Your first question has to do with the teaching of braille and other methods available to students. When a student under the age of 10 is blind, we initiate him to braille without using any other tools. When you can see, you can see words, when you are blind, you need to touch them. For instance, the word water in French has homophones, it can be written in several ways. For educational purposes, young people must learn braille. It is doing young people a favour to teach them early. All grammar and spelling rules are a major consideration for young people. Very early on, they have to learn them if they want a long, happy, and successful academic career.
Your second question is interesting. Comparing braille with new technologies is a subject of some debate. Some people wonder whether braille will disappear. I will make an analogy, which may be somewhat shaky. When e-mail became accessible to all, people predicted that that was the end of paper. I don't think we've ever had as much paper as we have today. When it comes to braille, the same thing may apply. Over the last few years, I have sensed interest on the part of some private companies and public or quasi-public organizations who have requested braille transcriptions from us. We have noted an increase in the use of paper. Annually, we produce over one million pages of braille. This figure could easily increase.
Obviously it comes down to personal choice. Some people prefer audio tools, and model-based speech syntheses that use adapted software. They may use computers that provide verbal responses. A braille display unit shows the information appearing on the computer screen. It is one of the ways to compensate for the impairment. I personally think we need as many tools as possible in the tool box, including the ability to use braille. Often we work with a number of media, braille, paper and sound. It is by combining methods that people become more skilled at reading and writing.