile globe that was favored by Helen Keller, Radcliffe College Class of 1904. The globe, which was built in 1837 and stands 13 feet in circumference, was the first thing that Keller touched when she arrived at Perkins as a student at the age of 8.

Vrabel, who is writing her thesis on Perkins’ outreach program and lived there last summer, was glad her Harvard classmates had the chance to acquaint themselves with  the extraordinary world at Perkins. “It was really cool to come back with the class and experience all the exhibits and see people who probably would not have been in the space otherwise,” she said.

Now, more than halfway through the semester, Sevier said she’s happy with how the course has manifested. “I am very impressed with everyone’s ability to put themselves out of their comfort zones to learn more about the braille code,” she said, adding that she hopes students will take with them “the pride and joy blind people have within their community … and that students will be able to see this in other spaces.”

Shell and Sevier plan to teach another iteration of this course next academic year.