It’s not necessarily more work to teach kids basic communication in both ASL and braille than some of the other things kids get taught in schools.
I can think of many benefits to society if the majority knows how to do both, so I’m genuinely curious why it never gained traction anywhere? Like, there are no countries on earth where the majority can communicate in sign language or read braille.
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Why would reading Braille be useful? It would require huge investment in specialised books and/or Braille displays, and I’m not sure what benefit it would offer to those who aren’t blind or partially-sighted, unless perhaps they lose their vision later in life?
Sign language may be more useful, but again there’s a skill and resources issue with it – because it isn’t commonly-taught, and it’s rare to have it as a native tongue, how would you get sign language users into schools? You could look for hearing people who have Deaf family members, but unfortunately there’s little emphasis put on disability education, and very few Deaf teachers (who may struggle to communicate with a hearing class who can’t sign yet) or those with adequate sign language going into teaching.
Some basic signs and sign language systems (such as Makaton) are more commonly taught in schools and pre-schools, particularly for children who are too young to verbalise their needs or have some other developmental or sensory issue. It’s becoming increasingly common, thankfully, but still there’s little importance assigned to it.
I’d also like to add that sign languages vary significantly between countries – ASL and BSL are mutually unintelligible, for instance, and they differ greatly from English (via syntax, grammar etc.) too. There’s no universal sign language, and Braille also varies between countries, languages and alphabets/scripts too. Even within English Braille, there are three levels of complexity for the script, and it isn’t a simple re-encoding of the English alphabet.
I think primarily teaching these topics would help with empathy and understanding towards disabled people, but there are simpler/cheaper ways of trying to achieve this outside of overhauling the education system.
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