How this teen learns a visual language like Japanese with no vision of her own

Australia Broadcast Center

4 days ago

Japanese is one of the most studied languages for Australian high school students — but few learn it like Jacinta McIntyre.
The 14-year-old from Jamison High School in Penrith is blind and learning the language using braille.
"I've been interested in learning Japanese since Year 7," the now-Year 9 student said.
"I'm really interested in the language and the culture and one day I hope to go there."
Jacinta studies the language through the New South Wales School of Languages, run by the state department of education.
She is assisted by a team of people, including a Japanese teacher who she meets online each week to practice conversation, and two support teachers from the education department.
One of those support teachers is Melissa Marscham, who has been teaching braille for almost a decade.
She helps translate online course modules from English, into both English braille and Japanese braille, which is then embossed onto the page which Jacinta can feel and read.
Ms Marscham has been learning the language alongside Jacinta, leaning on a Japanese braille transcriber to ensure the work is accurate.
Braille is a combination of raised bumps on a surface that people can feel using their fingers, and was invented in the 19th century by French teenager Louis Braille.
It is centred around six cells and different combinations of those cells make up the language.
In English, each combination of six cells represents letters, numbers or punctuation.
But how does Jacinta learn such a visual language like Japanese — which has three writing systems — through touch?
For words in two of those writing systems — hiragana and katakana — Ms Marscham will translate those into English, then into both English and Japanese braille.
Kanji, the third writing system, needs to be translated into hiragana first.
"[The language is] complicated … to learn because of the braille, the sentence structure and how precise you have to be," Jacinta said.
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Ms Marscham said Jacinta's knowledge of Japanese has recently come ahead in leaps and bounds.
"Jacinta has an incredible memory … she remembers the sounds and the braille to go with it and then she's able to [transcribe] that down into sentences."
As well as being taught to read and write in Japanese, Jacinta is also learning about the culture.
Students who learn Japanese through the NSW School of Languages often come through the Nihongo Tanken Centre at Kirrawee High School.
Decked out with tatami mats, a traditional garden, kimonos and cups of green tea, the centre is a slice of Tokyo tucked away in a quiet pocket of southern Sydney.
Jacinta's favourite parts of the Japanese culture are the music and cartoons.
"I like anime," Jacinta said.
More than 400,000 people in Australia are blind or have low vision — a number that is increasing due to an aging population.
It is not known how many of those use braille, but international estimates suggest it could be around 10 per cent of all people who are blind or have low vision.
Even with shifts towards assistive technology, braille remains an important and valued tool for those who use it.
Jacinta is not the first student in NSW to learn Japanese through braille and will likely not be the last.
According to the NSW department of education, 2024 saw the highest number of students ever study Japanese as part of their Higher School Certificate (HSC).
Jacinta wants to keep doing Japanese through to Year 12 — and possibly make it part of a future career.