Braillecast: Connecting the Dots for Braillists Everywhere: Recent Episodes
The Braillists Foundation
Celebrating braille and keeping braillists informed with exclusive interviews, independent reviews, comprehensive demonstrations, clear presentations, thought-provoking commentary and up-to-the-minute braille news.
We start this episode in conversation with Maria Stevens, Chair of the Braille Authority of New Zealand Aotearoa Trust. We find out more about the work of BANZAT, the standards it has created and how it is helping to promote braille across New Zealand. We also discover more about the relationship between BANZAT and the Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities.
Afterwards, we catch up with Chantelle Griffiths, a familiar voice to many Braillecast listeners. She is also a BANZAT trustee and responsible for a new and exciting course to train blind people to become braille transcribers.
Last time on Braillecast, we heard from Ben Clare about the challenges facing Pacific Island countries in terms of access to braille, and Ben's experiences of visiting those countries to deliver training.
One of the larger Pacific Island countries is Samoa, and thanks to a substantial fundraising effort, the Samoa Blind Persons Association were able to send three observers to the eighth General Assembly of the International Council on English Braille, which took place in neighbouring New Zealand at the end of May.
One of those observers was Ari Hazelman, who works as the Disability Inclusive Coordinator at the Association. He spent a few extra days in New Zealand after the General Assembly to find out more about blindness services there, and during a rare break in his busy schedule, he generously agreed to be interviewed for Braillecast.
Australia and New Zealand are the two most well-known countries in the Pacific Region, the area between Australia and Hawaii. The region also includes many other countries including Fiji and Samoa. Many of these countries are on small, remote islands in the Pacific Ocean. They are difficult and expensive to reach, with total populations often of 100,000 or fewer, and ensuring access to braille is very difficult.
Over the next two episodes of Braillecast, we will be finding out more about braille provision in Pacific Island countries. This episode will discuss the challenges they face and the international intervention which is assisting them, and in the next episode, we will hear from a representative from the Samoa Blind Persons Association about the work they are doing to overcome these challenges.
Ben Clare, from Australia, has had a career delivering blindness education in Pacific Island countries for over twenty years. He is President of the Pacific Region of the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI), where he also represents South Pacific Educators in Visual Impairment (SPEVI). Prior to this, he spent two years in the Solomon Islands delivering braille training and establishing a Solomon Islands Government Blind Service through The Australian Volunteers Program. His first visit to the Pacific Islands, in 2004, was to deliver screen reader training at a school in Papua New Guinea, through a partnership with the School for the Blind in Sydney. He set off with just a couple of laptops and demo versions of JAWS.
This interview was recorded during the Annual Conference of the Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities.
Braille isn’t just for books! It can also be found on household products and signs; in restaurants, museums and theatres; and your personal and confidential documents can also be sent to you in braille. So how do you find it? Who do you ask? And if you think the braille you’ve found could be improved, how do you make your case without upsetting people?
In this special event for World Braille Day, we were joined by a panel of braille advocates to explore these questions and more. We examined when companies are legally required to provide braille, discussed how to encourage the provision of braille and considered how best to respond when braille is not available.
On the panel:
- Connor Scott-Gardner (@catchthesewords)
- Paul Hopkins (@vipodcasting)
- Siobhan Meade (@blindgirlvlogs)
Do you need an easy way to identify your shampoo from your hair removal cream? Do you want to avoid accidentally feeding dog food to your dinner guests—again? Does your granddaughter complain that you’ve covered up the print label on her favourite midnight snack with your “special dots”?
Our sense of touch can give us much more information about our environment than we may think. Naturally, there’s braille, but how else can we use this powerful tactile sense to make things easier at home and further afield?
In this Masterclass, Matthew Horspool and Chantelle Griffiths joined forces to take you on a tactile journey to help you master your sense of touch for the simple, yet powerful purpose of identification and marking.
They covered:
- How everyday office stationery can save your sanity when travelling.
- How a simple rubber band can turn nightmare neighbours into amicable allies.
- How to use braille in fun and creative ways, even if you’re not yet a confident braillist.
- Why you need to own hair ties, even if you have no hair to tie.
- How texture and orientation work together to create a customisable system for identification that anyone can use.
- And so much more!
Whether you’re newer to sight loss or blind since birth, there’s something here for everyone. Join us to learn how to level up your tactile marking skills, and create unforgettable experiences for yourself and others, for all the right reasons.
This session, presented by Saima Akhtar, is designed to give you a Whistlestop tour of the fundamentals of Arabic braille. Rest assured, it’s not nearly as complicated as you think. By the end of the session, you will have more insight into the following areas:
- The origins of Arabic braille
- Common misconceptions around the structure and layout of Arabic braille
- How the Arabic alphabet is constructed (here we will tackle the puzzling conundrum surrounding how to identify consonants and vowels)
- Next steps for anybody looking to learn more after the session
Please note, it will be much easier to follow along if you have a grasp of grade one English braille as Saima will refer to similarities between English and Arabic braille throughout the session.
Many braille displays include an SD or Micro SD card slot. However, when it comes to purchasing a suitable card, there are so many options! Which is best, and which work with your braille display?
In this session, we were joined by friend of the Braillists Ben Mustill-Rose to help make sense of them. He covered:
- Technical terms – SD, Micro SD, SD HC, SD XC and card classes
- How much capacity you need
- Card readers and adapters
- Avoiding poor quality cards
- Unpacking and setting up your new card, including formatting and write protection
According to its website, “BrailleBlaster™ is a braille transcription program developed by the American Printing House for the Blind to help transcribers provide blind students with braille textbooks on the first day of class.” It uses markup from source documents to automate formatting, and provides “tools to make advanced tasks quicker and easier.”
Although it is “Designed primarily for editing textbooks that meet the specifications published by the Braille Authority of North America,” the adoption of Unified English Braile in most English-speaking countries makes it suitable for use in a wide variety of applications in many parts of the world. It is free of charge and compatible with virtually all braille embossers.
On Tuesday 20 February 2024, we were delighted to be joined by two representatives from APH to introduce us to BrailleBlaster and demonstrate some of its features:
- Willow Free is the Tactile Technology Product Manager and based in the United States
- Michael Whapples is the Lead Developer of BrailleBlaster and based in the United Kingdom
Sometimes, you just need a BRF file with no fuss, even though you know it might have the occasional error or won’t be formatted quite as you’d like.
RoboBraille is one solution to this problem. It works with a large variety of file formats including PDF, Microsoft Word and plain text, and converts them to braille within a matter of minutes. Best of all, it’s entirely online, so you don’t need to install anything. You can use it on computers even if you don’t have admin rights, smartphones, tablets and even braille notetakers.
Join us in this episode to find out:
- When is fully automated translation appropriate (and when is it not)?
- Translating files through the robobraille.org website
- Translating files by emailing RoboBraille
- How to evaluate the output
- Where to find help
Following our exploration of braille translators during National Braille Week, we were delighted to be joined by esteemed assistive technology pioneer Dean Martineau. Dean is a long term braille user and has spent many years developing his own personal braille shorthand system.
In this Masterclass, Dean introduced us to the Biblos braille translator and demonstrated how he uses it to translate text into his personalised shorthand system. He also covered some more conventional uses of the program and compared it with other free translators on the market, including Send to Braille and Sao Mai Braille.
For many years now, Sight Scotland have championed National Braille Week, an opportunity to celebrate braille usage and raise awareness of the importance and value of braille. It runs in the second week of October, to coincide with World Sight Day.
In 2023, we celebrated National Braille Week at the Braillists by running five Masterclasses, one each day, following the journey “From Print to Braille”. These episodes are the recordings of these Masterclasses.
This week: The final stage of the transcription journey is for someone to read the braille! Usually, this is either done by embossing the document on paper or transferring it to a braille display. Which is most suitable? How easy is it to do? Join Matthew Horspool and Jackie Brown to find out!
A message from our Chairman, Dave Williams, to thank our many volunteers this National Volunteers Week.
For many years now, Sight Scotland have championed National Braille Week, an opportunity to celebrate braille usage and raise awareness of the importance and value of braille. It runs in the second week of October, to coincide with World Sight Day.
In 2023, we celebrated National Braille Week at the Braillists by running five Masterclasses, one each day, following the journey “From Print to Braille”. These episodes are the recordings of these Masterclasses.
This week: The Duxbury Braille Translator is used in braille production facilities all over the world. We will explore how templates can be used to produce braille according to virtually any international standard, and how styles and codes can be used to control the finer points of the braille output. The presenter is James Bowden.
For many years now, Sight Scotland have championed National Braille Week, an opportunity to celebrate braille usage and raise awareness of the importance and value of braille. It runs in the second week of October, to coincide with World Sight Day.
In 2023, we celebrated National Braille Week at the Braillists by running five Masterclasses, one each day, following the journey “From Print to Braille”. These episodes are the recordings of these Masterclasses.
This week: Microsoft Word knows about typography and layout, but it doesn't know about braille contractions. That's why we need a braille translation package. There are a number of packages on the market to suit a variety of budgets and complexities, and we'll help you decide which one is the right one for you, in conversation with Christo de Klerk.
For many years now, Sight Scotland have championed National Braille Week, an opportunity to celebrate braille usage and raise awareness of the importance and value of braille. It runs in the second week of October, to coincide with World Sight Day.
In 2023, we celebrated National Braille Week at the Braillists by running five Masterclasses, one each day, following the journey “From Print to Braille”. These episodes are the recordings of these Masterclasses.
In this episode, discover how making a few small tweaks to your Microsoft Word documents will not only lead to better automated braille, but also speed up your word processing tasks! Using styles, inserting proper characters and ensuring tables are created effectively will all be covered.
The session was presented by Barry Coates, Technology Training Manager at RNIB.
For many years now, Sight Scotland have championed National Braille Week, an opportunity to celebrate braille usage and raise awareness of the importance and value of braille. It runs in the second week of October, to coincide with World Sight Day.
In 2023, we celebrated National Braille Week at the Braillists by running five Masterclasses, one each day, following the journey “From Print to Braille”. These episodes are the recordings of these Masterclasses.
This week, we unpack the rules and conventions of braille layout in different parts of the world. Are headings always centred? What happens if a table is too wide for the braille page? Find out the answers to these questions and so much more!
Our panel of braille transcribers was comprised of:
- Jen Goulden from Canada
- Anja Gibbs from New Zealand
- Craig Morgan from Wales
Supernova is a screen magnification and screen reading package from Dolphin Computer Access Ltd, based in Worcester in the UK. Braille display support is a core part of its offering, but we don't hear very much about it.
In this session, we were joined by Aj Ahmed, proprietor of AAT Solutions, an independent provider of assistive technology training and support. Aj talked us through how to set up a braille display to work with Supernova, the various settings which are available, and the keystrokes which will help you make the most of this functionality.
If you have a new braille display and you’re struggling to connect it to your computer, iPhone or iPad, or you have a new computer, iPhone or iPad and you’re struggling to connect it to your braille display, this session is for you.
We covered:
- The pros and cons of Bluetooth and USB
- Pairing and unpairing your braille display via Bluetooth
- Drivers and how to install them
- Screen reader setup
- Using braille without speech
The session was presented by Matthew Horspool.
Many screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA, make use of the popular, open source Liblouis braille translation engine as part of their braille display support. In this session, we explained and demonstrated how to harness the power of Liblouis braille tables to implement additional contractions in your screen reader of choice.
If you use a long word regularly and find it is taking up too much space on your braille display, this is the session for you! It also serves as a brief introduction to Liblouis translation tables in general.
The session was presented by James Bowden. In addition to his work as Braille Technical Officer at RNIB, James is also the Chair of the Braille Technology Committee of the International Council on English Braille, and is the primary developer of the default UEB translation table in Liblouis. Over many years, he has not only added new symbols to the UEB tables, but has also corrected numerous errors with existing contractions, and he actively contributes to discussions about the future development of Liblouis.
Please note: although we did our best to present the concepts in this session in as simple and straightforward a way as possible, modifying Liblouis tables involves advanced file and folder manipulation, administration rights and working with computer code in a text editor. You do not need to be a computer programmer in order to benefit from this session, but it is best suited to people with intermediate to advanced computer knowledge.
“What’s wrong with grade 2?” In many cases, nothing. It strikes a good balance between compactness, readability and lack of ambiguity. However, in some cases, a code which is even more compact than grade 2 is extremely advantageous, especially when information needs to be written down at speed.
The Braille Shorthand Code was one attempt at creating such a system. Devised and used in the UK, it was last updated in 1959 and still has a loyal following.
In this event, we were joined by Dr Norman Waddington, a prolific user of the Braille Shorthand Code for many years. Norman explained the principals behind the Braille Shorthand Code and took us through some examples of some typical shorthand phrases. He also talked about the equipment which was traditionally used to produce braille shorthand and discussed who would benefit from using the Braille Shorthand Code.
To order The Braille Shorthand Code book from RNIB, quote archive number 513871.
A BRF version of The Braille Shorthand Code can be downloaded from the Shorthand Braille Codes page of the ICEB website.
iOS 17 was released last September, bosting a number of significant braille enhancements. In this Masterclass, we were joined by Scott Davert to find out more.
Scott is well regarded in the blind community as an expert in braille on iOS. He regularly contributes braille-related content to the AppleVis website, and presented a series of three Masterclasses introducing us to braille on iOS in 2022.
This was an extensive presentation followed by your questions. We also covered some of the new braille features in iOS 16 which have not been covered in other sessions.
The 39th CSUN Assistive Technology Conference took place from 18 to 22 March in Anaheim, California, hosted by the Centre on Disabilities, Division of Student Affairs at California State University, Northridge. There were many exciting braille product announcements at the conference, and the latest prototypes of previously announced braille products were also exhibited.
In this episode, we are joined by a panel of braille experts who attended the conference. They will help us unpack the announcements and share their thoughts on the products they saw.
If you are planning to attend any of the Sight Village exhibitions in the UK, this episode will help you decide which products you might like to see for yourself.
Products discussed in this episode:
- Monarch from APH and HumanWare
- BT Speak from Blazie Technologies
- Orbit Speak, Orbit Reader Q20 and Orbit Reader Q40 from Orbit Research
- Cadence from Tactile Engineering
- Optima from Orbit Research and Access Mind
- BraillePen24 from Harpo
- NewHaptics
- Paige Connect from Paige Braille
- Braille eMotion from Hims
- OneCourt
- Various accessibility efforts from Procter and Gamble and Sony
- Braille guide dog name tags from Elegant Insights
On the panel:
- Chancey Fleet (chanceyfleet@mas.to on Mastadon) from the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library
- J.j. Meddaugh (jage@mas.to on Mastadon) from A. T. Guys and Blind Bargains, home of the Blind Bargains Qast which is soon to return
- Judy Dixon, President of the International Council on English Braille
Getting tactile diagrams at University is often not as easy as it should be. However, the Open University has an excellent reputation for accessibility, and has developed robust processes for students to request diagrams and for those diagrams to be designed and produced.
This session was presented jointly by Jeff Bashton, former Visual Impairment Adviser at the Open University; and Andrew Whitehead, Graphics Media Developer within the OU’s Learner and Discovery Services. It briefly outlined what the Open University is, before explaining what gave rise to the tactile diagrams initiative and how it was developed.
Andrew illustrated how diagrams are prioritised, and described the tools and techniques he uses to design and produce them. We learnt how these techniques are applied to standard graphs and charts, as well as more complex images such as a cross-section of part of the brain!
If you are currently studying at University, or thinking of starting a University course soon, this session serves as a case study of how Universities can provide effective support in this area. We gave details of DSA funding models at the end of the presentation.
If you are interested in tactile diagrams in general, this session offered valuable insights into the tools and techniques available and the reasons for choosing them.
Decision Tree: Deciding if a Tactile Diagram is Necessary1. Start 2. Is the information a repeat of the facts?Yes: go to 5.No: go to 3. 3. Would the information be more meaningful in text form?Yes: go to 6.No: go to 4.Return to 2. 4. Does the graphic require the reader to use visual discrimination or visual perception?Yes: go to 7.No: go to 8.Return to 3. 5. Do not produce graphic.Return to 2. 6. Create a figure description. Do not produce a graphic.Return to 3. 7. Modify the graphic.Return to 4. 8. Is the actual object unavailable, too small, too large, or too dangerous to examine by touch and perceived details?Yes: go to 11.No: go to 9.Return to 4. 9. Does the reader need the information from a map, figure or graph to complete an assessment/task or to participate in discussions and/or answer questions?Yes: go to 11.No: go to 10.Return to 8. 10. Do not produce graphic.Return to 9. 11. Produce graphic.Return to 8.Return to 9.
Tactile Diagram Transcribers* A2I * All Formats * Pia * RNIB Business Services * RNIB Personal Transcription Services * Scottish Braille Press * Swansea University Transcription Centre * University of Leeds Equality and Inclusion Unit
Sources of Tactile Diagrams* RNIB Bookshare - Accessible Images * APH Tactile Graphic Image Library (TGIL) * National Braille Press (NBP) * Tactile Images and Maps from the Lighthouse for the Blind, San Francisco
Sources of Swell Paper and Heat Fusers* HumanWare Swell Form Machine * Sight and Sound PIAF Tactile Image Printer * HumanWare Swell Touch Markers * HumanWare Swell Touch Paper A4 100 sheets * HumanWare Swell Touch Paper A3 100 sheets * Sight and Sound PIAF Swell Paper * Braillists Consumables page
Other Links of Interest* Guidelines and Standards for Tactile Graphics from the Braille Authority of North America (BANA) * Inkscape * Curriculum Framework for Children and Young People with Vision Impairment * Tactile Reading Conference 2025 * Visio Tactual Profile and Feel Free
Bristol Braille Technology CIC recently released version 2.1 of the firmware for Canute 360, the world's first multi-line braille E-reader. Canute has come up in conversation many times before, but never specifically: what is it, and what can it do? In this episode, we sit down with Ed Rogers, Managing Director of BBT, to find out.
Links of interest:
- Specification for supplementary Canute BRF metadata file
- Information about Bristol Braille's braille music event on 13 April 2024
The braille community is buzzing about the next generation of braille display: multi-line devices which can show anything from tables to tactile graphics at the press of a button are now a reality, and enthusiastic early adopters around the world are putting the technology through its paces.
These multi-line braille displays will, sooner or later, undoubtedly disrupt all our experiences of refreshable braille in many places, but perhaps most notably in education. What does this mean for teachers, and what does this mean for students in the classroom, doing their homework and progressing to further and higher education? We'll be digging into the detail in two parts:
Firstly, we will hear from HumanWare, Bristol Braille Technology CIC, Dot Inc and Orbit Research, all of whom are developing multi-line braille displays, and each of whom will give a ten minute presentation on how they see their products working in the classroom.
Secondly, we'll hear from a panel of education professionals. They will share their reactions to the presentations, discuss how current practice might evolve to take advantage of emerging braille technologies, and engage with the manufacturers to find answers to some of their most pressing questions.
This episode is presented in collaboration with the Professional Association for the Vision Impairment Education Workforce (VIEW).
Manufacturers, their Products and Representatives* HumanWare, promoting the Monarch: Andrew Flatres, Braille Product Manager, and Peter Tucic, Director of Strategic Partnerships * Bristol Braille Technology CIC, promoting Canute 360 (£2495.00) and Canute Console (£3995 or £1650 for existing Canute 360 owners): Ed Rogers, Managing Director * Dot Inc, promoting the Dot Pad (£11995): Mazi Zarrehparvar * Orbit Research, promoting the Orbit Slate 520 ($3495 USD) and the Orbit Slate 340 ($3995 USD): Venkatesh Chari, CEO
Panellists* Jane Sharp, Education Specialist QTVI at RNIB and Chair of the Visual Impairment Education Workforce (VIEW) * Jonathan Fogg, Strategic Lead for IT at New College Worcester * Jackie Brown, Technology For Life Co-Ordinator for Northern Ireland at RNIB
The event was hosted by Dave Williams and produced by Matthew Horspool.
Extracts from the ChatWhat are the dimentions of the Dot Pad please?Participant: 273.2 mm × 228.1 mm
Mazi: 20 braille cells per line and 10 lines on the large screen. 20 cells on single line below graphics area.
Dot Pad pricing is not fixed but our goals is to make the Dotpad economically accessible.
Can you send information from the dot pad back to an iPad?Mazi: We are working on two way interaction between the Dot Pad and connected devices. At this time, the Dot Pad is a printer. It receives content from the iPad, iPhone, PC, or Mac. It is interactive in the sense that you can scroll up and down pages and make selections. You can also scroll across icons showing on your iPhone or iPad.
If you would like more information, please be comfortable contacting me. We are rapidly innovating and all ideas and advice is welcome.
Do the graphical devices allow a tactile diagram and a braille label on the same page?Ed: Yes. You can mix them up. We typically use a lot of Braille to make sense of the diagrams. For the Canute Console, that was.
Andrew: For Monarch, Yes, it can display both graphics and braille on the same array.
I'd be very interested to know if manufacturers were intending to (or have) produce progression charts/teaching ideas for supporting student development of skills in using these products? We can't afford to have one for us to learn on as well as one for the student, so any help on how to use them effectively and to think about skills progression is really helpful!Andrew: HumanWare appreciates there is a lot to learn when it comes to these types of new technology, therefore before Monarch will be released we will be conducting in-person teachers training across the UK. The objective will be to show how a Monarch could be used in a classroom along with getting a better understanding on this new ebraille file format. Please register your interest so you can stay updated on when these days become available.
Participant: I am familiar with human wear products and they have a fantastic set of training videos for all of their devices. These are easily accessible for LSAs and BSAs as well as teachers.
Would the Dot Pad be useful for a student taking physics at advanced level (up to university)? Rendering the visual data effectively has been a constant struggle/ongoing question.Mazi: Dot would love to work with you on your content and progression idea. YES, physics is an ideal subject matter for the Dot Pad.
Participant: That's great to hear. I have a student applying for Physics at university this year, and this might be helpful for his Disabled Students Allowance application.
Mazi: Wonderful. Exciting to know your student is going for it. Let's connect and set up a call to figure out how to help your student.
What is a simple device for early years children instead of Perkins Brailler?Matthew (Braillists): The Perkins is still the best device for the job in our experience.
Ed: Using the Canute Console in the basic text editing mode I demonstrated would be closest equivalent experience for our display. However as Matthew says the Perkins hasn't been superceded by any of these devices and they aren't meant as replacements for it.
Participant: Unfortunately, for a 4 year old with small hands and not have the strength may impact their development
Ed: In that case, pairing a multiline display with a Hable One or an Orbit Writer, be that a Canute Console or any multiline display that supports external keyboards, would be something to experiment with.
Venkatesh: The Orbit single-line and multiline displays include an ergonomic Perkins-style braille keypad. The keys require very little force and would be suitable for a young child.
Participant: Thank Venkatesh, I need to view this to understand if its suitable for my CYPVI
Venkatesh: You are welcome. Please feel free to email me and we can work out a demo.
Louise Johnson: The Annie Brailler is especially for young children. We will be purchasing two and I am happy to let you know how we get on.
How do you distinguish colour? Textures? We need to teach students to read diagrams the way they will be presented in exams.Ed: Explaining our solution is a bit much to fit into the chat box but happy to tell you about the solutions we use and are experimenting with by email. In short though, with a display 40 cells wide you have space for a key along side every image if you need it and the image can include information about colour and other style information. That is one solution suitable for some circumstances.
Participant: In terms of development of these products, it's worth remembering that there are a significant number of learners who are not braillists but still need tactile diagrams.
Is it easy to create a table?Ed: Very easy to create a table for the Canute Console. You can use a spreadsheet or a text editor or generate a tables using conversion software.
Will Monarch run on an up to date Android system? BNT+ is Oreo which no longer receives security patches. (Happy to hear if this is not the case!)Monarch will be based on Android, but will not have access to the play store, therefore it would be more capable of updating security. It should not be the case of being stuck.
Does the Monarch come with Windows applications (Word, PowerPoint) and email?The Monarch will include KeySoft core application including word processor, email client and many more.
It's an exciting time for braille as we approach the 200th birthday of the braille code, and the International Council on English Braille will be celebrating in style this year with its eighth General Assembly, the theme of which is "Two Centuries of Braille". It will take place from Saturday 25 May to Thursday 30 May at The Grand Millennium Hotel Auckland, 71 Mayoral Drive, Corner Vincent Street, Auckland Central, New Zealand.
But what is the International Council on English Braille, what is the purpose of its General Assembly, and how can we get involved? James Bowden, Braille Technical Officer at RNIB, Chair of the Braille Coding Group of the UK Association for Accessible Formats, Chair of ICEB's Braille Technology Committee, and UK representative on the ICEB Executive and Code Maintenance Committees, tells us more.
Join the iceb-announce group on groups.io by sending a blank email to iceb-announce+subscribe@groups.io
The Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities is holding its Annual Conference the week before the ICEB General Assembly. It will be taking place at Novotel Perth Langley, 221 Adelaide Terrace, Perth, Western Australia, and early bird registration is open until 29 February 2024. The conference theme is Information Equity: Empowerment through Technology, Advocacy and Collaboration. The Annual Meeting of the Australian Braille Authority will be held on Saturday 18 May, followed immediately by the Round Table Conference from Sunday 19 May to Tuesday 21 May.
Chantelle Griffiths, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at New Zealand's Tactile and Technology Literacy Centre and good friend of the Braillists Foundation, tells us more.
The Braillists Foundation held a face-to-face meeting at the 83rd annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind at the Hilton Americas-Houston hotel, Texas, in July 2023. Our Chairman, Dave Williams, was there with a microphone to soak up the atmosphere.
We spoke to:
- Bristol Braille Technology CIC
- Hable
- A Cubed Design
- Ka Li (consulting for National Network for Equitable Library Service and member of the Australia and New Zealand Accessible Graphics Group (ANZAGG) and the EBraille Tactile Graphics Taskforce)
- Marco Salsiccia, Senior Native Mobile Accessibility Coach at DEQ Systems and owner of the Blind SVG Study Guide
- Danielle Montour, volunteer Braille and Tactile Literacy Educator at the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, New York
- A. T. Guys and Blind Bargains
With thanks to the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library for allowing us the use of their room for our meeting.
As the days get shorter and the nights get colder, a few people joined us for a cosy fireside chat to round off the year on Tuesday 19 December.
How do you write and address your Christmas cards? How do you know whose Christmas presents are whose? And what part does braille play in all of this?
We were joined by our expert Braille for Beginners team, Mel Pritchard and Chantelle Griffiths, to get the conversation started, and we heard plenty of ideas from the audience too, on a multitude of Christmas-themed topics.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just pick up a tablet of sorts, draw on it, and have the drawing in a tactile form? And wouldn't it be even more wonderful if you could simply erase the drawing and start over if you didn't like it?
The Braille Doodle does just that, and we catch up with the Touchpad Pro Foundation to find out more.
Have you ever downloaded a book from Bookshare or Reading Services, but struggled to extract the zip file? Have you ever had a BRF file emailed to you, but not been able to copy it to your braille display? Does your braille display only support text or BRF files, but you want to read Word or PDF files on it?
If you can answer “yes” to any of these questions, this episode is for you!
Matthew Horspool was in the presenter’s chair on Tuesday 19 September 2023 and took us step by step through extracting zip files, converting files from one format to another, and copying files from your computer to your braille display. Demonstrations using a screen reader formed an integral part of the presentation, and as ever there was plenty of time for questions at the end.
N.B. most of the demos were carried out on Windows, but the concepts discussed should apply equally to other operating systems.
Whether you're new to braille or an experienced braillist, reading is an important and fundamental process. To fully appreciate the brilliance of braille for use in daily life, reading is something you should enjoy and feel comfortable with. But what can you do to improve your reading skills once you have learned all the letters and perhaps some contractions as well? How can you enhance your reading speed and accuracy even if you've been doing braille for a while?
On Tuesday 20 June 2023, Chantelle Griffiths, Co-Founder and CEO of New Zealand's Tactile and Technology Literacy Centre, shared some practical tips and tricks to get you on the right track with your reading, no matter how much braille you've done or where you are on your braille journey. There is something here for everyone.
We learnt:
- What actually happens when we read and how reading by touch is different — or not — from reading visually.
- How to press the “reset button” for your fingers and brain when you're just not feeling it. Literally.
- The fundamental braille technique you didn't know you knew and how it enhances your reading.
- The three C's of braille reading; what they are and how they work together to help you connect the dots between your brain and fingers.
- How playing the viola relates to reading in a straight line and how you can experience something similar yourself, even if you're not a musician.
- How to start from exactly where you are and enjoy the process.
- Lots more practical tips, ideas and experiments you can try on your own.
This was a very practical session. If you'd like to follow along with the recording, please have some hardcopy or electronic braille handy and a couple of random objects that feel nothing like braille.
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
The Orbit Reader range is now very extensive and comprises the Orbit Reader 20, the Orbit Reader 20 Plus and the Orbit Reader 40. On Tuesday 30 May 2023, James Bowden, Braille Technical Officer at RNIB, talked us through what these products can do, how they work, and the differences between Orbit Readers and other braille displays and notetakers.
We learnt:
- The differences between the Orbit Reader 20, 20 Plus and 40
- How Orbit technology differs from traditional braille display technology
- How to find and open files
- How to find text within a file
- How to use the editor
- How to transferr files between the Orbit and a computer
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
“This new braille has so many extra dots!” This is something we hear a lot, and it’s often followed by the question, “What do they all mean?”
This Masterclass will help to solve the mystery. James Bowden, Braille Technical Officer at RNIB, Chairman of the Braille Coding Group of the UK Association for Accessible Formats, and the UK Representative to the Code Maintenance Committee of the International Council on English Braille, described the common indicators in UEB and gave some real world examples of their use.
In particular, we covered:
- Capital letters and block capitals
- Making sure a word or symbol is not misread as a contraction
- Italicised, bolded and underlined text
This session was recorded on Tuesday 16 May 2023. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Dave Williams, Chairman of the Braillists Foundation, and Ed Rogers from Bristol Braille Technology discuss the braille products to emerge from this year's event.
There was a lot to cram into the last of our computer science-themed classes. We started with a quick refresher about what we’ve covered so far before taking a deep dive into what it takes to write software and build hardware with a particular focus on the accessibility elements of the process.
The final recording from the recent Six Dots to Success conference held in collaboration with Sight and Sound Technology Ltd.
This episode features:
- Options in Education with Braille with Alannah Moriarty
- Panel discussion chaired by Roger Firman
- Summing up
The fourth of a series of recordings from the recent Six Dots to Success conference held in collaboration with Sight and Sound Technology Ltd.
This episode features a recording of one of the breakout rooms.
The third of a series of recordings from the recent Six Dots to Success conference held in collaboration with Sight and Sound Technology Ltd.
This episode features a recording of one of the breakout rooms.
Hable One is a powerful, fun and exciting way for you to interact with your smartphone or tablet using braille. As well as being a fully functional braille keyboard, supporting both grades 1 and 2, it also serves as a wireless remote control for every aspect of your smartphone or tablet, from moving around the screen to selecting, playing and pausing music, dialling numbers and changing settings.
For beginner braillists, it is a uniquely satisfying way of putting your braille skills into practice. For more advanced braillists, it is a vital productivity tool. It works in partnership with the smartphone or tablet’s screen reader and supports all popular apps including messages/WhatsApp, Facebook/Messenger, Twitter, Spotify, mail, contacts, calendar, reminders and notes.
On Tuesday 21 February at 7:30 PM GMT, we were joined by representatives from Hable, who told us more about this innovative device. We learned how easy it is to set it up and saw some practical examples of how it works both as a keyboard and a remote control. There was also plenty of opportunity for the audience to ask questions.
The first of a series of recordings from the recent Six Dots to Success conference held in collaboration with Sight and Sound Technology Ltd.
This episode features a recording of one of the breakout rooms.
According to Wikipedia, Git is a distributed version control system that tracks changes in any set of computer files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Luckily for us it’s far more interesting than it sounds on paper as it was the topic of the third in our series of computer science masterclasses.
We started off by cutting through some of the technobabble typically associated with tools such as this and then got hands on with some simple examples using the popular Liblouis project. We built on our Linux skills from the previous class along the way and even did a little bit of programming before ending the session with questions.
)The first of a series of recordings from the recent Six Dots to Success conference held in collaboration with Sight and Sound Technology Ltd.
This episode includes:
- Welcome from Sight and Sound CEO Glenn Tookey
- Welcome from Braillists Chairman Dave Williams
- Keynote speech from Peter White, Disability Affairs Correspondent at the BBC
- Greater Indepenndence with Braille: a video by Red Széll
This episode focusses on braille technology: its past, present and future. We are joined by historians, people working in the braille technology industry today and developers of the next generation of braille hardware and software.
Linux: it powers everything from laptops to toasters, braille displays to coasters. You may have heard of the world’s most popular operating system if you follow technology related news, but what is it and how do you get started exactly?
In the second of our computer science themed Masterclasses, we explored how to get started using Linux with technologies that you’ll already be familiar with. We started by getting access to a test system to experiment with, then introduced everyone to a few basic commands that allowed us to perform some basic tasks.
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
The blind community is not without its fair share of innovators: Louis Braille himself, of course, alongside many others who brought us the braille code we know and love today. Elsewhere, the blind community has invented talking book players, screen readers, notetakers and so much more.
For blind musicians, many of the most notable technological innovations in the past thirty years or so have come from Dancing Dots, makers of the Goodfeel braille music translator, Cake Talking scripts for the Sonar Digital Audio Workstation, and Sibelius Speaking.
In this episode, we catch up with its founder, Bill McCann. We talk about how he came to found Dancing Dots and what his products do, before discussing the advantages of his favourite braille displays – the QBraille XL and Canute 360 – and the mechanics of reading music using refreshable braille.
Purchasing in the UK* QBraille XL (£2745 ex VAT) from Sight and Sound Technology ltd: call 01604 798070. * Canute 360 (£1895 ex VAT) and the Goodfeel Braille Music Translator (£1275 ex VAT) from Techno-Vision Systems Ltd: call 01604 792777.
The Braillists Foundation recently held its first face-to-face event since the Coronavirus pandemic. In this episode, we catch up with some of the people who attended, and we also hear recordings of the three presentations which took place:
- Reading multilingual text using an iPhone, the Kindle app and a Focus 14
- Text enntry with an iPhone and a Brailliant BI40X
- Reading books with an iPhone, the Kindle app and an Orbit Reader 20
George Bell has been at the helm of Techno-Vision Systems for at least 35 years. In that time, he has brought many blindness products to the UK market, repaired numerous machines which would have otherwise been condemned, and provided countless hours of technical support. He is particularly well-known for his involvement with the Duxbury Braille Translator, not only as UK sales and support but also through his tireless oversight of the documentation. He also enjoyed a very fruitful relationship with Dancing Dots, and imported many of their products including the Goodfeel braille music translator.
As we approach the end of George’s long and established career, we thought it would be fitting to spend some time in conversation with him, picking out the highlights of the past three and a half decades and thinking about what the future might look like.
In our last Masterclass before the Christmas break, we’re delighted that Kim Charlson, Executive Director of the Perkins Library (part of Perkins School for the Blind), was able to join us again. Kim is author of the book “Drawing with your Perkins Brailler”, which includes step-by-step directions for creating 36 different drawings including shapes, animals and subjects with holiday and transportation themes.
In this session, she used Christmas-themed drawings to explain the concepts behind using braille cells to create pictures. Bring a Perkins and some paper and follow along and, by the end of the session, you will have your very own festive pictures made entirely of braille dots!
And don’t worry: if you heard Kim’s excellent session last year, this year’s pictures are brand new!
On Tuesday 15 November 2022, we hosted an incredibly informative panel discussion around writing software and working in the technology industry in general when using a braille display.
We heard from people in a variety of different IT rolls about the techniques they use, when they use braille and when they use speech, and left plenty of time for audience questions.
We are delighted to be collaborating with Sight and Sound Technology for our inaugural online conference to mark World Braille Day. Find out more in this episode, and register for the conference here.
Find out all about the Braillists Foundation's new Braille for Beginners On-Demand programme in this archive of the launch event which took place on Monday 10 October 2022.
There are two well-known braille keyboards on the market today, the Orbit Writer and the Hable One. What are the similarities? What are the differences? Which one would suit your needs best?
On Tuesday 4 October 2022, we were joined by a user of each keyboard. They told us more about how their preferred keyboard works and why they like it, and we learnt how they compare against each other.
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
In April 2022, our Chairman, Dave Williams, travelled to Boston Massachusetts in the US to run the Boston Marathon. While he was there, he took a trip to the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown and recorded a tour of the facility where Perkins Braillers are manufactured.
The International Council on English Braille held its Mid-Term Executive Committee Meeting from 5-9 June 2022. As well as transacting various items of business, there were lively discussions around the history of braille, braille music, braille technology and the braille code itself.
In this episode of Braillecast, we were joined by ICEB President Judy Dixon to discover the highlights of the Mid-Term and look ahead to how the discussions that took place will influence the future of braille around the world.
Connor Scott-Gardner is an avid reader, and on Tuesday 6 September 2022 he demonstrated how to download books from RNIB Reading Services, transfer them to a braille display and read them. He also explained how Reading Services differs from other offerings from RNIB and elsewhere.
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
If you have an iPhone, iPad or Android device, it’s highly likely that you can braille in grade 2 directly on the touch screen and have it back translated instantly – a perfect replacement for the on screen keyboard. In this episode, Matthew Horspool and special guest Chris Norman demonstrate how this works on both iOS and Android.
We also briefly explored other ways of entering braille without a braille display, including the popular Perky Duck program from Duxbury Systems.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 5 July 2022. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
It’s often said in the industry that garbage in = garbage out, but what does this mean in practice?
On 17 May 2022, our Chairman Dave Williams held a conversation with Kawal Gucukoglu, who worked for many years as a braille transcriber at RNIB. They discussed the principals of effective braille layout – headings, paragraphs, lists, tables and so on – and how to implement them in electronic file formats to achieve optimum quality.
In this session, Matthew Horspool explains how braille is still relevant in the 21st century and demonstrates how free and low-cost braille technology is significantly improving the independence and productivity of blind and partially sighted people of all ages. We paid particular attention to Braille Screen Input and the Orbit Reader, both of which are relatively recent additions to the braille technology landscape and are being used by thousands of people all over the world.
This session was presented by the Braillists Foundation on behalf of Visionary: Linking Local Sight Loss Charities on Tuesday 8 February 2022.
The annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference took place in March in California, and there were lots of exciting braille and tactile graphics announcements.
We assembled a line-up of braille-using panellists who attended the conference who talked us through what was announced and gave their first impressions of the new products they saw.
We know about braille in the UK, of course, and we regularly hear about braille in other developed English-speaking countries – the US, Australia, New Zealand and so on. But there are many other countries in the world about which we hear much less. How is braille taught? How is it produced? How easy is it to obtain? What braille technology is in use?
On Tuesday 4 January, to mark World Braille Day, we explored these issues in detail with three panellists:
- Adrijana Prokopenko is a teacher of English and English braille in a school for the blind in Macedonia.
- Yanan Yu from China has a Master's degree in Disability Studies and is currently an intern at Bristol Braille Technology. Prior to this, she worked for a year as an Editor at China Braille Press.
- Christo de Klerk is a founding member of Braille SA, the first President of the South African Braille Authority and the Immediate Past President of the International Council on English Braille. He is a former student of the Pioneer School for the Visually Impaired (formerly the School for the Blind in Worcester), where he later returned as a staff member, teaching law and braille and establishing computerised braille production. He qualified in law and practiced as a lawyer before retraining as a computer programmer, and has developed braille tables for ten South African languages in Duxbury, eight in Liblouis, and one for Afrikaans for the Embraille iOS app. His last job before retirement was as an IT Specialist in one of South Africa's banks.
The Perkins Brailler has been a staple in the lives of braille users ever since the first one was manufactured in Watertown, Massachusetts in 1951. To this day, the Perkins is widely considered to be the most durable braille device on the market, with machines over 50 years old still going strong.
They are so popular, in fact, that it is easy to forget that we need to teach new braillists how to use them! Furthermore, even established braillists do not always know how to diagnose faults when they arise, or how to take the best care of their machines so as to minimise the risks of faults arising in the first place.
On 15 March, we were joined by Alan Thorpe of Eyecan, a certified Perkins Brailler Repair Centre. Alan took us on a tour of the Perkins Brailler, introducing us to the proper names of all of the parts! He explained how to insert paper and write braille, and described some common faults and how to overcome them. He also explained when a professional service or repair may be required and briefly explained the differences between the different models of Perkins Brailler available.
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
We were delighted to be joined by Scott Davert, one of the most well-known authorities on the use of iOS with a braille display, for the third and final part of his exploration of this winning combination. Scott is the Coordinator at the Technology, Research and Innovation Center, part of the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults, and serves on the editorial team at AppleVis.
In this session, he explained how to re-assign braille display commands and demonstrated web browsing with a braille display in Safari.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 1 March 2022. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Following the first successful Masterclass, we were delighted to have been joined once again by Scott Davert, one of the most well-known authorities on the use of iOS with a braille display, to continue his exploration of this winning combination. Scott is the Coordinator at the Technology, Research and Innovation Center, part of the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults, and serves on the editorial team at AppleVis.
In this Masterclass, he introduced some more advanced navigation commands, including using the rota, and then discussed and demonstrated text editing.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 15 February 2022. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Following our brief introduction to Braille on iOS last year, we’re delighted this year to have been joined by Scott Davert, one of the most well-known authorities on the topic, to explore this winning combination in more detail. Scott is the Coordinator at the Technology, Research and Innovation Center, part of the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults, and serves on the editorial team at AppleVis.
In a series of three Masterclasses, he discussed and demonstrated how to make the most of using your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch with a braille display, from basic exploration to text editing, web browsing and much more.
In the first Masterclass, he covered:
- Supported braille displays and how to connect them
- Braille settings in Voiceover
- Exploring the home screen
- Some useful braille display commands
This session was recorded on Tuesday 1 February 2022. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
In our first Masterclass of 2022, Matthew Horspool tackled the hows, whys and wherefores of braille embossers: choosing them, setting them up and making the most of them. The session covered:
- The purpose and function of an embosser and why you might want one
- Different types of embosser
- Different types of paper
- Connectivity options
- The user interface
- The relationship between embosser and computer
- The role of translation software
This session was recorded on Tuesday 18 January 2022. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Happy Christmas! In this special episode, James Bowden talks us through drawing some stars. The instructions are provided in written form below:
Star 1
- Line 1: ow sign (Dots 246); comma (dot 2)
Star 2
- Line 1: o (dots 135; k (dots 13)
Star 3
- Line 1: capital sign (dot 6); ar sign (dots 345); gh sign (dots 126); apostrophe (dot 3)
- Line 2: dot 4; wh sign (dots 156); s (dots 234); a (dot 1)
Star 4
- Line 1: space three times; letter sign or grade 1 indicator (dots 56); semicolon (dots 23)
- Line 2: space three times; ar sign (dots 345); gh sign (dots 126)
- Line 3: space twice; ar sign (dots 345); space twice; gh sign (dots 126)
- Line 4: x (dots 1346) twice; space four times; x (dots 1346) twice
- Line 5: space twice; wh sign (dots 156); space twice; s (dots 234)
- Line 6: space four times; wh sign (dots 156); s (dots 234)
- Line 7: space four times; dots 45; b (dots 12)
A Box
- Line 1: p (dots 1234); c (dots 14); l (dots 123)
- Line 1.5: l (dots 123); space; l (dots 123)
- Line 2: c (dots 14) twice; a (dot 1)
Star 5
- Line 1: space twice; capital sign (dot 6); i (dots 24); en sign (dots 26)
- Line 1.5: space twice; comma (dot 2); space twice; comma (dot 2)
- Line 2: dot 4; ed sign (dots 1245); space three times; dots 46; f (dots 124)
- Line 2.5: space twice; semicolon (dots 23); dot 5; space; semicolon (dots 23)
- Line 3: space twice; r (dots 1235); a (dot 1); e (dots 15); l (dots 123)
We were delighted to be joined by Kim Charlson, Executive Director of the Perkins Library (part of Perkins School for the Blind). Kim is author of the book “Drawing with your Perkins Brailler”, which includes step-by-step directions for creating 36 different drawings including shapes, animals and subjects with holiday and transportation themes.
In this session, she used a drawing of a Christmas tree to explain the concepts behind using braille cells to create pictures. Bring a Perkins and some paper and follow along and, by the end of the session, you will have your very own frilly Christmas tree made entirely of braille dots!
This session was recorded on Tuesday 7 December 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
We were delighted to have been joined by Sean Randall for the second in a two-part series. Sean is something of a computing and IT mastermind and now works at New College Worcester, training many of their students in the use of assistive technology including screen readers and braille displays.
This session covered sources of reading material that are more mainstream in nature, including apps or specialist software used to read. These included:
- Amazon Kindle
- Local libraries
- Smaller publishers (e.g. Smashwords
This session was recorded on Tuesday 23 November 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Freedom Scientific is perhaps best known for its popular JAWS screen reader, but it also manufactures the Focus line of refreshable braille displays. The first generation of these well-known units was released in the early 2000s, and now the fifth generation is available in 14, 40 and 80-cell configurations, with the 40-cell version being an integral part of the ElBraille from Elita Group. To tell us more, I'm joined by Ron Miller, Blindness Hardware Product Specialist at Vispero.
UK Pricing
All products available from Sight and Sound Technology Ltd and all prices given ex VAT.Focus 14 £1275 Focus 40 £2950 Focus 80 £7850 ElBraille 40 £1535 with Intel M3 or £1825 with Intel I5
Links
- Focus Blue 5th Generation Firmware Downloads
- Focus Blue Braille Display Training
- Freedom Scientific Webinars On Demand
- ACB Community
For at least the past 30 years, blind people have been well-served by notetakers: electronic, computer-like devices with a Perkins-style keyboard and speech and braille output. At their most basic level, they've functioned as an electronic brailler for composing documents and, of course, taking notes, but they've also included functionality such as a calculator, address list, scheduler and, latterly, internet connectivity. Over the past few years, there's been a steady shift towards vastly increasing the capabilities of these devices, with many moving towards either Windows or Android.
The latest of this newer style of notetaker is the BrailleSense 6 from Selvis Healthcare (formerly Hims). It measures 9.65×5.67×0.87 inches, weighs 1.58 lbs (2.3 lbs with case), and is equipped with a 4590 mAh user-replaceable battery, wi-fi up to 802.11AC, Bluetooth 5.1, GPS and compass, USB C with display port functionality, full-size SD card slot, 13 MP rear camera, microphone and stereo speakers. It's also just received its first software update.
Stuart Lawler is Head of Digital Content at Sight and Sound Technology Ltd, and Business Development Manager at Sight and Sound Ireland, and he joined me to tell us more about this update and the BrailleSense as a whole.
The BrailleSense 6 retails for £4395 excluding VAT.
Useful Links
- The Sight and Sound Technology Podcast
- Sight and Sound Technology on Youtube
- SenseCast, the international podcast from Hims
- Hims International on Youtube
We were delighted to have been joined by Sean Randall for the first in a two-part series. Sean is something of a computing and IT mastermind and now works at New College Worcester, training many of their students in the use of assistive technology including screen readers and braille displays.
This session primarily discuss the various braille devices available to consumers. He then provided an overview of libraries and sources of materials specifically for blind people, including:
- RNIB: reading Services, Bookshare and NTNM
- The Seeing Ear National Accessible Library
- Bibles for the Blind
This session was recorded on Tuesday 9 November 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
George Bernard Shaw, in his play Pygmalion, wrote that "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain." That line has its roots in spoken language, though of course in English rather than Spanish! But what about written language?
We quite often talk about braille being useful as a tool when learning languages, but María García Garmendia of Madrid, Spain has taken things to the next level by qualifying as an official translator for the Spanish Foreign Ministry. As well as professionally translating to and from Italian and Portuguese, she's also a fluent speaker of English, German, French and Russian.
She's been blind effectively since birth due to Retinopathy of Prematurity, learnt braille from the age of three and, in addition to her translation work, she has a part-time job as a lawyer in one of Spain's principal banks.
In this episode of Braillecast, we hear more about her legal and translation work, the availability of braille and braille technology in Spain, and the Spanish braille code. We also discuss her thoughts about grade 2 braille, scenarios in which braille is especially useful, and braille education.
Links
- Accesibilidad Universal: a podcast in Spanish about Apple devices and braille
- Email María
Transcription, for anyone who doesn't already know, is the process of taking content in one format and converting it into another. In this case, print is being converted into braille, a process ubiquitous in the production of braille books, magazines, bills, bank statements, legal documents and much more. Humans have been at the heart of this process since its inception and, in spite of numerous technological advances, they remain so today.
Kawal Gucukoglu, herself blind since birth, was a braille transcriber at RNIB for over 23 years, and in this episode of Braillecast, she shares some of the highs and lows of this part of her career, as well as what braille means to her more generally. We discussed the change to Unified English Braille, the evolving role of technology, the division of labour within a large organisation, and unique opportunities afforded to her through her braille-related work.
Resources
- The Braillists Manual: standard reference on braille transcription with detailed information on layout and editing for a range of material such as books, leaflets and articles (TC-BMUEB. Available for £18.00 in print (formerly TC21451) and grade 2 braille (formerly TC21450).
It's a question we get asked all the time – how can I read braille more quickly? To answer it, we were delighted to be joined on Tuesday 19 October by Kit Aronoff of Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and founder of Main Line Accessibility Consulting. Kit has a background in elementary education and, using principals of teaching literacy to emerging readers and articles from the National Federation of the Blind, she has developed a series of strategies which are sure to benefit even the most competent of braillists.
Our Chairman Dave Williams led the discussion, and he started by asking Kit to describe her braille learning journey.
Resources
- Braille Together Mingle is organised by the American Council of the Blind. For more information, email brl@earthlink.net
Perhaps you're thinking about learning braille, but don't know whether it's worth it. Maybe you learnt braille as a child, but haven't used it since. You might know braille and want to use it in your daily life, but can't work out where it will fit. Or you could be bamboozled by braille technology, gadgets and gizmos.
A panel of passionate braillists met in front of a live audience on Tuesday 12 October 2021 to celebrate National Braille Week. They explored how to overcome common obstacles faced by people who could benefit from reading by touch, sharing a diverse range of perspectives from braille learners to braille experts, technology enthusiasts to people who just need to get on at home or in the workplace. The audience also had the opportunity to ask questions and contribute their own tips and suggestions. Credits
Host Dave Williams Panellist Claire Amoroso Panellist Darren Paskell Panellist Laurent Cadet de Fontenay Moderator Ben Mustill-Rose Producer Matthew Horspool
Resources Mentioned in this Episode * Vital Tech * Braillists Book Club
What is computer braille? Are there different flavours? What are all the signs? Why would you want to use it? Is it still relevant now that we have UEB?
The latest occasional Masterclass from RNIB’s braille expert James Bowden answered all of these questions and more.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 21 September 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Dave Williams, Chairman of the Braillists, explored how to use braille displays with various combinations of screen reader and web browser, unpicked some of the jargon that appears on the display, and explained how to navigate without a QWERTY keyboard or touch screen.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 7 September 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
How many listeners remember Talks? The popular screen reader for Series 60 and other phones running the Symbian operating system. It first came to the market in the early 2000s, and perhaps its most well-known proponent in the UK was Steve Nutt, the man behind Computer Room Services. His expertise when it comes to mobile phones is unparalleled and, unphased by the slow demise of Symbian, he's now just as well-known for his knowledge of Android.
There's more to Steve than phones though. His company offers assistive technology training and consultancy; braille transcription; and sells a wide range of products including digital audio recorders, talking gadgets, talking book machines, speech synthesizers and other assistive software and, most notably for this podcast, an assortment of braille products. In addition to flagship displays from VisioBraille and Esys, he also sells the full range of leather cases from Executive Products, including a case for the popular Orbit Reader 20.
Call Computer Room Services: 01438 742286 Also In This Episode * Sight Village Birmingham: Queen Alexandra College, Court Oak Road, Harborne, Birmingham, B17 9TG * Braille and Beer: The Old House at Home, 193, Lordswood Road, Harborne, Birmingham, B17 8QP * Focus 14 Blue 5th gen and Focus 40 Blue 5th gen special offer: call 01604 798070 or order online * Vision Through Sound CIC
Most of us know about grade 2, of course, with its 180 contractions designed to make braille quicker to read and write and occupy less space.
Grade 3 extends this concept still further with over 300 additional contractions, rules to allow vowells to be omitted, and provisions for reducing spaces and new lines. Whilst it’s not an officially recognised code, it has a loyal following amongst long-time braillists, who have used it very successfully to take shorthand notes or transcribe passages of text for reading aloud. It’s especially useful in conjunction with a hand frame or slate and stylus.
James Bowden led a session exploring this code in more detail on Tuesday 20 July. Whilst he wasn't able to cover all of the 300+ contractions in an hour, he did explain the concepts used to form them, introduce some of the most useful ones and the rules which govern their use, and signposted to resources with more information.
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
"Most of us who know braille were taught it." It sounds like such an obvious statement – so obvious, in fact, that it seems appropriate to conclude that the world has an abundance of braille teachers, and the methods and techniques that they use are mature, uniform and understood by everyone working in the field. Presumably, approaches that work well have been iterated over time, those that haven't worked so well have been abandoned, and the entire process has been well-documented so that future teachers can learn from the mistakes of the past.
The reality is less clearly defined, although certain concepts which have withstood the test of time especially well have become accepted as common knowledge. Pre-braille skills, for instance, feature regularly in discussions about teaching braille, as do the differences between learning braille by touch and by sight and teaching braille to children and adults.
On Tuesday 29 June 2021, we explored this topic in more detail in a live panel discussion with three braille teachers: * Kirsten Roberts is a life-long braille user, a Qualified Teacher of the Visually Impaired (QTVI), and Deputy Braille Tutor for the Mandatory Qualification for Teachers of Children and Young People with Vision Impairments offered at the University of Birmingham. In addition to her university work, she regularly teaches braille to both primary and secondary-aged children. * Christine Williams recently retired from Exhall Grange Specialist School and Science College in Coventry, where she held the post of Lead Teacher of the Visually Impaired. In that capacity, she taught braille not only to the pupils at Exhall Grange, but also peripatetically to pupils of all ages in mainstream schools throughout Warwickshire (via the Vision Support Service). Prior to this, she taught French at Exhall Grange for a number of years, where braille also played a significant role. In her retirement, she teaches braille voluntarily at Coventry Resource Centre for the Blind, predominantly to adults who are losing or in danger of losing their sight. * Melanie Pritchard has an extensive background in teaching braille to adults, either with visual impairments themselves or who are sighted friends or relatives of people with a visual impairment. Most recently, she taught the Braille For Beginners course remotely for the Braillists Foundation.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode * I-M-ABLE: Individualized Meaning-Centered Approach to Braille Literacy Education, by Diane P. Wormsley, Ph.D published by the American Printing House for the Blind * The Abi Books: Adventures of a Young Blind Girl, available from the Royal National Institue of Blind People (ABI-BOOKS): full set (formerly TC21432, £115.00), books 1-20 (formerly TC21429, £40.00), books 21-30 (formerly TC21430, £40.00) and books 31-40 (formerly TC21431, £50.00) + Teacher's Handbook (ABI-TEACHER) available for £15.00 in print (formerly TC21433) and braille (formerly TC21434). * Fingerprint: distance learning course for touch readers, available from RNIB: course books (TC21439, £39.00) + instructions (TC21439-INST) available for £15.00 on audio CD (formerly TC21439CD), multi-media CD (formerly TC21439M) and in print (formerly TC21439P) and grade 2 braille (formerly TC21439B) + Reference Book (volume 10), available in braille (TC21440, £5.00). * BrailleNote Touch Plus (18-cell and 32-cell), available from HumanWare * The Duxbury Braille Translator from Duxbury Systems * The Braille Primer: a comprehensive guide to contracted braille for people wishing to learn to write braille or who want to become transcribers, available from RNIB for £9.90 (TC21423) in print (formerly TC21423P), large print 18pt (formerly TC21423LP) and grade 2 braille (formerly TC21423B). * A Braille Reader in the Family (booklet and sheet formats) and Crack the Code (booklet and sheet formats) from the ClearVision Project * UEB Online from the Renwick Centre of The Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children * The Orbit Reader family from Orbit Research * The professional association for the vision impairment education workforce (VIEW) * Catch These Words, website of Holly Scott-Gardner * Using a Range of Braille Technologies to Access Adult Life, a paper presented at the seventh General Assembly of the International Council on English Braille by Kirsten Roberts: Video presentation on Youtube, Word version or BRF version
In Using Braille on Windows, we introduced you to the basics of making a braille display work with various screen readers. In this session, we took this to the next level in the first of an occasional series of Masterclasses looking at the braille settings of a particular screen reader.
This time it was JAWS. There are lots of settings and we weren't able to cover all of them in an hour, so instead we reviewed some of the most common questions we’re asked, found the settings that relate to them, and explained what they do.
We covered: * Adding and selecting your braille display * Choosing your braille code and grade * Status cells and their use in structured mode * Reversing panning buttons and panning by paragraph * Using JAWS Braille In ™
This session was recorded on Tuesday 6 July 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
After a recap of octave signs and intervals, this session covered: * Word signs * Ties and slurs * Phrase marks
You can follow Stuart on Twittre (@stuartlawler)
We're almost exactly a month away from the opening night of the BBC Proms, the world famous summer season of concerts of classical music founded in 1895. Since their infancy, they've championed the composition and performance of new works of music through various channels including, latterly, the BBC Young Composer competition.
In 2018, one of the winners of this competition was blind composer Xia Leon Sloane, who describe themselves as "a writer of words and music, with a particular interest in the way that art can respond to political and ecological ideas". Their choral piece, Earthward, subsequently received its world premier by vocal ensemble VOCES8 at a prom at Cadogan Hall on 22 July 2019.
In addition to the BBC Young Composer competition, they've won The Cambridge Young Composer of the Year, The Joan Weller Composition Prize, The Humphrey Searle<>/a> Composition Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society/Classic FM 25th Birthday commissions. They've also composed with Aldeburgh Young Musicians, The National Youth Orchestra and the Britten Sinfonia Academy.
Xia first undertook composition lessons at the age of 12 and, at time of publication, they've just finished their final year of undergraduate study at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Much of their composition emerges from their spiritual practice and their own responses to world affairs.
Blind since the age of 2, they're an advanced braillist and a prolific user of braille music. We spoke with them in February about their braille music journey, and what it was like to have a score that originated in braille performed by sighted musicians in front of a live audience of nearly a thousand, and a radio audience of hundreds of thousands more.
Over the years, blind people have benefitted from incredible enhancements in the fields of electronic braille and accessibility in general. In fact, it’s now possible to purchase a fully accessible Amazon Fire tablet for under £50 which, pared with an inexpensive braille display such as an Orbit Reader, and Amazons Kindle store which offers access to quite literally hundreds of thousands of digital books, makes for an incredibly cost-effective braille reading setup. But how does it work?
In this masterclass, presented by Ben Mustill-Rose, we provided a general overview of the Fire tablet, the basics of setting it up, how to connect a braille display and how to navigate the device using it. We then purchased a book from the Kindle store and walked through how to read it on a braille display.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 15 June 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Parents reading with their children: it's an experience common to many households in virtually every country of the world. It's a uniquely special experience for both the parent and the child, remembered for years to come, and often relived as children become parents themselves, and parents become grandparents.
For many blind people in the UK, it's been facilitated for decades by the Clearvision project and its collection of over 14,000 books, each designed in such a way as to simultaneously enable blind and sighted people to read and enjoy them.
It's been directed since 2013 by Alexandra Britten, and she joined me on the podcast to tell me more about the project and its involvement with a competition to find the world's best tactile book. Contact Clearvision Email: info@clearvisionproject.org
Telephone: 0208 789 9575
This week's Masterclass has a more low tech flavour as we take a wander into the heart of the household. If you’ve ever wondered how to read braille recipes without ruining them or what to do when the label is too big for the jar, this session is for you.
Emma Williams led the session – teacher of Independent Living Skills at New College Worcester, and a familiar voice to many from our Clever Cooking events last year. She drew on a wealth of personal experience of using braille in the kitchen, as well as things which have worked well (and maybe some which haven’t) for her peers and her students.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 1 June 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
In this session, we covered: * Rests: quaver, crotchet, minim, semibreve and dotted versions of the above * Clef signs: treble (G) and bass (F) * Octave signs and their use * Interval signs and their use
A mid-month clinic will take place on Monday 14 June at 8:00 PM in the UK and Ireland. The next teaching session will take place at the same time on Monday 28 June and cover hand signs, in accord, ties, slurs, articulation, fingering and maybe tongueing.
If you’re a blind Android user, you’re bound to have come across Steve Nutt at Computer Room Services. He’s blind himself, been in the accessible smartphone business for over 20 years, and has a vast amount of knowledge and experience when it comes to using smartphones with braille displays.
We’re delighted that he joined us on Tuesday 18 May to present an introduction to using an Android device with a braille display. He covered which braille displays work with Android, how to connect them, how to navigate the operating system, other key concepts, and how to use braille input.
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
You don't have to have been in the blindness community very long to have come across HumanWare and their two flagship brands: Victor Reader and BrailleNote. Indeed, on the second episode of this podcast, we talked extensively about the BrailleNote Touch, which has since been succeeded by the BrailleNote Touch Plus.
BrailleNote is not the company's only line of braille product, though. In 2003, thanks to an agreement with Baum, HumanWare launched its Brailliant line of refreshable braille displays. A braille input keyboard was added in 2011 and now, ten years on, the stakes have been raised still further with the launch of their most recent innovation, the Brailliant BI20X and BI40X.
The 20-cell and 40-cell displays have been shipping since mid-February, and a significant software update was released towards the start of May. Software version 1.1.1 also applies to the Mantis Q40 and Chameleon 20, which were released last summer and manufactured by HumanWare in partnership with the American Printing House for the Blind.
To discover more about this exciting new range of braille displays, and the new software update, we're joined by HumanWare's Andrew Flatres, Braille Product Manager; and Martin Roberts, Blindness Product Specialist for the UK.
Notes To join the Brailliant BI X Users list, send a blank email to: brailliant-bi-x-users+subscribe@groups.io
If you have trouble subscribing, email humanwarelive@humanware.com
To express your interest in beta testing new software from HumanWare, please fill out this Google form.
To contact HumanWare in the UK, call 01933 415 800 or email eu.sales@humanware.com
We’re starting to hear more and more about BRF files. They’re the default braille format on platforms such as RNIB Reading Services; they’re regularly used in the transcription industry to share braille versions of documents between producers; and notetaker users have used them to transfer files from one brand of braille device to another. But questions still prevail:
- What, exactly, is a BRF?
- Why would you use BRF files over more mainstream file formats?
- What are the limitations of BRF?
- How do you read BRF files?
- How do you navigate through them?
- How do you create them?
Matthew Horspool answered all these questions and more on Tuesday 4 May.
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Topics covered in this session:
- Debunking some myths
- Notes and note values - quavers, crotchets, minims, semibreves and dotted notes
- Sharp, flat and natural signs
- Time signatures and their placement - 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, common time, 6/8, 9/8
- Key signatures and their placement - D major (2 sharps), A major (3 sharps), B major (5 sharps) and F sharp major (6 sharps)
Resources of interest:
- RNIB Music Advisory Service
- Braille Music for Beginners for the Piano by Joan Partridge: available from RNIB, product code 25282902 (braille) or 25282903 (print)
- A Course in Braille Music by Maeve Smith
- Focus on Braille Music by Lisette Wesseling, published by Musicians in Focus Ltd and available from Techno-Vision Systems Ltd
- Who's Afraid of Braille Music? by Richard Taesch and William R. McCann, available from Dancing Dots
- Braille Music in a Digital Age, by Roger Firman and Clare Gailans, published by the International Council on English Braille at its Seventh General Assembly (2020):
- Microsoft Word
- BRF
- Video presentation by Roger Firman and James Bowden on Youtube
- Hadley School for the Blind braille music course (no longer available)
- ICEB Braille Music page
- New International Manual of Braille Music Notation
- BrailleOrch (in English)
- Braille Music Editor
Follow @stuartlawler and @roisindermody on Twitter
Join the next event on Monday 10 May 2021 at 8:00 PM in the UK and Ireland
Join the Braillists Foundation on Clubhouse
We were delighted to be joined by renowned braille display expert Jackie Brown. Jackie is a freelance writer, regular reviewer of braille technology, and author of “Braille ON Display” (published by Mosen Consulting), a comprehensive comparison of braile displays and guide to choosing the right one.
On Tuesday 20 April 2021, Jackie talked us through the process of choosing a braille display. She outlined which factors to consider and why, and the key features of the braille displays which are currently on the market. If you’ve ever wondered “Which braille display is the best one?” you are sure to have the answer at the end of this session.
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Based in Houston, Texas, Dr Robert Englebretson is widely recognised for his contribution to braille research. In 2008, his work on updating the Braille International Phonetic Alphabet was published by the International Council on English Braille, and in 2019 the Braille Authority of North America made him a recipient of the Darleen Bogart Braille Excellence Award in recognition of this work.
More recently, in his role as Associate Professor of Linguistics at Rice University, he has begun to tackle misconceptions around how students learn to read and write braille from the perspective of the cognitive sciences, with a large research project due to be completed in 2024.
On Friday 3 June, we caught up with Robert as part of our series of Stay Safe: Stay Connected conference calls, and we started by asking him to describe the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Links of Interest * International Phonetic Association * The Braille Challenge from the Braille Institute of America * Robert's IPA Website * Spring 2020 syllabus for Robert's Research on Braille course * World Braille Usage
On Friday 28 August 2020, Everette Bacon joined a Braillists Foundation Stay Safe: Stay Connected call to talk about how the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) promotes braille literacy across the United States.
Everette is a member of the Board of Directors of NFB and President of the Utah State Division. He told us how he has personally pushed to make assistive technology more widely available and explained the kinds of resources and programmes that NFB provides for its members, including the work it has done to promote equality of distance learning for blind students during lockdown. We also heard about some of the most exciting projects NFB has supported through the Dr Jacob Bolotin Award.
If you've been following Braillists Foundation events recently, you'll be aware that we've been hosting a number of sessions thanks to a grant from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. But why is the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust interested in the Braillists Foundation?
In September 2017, Ed Rogers, Managing Director of Bristol Braille Technology CIC and himself a Fellow of WCMT, undertook a four-week trip around India to discover more about braille usage in that part of the world and to ask the question: What can we in Britain learn from the Indian experience with braille? The trip was well-documented at the time on the Braillists Forum, was presented in a paper at the CSUN conference in 2018, and subsequently reported back to WCMT.
Nearly four years on, the findings from that trip are continuing to shape the activities of the Braillists Foundation. We recently discovered an unpublished recording of Ed's CSUN presentation in our archives, and are delighted to be able to present it on this episode of Braillecast, with apologies for the small amount of interference which can be heard from time to time.
Download Ed's full report in PDF format.
RNIB, which operates one of Europe’s largest braille lending libraries, has recently announced changes to the way books will be produced from April 2021. Since the announcement, there has naturally been much discussion about what these changes will mean for braille readers in the UK and around the world.
The Braillists Foundation and colleagues from RNIB explored these changes and answered questions from the public on Tuesday 23 March.
RNIB Braille Library - important update Dear RNIB Braille Library Customer,
I am writing to let you know that from April 2021, RNIB’s Braille Library will be upgraded to offer Braille Library books on demand, a new personalised braille reading service designed to substantially increase access to hardcopy braille books for readers across the UK.
While you do not need to take any action to benefit from the new service, I want to share some of the changes you will notice in the coming months.
You will begin receiving freshly produced pristine Braille Library books that are recyclable. Your braille books will be more hygienic as you will be the first person to read them. Plus, your book is much less likely to be damaged or unreadable due to squashed dots. You will have access to a larger braille collection delivered straight to your door free of charge.
You will notice Braille Library books will be a more convenient format that will fit through more letterboxes, is easier to store and carry around. The smaller lighter volumes are much more comfortable for children and anyone with physical difficulties handling older heavier books.
Braille Library books on demand also means books are never out of stock. You will no longer need to wait for another Braille Library member to return a book you have requested. Multiple readers can receive copies of the same title simultaneously, ideal to meet shifting demand for new releases, best sellers and prize winners while preserving access to rarer books of special interest.
If you are already an RNIB Braille Library member, you will start receiving books in the new format automatically. You can continue to manage your book lists online or over the phone. You can change how often you receive books. If you manage a Braille Library membership on behalf of someone else, you can continue getting support via the RNIB Helpline or manage booklists online.
Unlike traditional library books, Braille Library on demand books are designed to be recycled and should not be returned. You can keep books for as long as you need them. You can also share your books with other braille readers.
As passionate readers ourselves, we appreciate braille is a vital literacy medium for tens of thousands of readers across the UK. Sadly however, the Braille Library in its current form is increasingly out of date and excludes some readers.
Large parts of our current collection are in old braille formats unsuitable for new braille readers. Many books are rarely borrowed, most of our collection has not left the warehouse in the past two years. Braille books occupy miles of shelving that is complex and expensive to maintain.
Older braille library books are bulky, heavy, and difficult for some readers to return. These books exclude some readers, especially those with physical difficulties.
After careful research and evaluation of braille library services around the world, we have found producing braille library books on demand offers the best opportunity for sustainable access to hardcopy braille for the widest number of readers for as long as is needed.
Please be assured that older books in our warehouse will be donated to customers and schools in the UK. We will then donate books to our sister organisations overseas. If there is a particular book you would like to keep, please contact the library with your request.
Special braille items of cultural significance will be preserved as part of RNIB’s Heritage collection based in London.
Children who would like to keep a few favourite braille books in the old format are welcome to do so and we can arrange this by calling RNIB’s Helpline on 0303 123 9999, or via email readingservices@rnib.org.uk although they may find the new format easier to hold and read.
Combined with RNIB’s growing collection of electronic braille library books available to you on an SD memory card and download from our website, the braille library upgrade represents a renewed commitment to braille literacy and offers readers greater choice than ever before. In 2020 RNIB invested over £100,000 in providing electronic braille equipment and books to meet changing reader requirements. However, we recognise the continued value of hardcopy braille for many and plan to offer both services in parallel. However, if you would like to explore also receiving books electronically please contact the library.
If you have any questions about the Braille Library, please call our Helpline on 0303 123 9999 or email us at readingservices@rnib.org.uk.
Yours sincerely, James Bartlett RNIB Reading Services Manager
This session talked through advocacy strategies that you can use to facilitate access to braille in the wider world. This includes having healthcare and other personal communication sent to you in braille, as well as advocating for braille signage in public places.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 16 March 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
This session covered how to obtain braille through the Access To Work and Disabled Students Allowance schemes. We talked about how to advocate for the braille you need and what options you have. We also looked at advocating for braille textbooks and braille signage in work or education.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 9 March 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Led by Holly Scott-Gardner, this session looked at how to take effective notes in braille for your own personal use. We covered increasing your speed when note taking, ways to organise your notes and the tools that you may wish to use.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 2 March 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
If you are required to take notes as part of a team, whether that's in a meeting or for group projects, this session is for you! Led by Matthew Horspool, it guides you through using braille to take notes that are also visually accessible. We talked specifically about taking notes using a braille display, and writing Markdown in braille to format your notes.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 23 February 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Led by Holly Scott-Gardner, this session guided participants through using braille to present more effectively, especially useful if you need to deliver speeches for work, school, or as part of one of your interests. We covered writing a presentation script, using cue cards and the best way to set up your braille display or hard copy braille when speaking.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 16 February 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Led by Holly Scott-Gardner, this session covered using a braille display with Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides. We guided you through how braille output works with these applications and the ways in which braille output can enable you to deliver more effective presentations.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 9 February 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Led by Matthew Horspool, this session explained how to pair a braille display with an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and how to get the most out of using braille with these devices.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 2 February 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Led by Holly Scott-Gardner, this session explained how to pair a windows PC with a braille display, which screen readers support braille output and some tips and tricks for using braille output.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 26 January 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Led by James Bowden, Braille Technical Officer at RNIB, this session answered questions such as: How does UEB differ from Standard English Braille? Where can you learn about the changes? What tips and tricks are there for switching to UEB?
This session was recorded on Tuesday 19 January 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Judy Dixon is something of a braille icon. She is Consumer Relations Officer at the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, part of the Library of Congress in the United States; President of the International Council on English Braille; and has written a myriad of books for National Braille Press relating to braille and assistive technology. She also owns what is widely considered to be the largest collection of braille slates and styluses, containing over 280 unique designs.
On Friday 7 August 2020, the Braillists Foundation joined the dots on Judy's incredible story as part of its series of Stay Safe: Stay Connected calls. This episode is an archive of that call.
On 4 January, people across the world celebrated World Braille Day. This day, which marks the birthday of Louis Braille, is an important one for blind people and those connected to the blind community, so the Braillists Foundation couldn't let it pass without recognising it and the significance of braille.
The Foundation hosted a panel discussion, inviting three braille users to speak about their lives with braille. More importantly, perhaps, they also shared their thoughts on how braille may adapt to the changing needs of the blind community in future.
The session also included a short audio presentation sharing the voices and perspectives of braille users from around the world, from the UK all the way to New Zealand.
We would like to extend our thanks to the Braillists Foundation for allowing us to publish this recording, and to the three excellent panelists for giving up their time to be part of the session: * Saima Akhtar, recent graduate in English and Creative Writing from Birmingham City University * Gary O’Donoghue, Washington Correspondent at the British Broadcasting Corporation * Dr Fred Reid, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Warwick
Happy new year, and happy World Braille Day! Today (4 January 2021) is the 212th birthday of Louis Braille, inventor of the code that revolutionised literacy for blind people all over the world. In spite of intense opposition in Louis Braille's lifetime, the code has been adapted for use in dozens of languages and disciplines and is widely recognised throughout the world as the most effective means by which blind people can read and write. There's even a braille chess code!
But what about people who are partially sighted, who can just about read print if it's large enough? Stephen Anderson is one such person: a self-certified "Braille Muggle", he's the proud owner of an honours degree in Politics from the University of Leicester, a fluent French-speaker, and Director of Music at the Parish Church of St Thomas, Kensal Town, where he also plays the organ. He has also played in the presence of two Bishops, at two Church of England Cathedrals, one Royal Peculiar and several other high profile churches and Cathedrals in the UK and overseas.
He was kind enough to agree to join me on the podcast to talk candidly about his experiences growing up and his thoughts about braille. He also talked about the Louis Braille Museum, which he recently visited. Other Links of Interest * St Vincent's School * The Royal National College for the Blind * Priestley Smith School * Panthéon
Index Braille is synonymous the world over with braille embossers. Founded by Bjorn Lofstedt and Torvald Lundqvist as Polar Print Production in Sweden in 1979, its first incarnation was as a university project to develop a braille typewriter with copy function. The company took shape in 1982 and, by 1984, a small batch of Index Computer Braille Printers (known as "Index 3.7" embossers after the firmware version) were manufactured in Bjorn's garage. The current premises were obtained in 1985, financed by distributing assistive technology around Sweden. This distribution arm continued as Polar Print Production, and Index Braille became its own brand in the late 80s with the introduction of the Index Blue Bar, which took tractor fed paper. The Everest, for cut sheet paper, followed in 1992, then came the version 2 platform (Basic and Everest) in 1995, the 4X4 Pro for booklet printing in 1998, the version 3 platform with USB and network connectivity in 2002-4, the 4Waves Pro high speed production embosser in 2005, the version 4 platform with embedded translation and high speed cut sheet production in 2011, and the version 5 platform with wifi printing and printing directly from USB memory stick in 2016.
We caught up with Bjorn to find out more about Index Braille, its embosser line and its new annual Donation Programme, drawn on World Braille Day each year.
What is an Abacus and why would you use one? In this session, led by James Bowden, participants learnt about the various features of the Abacus and why it is ideal for use as a blind person.
The session covered: * Physical description and orientation * The beads and their meaning * Setting numbers * Basic addition * Overflows and carries
If you have an Abacus, you might find it helpful to have it with you so that you can follow along.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 8 December 2020. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
This event introduced participants to the various types of braille labels available and how to create their own labels using a range of materials.
The session covered using a slate and stylus, a Perkins brailler and a braille labeller to produce labels, as well as tips for labelling various products around the home. It also took a look at writing greetings cards in braille.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 1 December 2020. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
This session was a practical introduction to braille music. We covered basic music notation and where to access braille music. This session was led by James Bowden, Braille Technical Officer at RNIB.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 24 November 2020. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
This session introduced participants to the many ways of using braille when learning a language. Knowledge of English braille would be helpful when listening, but is not essential.
We took a look at using braille in conjunction with various language learning apps, where to learn other language codes and accessing books in other languages. We also heard from blind people who have used braille when traveling and how this has helped them. The session was led by Holly Scott-Gardner.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 17 November 2020. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
This session was a practical introduction to the Hand Frame (also known as a Slate and Stylus). We covered inserting the paper, holding the stylus and writing some characters, as well as some basic types of frame and where to get them, and we answered many questions from participants. The session was led by James Bowden, Braille Technical Officer at RNIB.
This session was recorded on Tuesday 10 November 2020. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
Christmas is coming; the goose is getting fat; and some of Santa's most trusted helpers have been sent, on secondment, to the Royal National Institute of Blind People, where they're busy writing letters to visually impaired children in accessible formats. Co-ordinating this effort on behalf of RNIB is Racheal Jarvis, News Agent Team Leader, and she joined us to tell us more about this exciting project.
To request a letter from Santa, please fill out the form on this page, email santa@rnib.org.uk or write to Santa Clause, RNIB, Midgate House, Midgate, Peterborough, PE1 1TN. Deadline for receipt of postal requests is Tuesday 1 December 2020, or Monday 21 December for emails.
Also on this episode, we hear about the Braille Challenge Alexa skill from Accessibility.net, inc.
Dave Williams, Brailleists Foundation Chair and Customer Experience Manager at RNIB talks us through the Orbit Reader. What is it, how does it compare to other displays on the market and how can you get one?
This session was recorded on Tuesday 3 November 2020. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
This is an overview of the Orbit Reader 20, held as part of a Stay Safe: Stay Connected call on Monday 27 July 2020.
This episode is a recording of a Stay Safe: Stay Connected call with Stuart Lawler held on Friday 14 August 2020.
Stuart Lawler has co-hosted many a Dublin Braillists meeting since 2015. He became Specialist Lead for Braille Product Portfolio at Sight and Sound technology Ltd in September 2018 and has over 20 years' experience working in the Assistive Technology industry, including as a member of the Irish National Braille and Alternative Formats Association (INBAF) and, prior to joining Sight and Sound, as Rehabilitation Centre Manager and Head of Technology Innovation at the National Council for the Blind in Ireland.
This session explained how various levels of braille technology, for example a note taker or display, might be advantageous for you in different situations. It also covered how mainstream technology has embraced braille to all our advantages.
Stuart focused particularly on the ElBraille with Focus 5th edition display, the Braille Sense Polaris and the QBraille from Selvas Healthcare.
In this first episode of Braillecast Extra, we re-acquaint ourselves with Megan Paul, winner of the 2016 Onkyo Braille Essay Writing Competition. We're treated to a complete reading of her winning essay, following our interview with her on the very first episode of Braillecast.
Based in Boston Massachusetts since 1927, National Braille Press is a global leader in producing high quality, affordable braille materials and developing innovative technologies advancing braille literacy for blind and visually impaired children and adults everywhere. In addition to its first class braille transcription facility, producing everything from standardised tests to restaurant menus, NBP has a unique specialism in publishing original books by blind authors expressly for blind people, from cookery to technology. It also provides braille transcription and production services to like-minded organizations and, through the Centre for Braille Innovation, overseas the annual Touch of Genius Prize for Innovation.
In adapting to public health guidelines designed to minimise the spread of COVID-19, National Braille Press has found safe ways to produce braille for the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (part of the Library of Congress), is offering free digital downloads for both children and adults until 31 August 2020, and continues to supply original titles explaining food delivery and preparation options from a blindness perspective. On Friday 15 May, the Braillists Foundation was privileged to host Brian MacDonald, NBP's President, on its weekly Stay Safe: Stay Connected conference call, and participants had the opportunity to ask questions about how more high quality braille is finding its way into the hands of more readers throughout these challenging times. We're pleased to present a recording of that session on this episode of Braillecast, with sincere thanks to Brian and all of the contributors for their permission.
To contact Brian, email bmacdonald@nbp.org. If you're an aspiring author and would like National Braille Press to consider publishing your work, email editor@nbp.org or view the Frequently Asked Questions on the NBP website. Links of Interest * NBP Book Store * Braillo Norway, manufacturers of high speed production braille embossers * NBP Tours * Boston Globe article about NBP * Sightsavers International * A Sighted Man's Path to Braille from the "Inside NBP" blog * Braille Me affordable braille display * NBP Events
Books * Cooking with Feeling by Deborah DeBord * Dr. Atkins Carbohydrate Gram Counter by Robert C. Atkins, M.D. * Recipes from my Kitchen: Asian and American Comfort Food by Christine Ha * Super Short Stories in Uncontracted Braille * Braille books update
Touch of Genius Prize Winners * Bristol Braille Technology Canute 360, 2018 * Tactile Caliper (imperial version), 2013 * Tactile Caliper (metric version), an extension of the 2013 idea
The Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (RIDBC) is Australia’s largest non-government provider of services supporting thousands of adults, children and their families with hearing loss or vision impairment. Established by an Act of Parliament in Australia in 1860, it now operates via a number of Centres, promoting the rights of all persons with vision impairment to inclusion in education, employment and society on the same basis as sighted persons - leaving no-one behind. Of particular note for this podcast is the Renwick Centre which, in partnership with the Macquarie University, is Australia’s leading centre for the provision of high quality teaching and learning opportunities for professionals in the area of Special Education for students with hearing or vision impairment, research in these same areas, and related community service.
In September 2014, the Renwick Centre launched UEB Online, an interactive website offering free training in the Unified English Braille code. An Accessible version followed in September 2016 and, since then, the website has reached over 15,000 people in 197 countries. Most recently, in 2020, it received an Award for Innovative Practice on Inclusive Education and ICT from the Zero Project. It is being continuously updated with new features and new content and now boasts a 2-part Literacy course based on the UEB Australian Training Manual (in turn edited from the RNIB Braille Primer) and two purpose-written Mathematics courses (Introductory and Advanced), with a further Extension Mathematics course due to be launched by the end of 2020.
To find out more, we're joined by three members of the team behind the UEB Online website: * Frances Gentle is the Team Leader for the UEB Online project. She's also a Conjoint Lecturer at the RIDBC Renwick Centre, President of the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI) and Co-President of the South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment (SPEVI). * Trudy Smith is Manager of the Continuing Professional Education program at the RIDBC Renwick Centre and is responsible for the day to day management of the UEB Online courses. * Josie Howse was editor of the original UEB Primer published in 2006, is co-editor of the UEB Australian Training Manual and is the author of the UEB Mathematics Training materials on UEB Online. She has worked in vision impairment for more than 40 years and, prior to her retirement in 2019, was the manager of the Braille, Large Print and E-Text Production Department of the New South Wales Department of Education. She has represented the Australian Braille Authority at all six of the International Council on English Braille (ICEB) General Assemblies held every 4 years and had a strong input into UEB discussions from the developmental years. Josie has conducted extensive workshops throughout Australia on numerous braille related topics and has presented papers in Thailand, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, the USA and Austria.
James Bowden is the Braille Technical Officer at RNIB, whose hard copy braille library is currently out of action due to COVID-19. We asked him what alternatives might be available. RNIB Services * RNIB Reading Services * RNIB Newsagent * RNIB Online Shop
Libraries * Project Gutenberg * The National Accessible Library from Seeing Ear
Software * Send to Braille * Robobraille * Braille Blaster * Duxbury
For many in the blind community, Dean Martineau will be a household name. Prolific in the technology sphere, he's perhaps best known for his Top Tech Tidbits newsletter, which has been published every Thursday for over ten years. In the past, he was also the voice behind the Sound Computing audio magazine, and delivered bespoke technology training under the brand of Top Dot Enterprises. Towards the end of 2018, he started a new initiative which uses a combination of audio tutorials, electronic braille files and the Orbit Reader 20 to deliver personalised, long-distance instruction in the braille code. We caught up with Dean to find out more about the project, as well as the person behind it, just after it launched. We didn't manage to bring the interview to you at the time, but thought we'd bring it to you now. To contact Dean, please email topdot@gmail.com.
In other braille news: * The UKAAF AGM has been moved online * The ICEB General Assembly has been postponed to the week of 19 October * Visit www.braillists.org/staysafe for information related to Coronavirus for blind and partially sighted people
This episode features the last of the content that we recorded at the recent Sight Village South East exhibition. Namely, a seminar from the Braillists Foundation entitled "Making the Case for Braille in the 21st Century", the notes from which are included below. We also present a comprehensive demonstration of the Braille Screen Input feature on iOS.
Chapter markers have been inserted throughout this episode to aid navigation. Making the Case for Braille in the 21st Century Abstract Braille is difficult to learn. Braille is expensive to teach. Braille is irrelevant now that we have assistive technology.
Statements like these are all too familiar, but are they really true? In this seminar, we provide an alternative perspective by outlining the inherent advantages of braille and exploring practical applications of braille in modern day life. Outcome Attendees will become positive advocates of braille in their day-to-day lives and be equipped with the knowledge to be able to effectively champion braille in both a professional and personal context, recognising it as an integral component in a well-structured package of independence skills. Learning Objectives By the end of this seminar, attendees will be able to: * Recognise the need for braille as a primary literacy medium * Exemplify both traditional and modern uses of braille * Understand how braille and technology complement each other * Describe several ways of reading and writing braille at varying levels of difficulty and different price points
Points in Favour of braille 1. Literacy: a blind person who only uses speech output misses out on incidental reinforcement of: 1. Spelling (n.b. it could be argued that contractions get in the way, but this is often due to the way they are taught - teach T-H-E rather than the) 2. Grammar (subtle uses of punctuation, such as the semicolon and apostrophe; capitalisation, in particular of proper nouns which have become normalised (e.g. Post Office); paragraphing; quoting; etc) 3. Typesetting (use of bold, italics, underlining; superscripts and subscripts (particularly in technical subjects); etc) 4. Formatting (centred lines, right justified addresses, running headers, page numbers, tables, contents pages, etc) 2. Independent judgement: a blind person who primarily uses speech output does not learn to doubt the pronunciation of his/her speech synthesizer. This is a particular challenge when dealing with text in a foreign language, including Welsh - many blind people would pronounce Cymru as "Sime-roo" instead of "Cum-ree", for example. If the same word was read in braille, its unfamiliarity would result in an increased likelihood that the braillist would ask for help pronouncing it. 3. Efficiency of review: speech can read horizontally very easily but it is more difficult for a screen reader to be precise when reviewing vertically. Similarly, extra typographical information such as superscripts/subscripts, italics/bold/underline and change of colour can be extremely verbose when vocalised by a screen reader; the braille equivalent is often less obtrusive. It is often therefore more efficient to deal with subjects such as Mathematics in braille. Consider the following example equation: w=(12(s₁+s₂)÷52)+(b₁÷4)+b₂ 4. Discreetness: there is a myriad of scenarios in which braille draws much less attention than speech, both personally and professionally. Straightforward examples include using a tactile watch to check the time as opposed to a talking watch. More complex examples include delivering a presentation from braille notes, either in hard copy or electronically. This is far preferable to wearing headphones so as to listen to notes spoken by a screen reader, partly because the latter method appears antisocial and partly because the presence of headphones impairs hearing. This, in turn, lessens the presenter's ability to detect audible queues (e.g. fidgeting, which could signify boredom; or people attempting to ask questions). There are very specific cases along these lines to be made for braille in performance environments, e.g. radio presenting, singing in a choir etc. 5. Instantaneousness: once produced, no further technology is required to read hard copy braille, thus eliminating the need to, e.g. change batteries at an inopportune time. This makes it particularly suitable for labelling, both individually (e.g. labelling CDs or items of food) and corporately (e.g. braille labels on lifts, hotel room doors, etc). 6. Social inclusion: braille offers an ideal solution for the modification of card games. Regular playing cards (Red, Blue, Large Print Red and Large Print Blue), as well as specific sets for, e.g. Happy Families, Uno and Bingo, are readily available in braille, and other cards can be easily brailled locally. The skills required to read braille also transfer to reading, e.g. Tactile Dice (Large Tactile Dice available here), which are readily available and which instantaneously offer access to many more games and activities. 7. Preservation of residual vision: a person who is severely partially sighted may still be encouraged to read large print instead of braille for a multitude of reasons, largely centred around denial (not wanting to look "blind"). However, the resultant eye strain could lead to the person putting him/herself in significant unnecessary danger, e.g. by attempting to cross a road at the end of the day using tired eyes. It is also fair to point out that large print above roughly 24 point may in fact be more bulky than braille.
Points Against Braille 1. Braille is difficult to learn: cognitively, learning braille is no more difficult than learning, e.g. a foreign language or musical instrument. The argument is particularly common when addressing elderly people, and indeed in some cases it may be true, but it should not be the default position as it is clear that some elderly people are still able to learn. 2. Braille requires too much tactile discrimination: again, this argument is heard most commonly when referring to elderly people, and again, it may be true in certain situations, e.g. for manual labourers. However, a significant body of older people do not fall into this category, e.g. office workers, musicians, salesmen etc. These people may have perfectly adequate tactile discrimination already, or certainly could be taught to develop it, so once again the argument should not be the default position. 3. Braille is time-consuming and expensive to teach: whilst this is undoubtedly true, especially if a thorough mastery of the braille code is desirable, it need not be any more expensive or time-consuming than other forms of specialist intervention, e.g. mobility training. Indeed, mastery of IT and assistive technology is also expensive and time-consuming if done well, and rapid training in order to overcome a short-term problem nearly always results in poor performance later on which can only be remedied by additional training, which is often less opportune for the end user. 4. The support requirements of braille are too onerous: often heard in education, where a Teaching Assistant is often required to learn braille alongside the student in order to transcribe work. Appropriate use of braille technology, e.g. a notetaker or braille display connected to a computer or tablet, minimises the requirement for human intervention particularly in the braille to print transcription process. However, there is no substitute for knowledgeable human intervention in any aspect of blindness education, not least braille. Blind people use computers very differently to their sighted counterparts and it is therefore a false economy to suggest that it is easier to support a computer-first approach to accessibility merely because the technology appears "normal", either because the technology will inevitably require repair which the TA is ill-equipped to perform, or because the TA will inadvertently teach bad habbits which will need to be overcome by romedial intervention at a later stage. 5. Braille is time-consuming and expensive to produce: the proliferation of high quality electronic resources in the mainstream, e.g. Amazon Kindle or Apple Books, results in a blind person being able to read most straightforward titles on a braille display connected to a tablet or computer with no additional human intervention, thus eliminating the time and expense of transcription altogether. The traditionally high initial cost of such a display can often be covered by grant funding, or modern, cheaper braille technology can be obtained instead, e.g. the Orbit Reader. For those who prefer hard copy braille, advances in automated braille transcription solutions and personal braille embossing technology take advantage of high quality mainstream output to vastly reduce transcription times and costs. Examples include RNIB Bookshare in education. Though human-transcribed braille is still desirable over automated alternatives, it is now most useful for technical subjects such as Mathematics, science, foreign languages and music, which is usually only a small subset of the amount of material that someone may need to access, and the expense in this instance may be offset against a reduction in support costs and higher retention and attainment levels resulting in a decreased potential need to, e.g. defer or retake examinations. For adults, the cost of transcription may be offset against the gains of employment and may usefully be covered either by schemes such as Access to Work or benefits such as Personal Independence Payment, with wages as a last resort. 6. Braille is bulky and wastes resources: this is unfortunately inevitable for hard copy braille. However, care should be taken when comparing braille with other formats, as large print above 24 point also becomes bulky and may, in some cases, in fact occupy more shelf space than braille. It is also important to investigate all possible means of maximising available space, e.g. by embossing on both sides of the page (to reduce the number of volumes) and using braille paper which is wider than A4 (to increase the amount of braille which will fit on a shelf) - or, indeed, in certain situations, using braille paper which is A4 or smaller (so that it will fit through a letter box). Continuing advances in braille technology, such as the Canute, are increasingly renderring "soft" braille a viable proposition, where the equivalent of hundreds (if not thousands) of traditional hard copy braille volumes can instead be delivered via media such as an SD card. 7. Modern technology renders braille obsolete: this is true in as far as modern technology also renders print obsolete. It is possible, for example, to receive bank statements and utility bills in hard copy braille, but nonetheless sensible for a blind person to instead access this information online (possibly using a braille display) if that is his/her preference, as is true for sighted people. However, there will still be a need for braille for as long as there is a need for print, and there will still be a need for hard copy braille for as long as there is still a need for a pen and paper. It is not fair to deny a blind person the choice to read braille, even refreshable braille, unless we are also prepared to deny a sighted person the choice to use their computer with a screen. It is also important to point out the reduced access that blind people have to incidental writing, e.g. text on street signs and product packaging. It is therefore imperitive that blind people are afforded regular structured opportunities for reading in order to reinforce basic concepts of literacy. This is not achieved by exclusive use of speech access solutions.
Who Should Learn Braille? 1. Anyone who does not have enough vision to read print, unless physical or cognative factors prevent this 2. Anyone for whom serious sight loss is predicted in future, e.g. due to a deteriorating eye condition 3. People with partial sight who may require a second reading medium, for instance because they can only read print at a reasonable speed above a certain font size (e.g. 36) or indeed below a certain font size (e.g. size 8 due to tunnel vision), or because their ability to read print is severely impacted by lighting conditions (e.g. night blindness or eye sight sensitive to glare) 4. Sighted supporters of the above, in both a professional and personal context (e.g. QTVIs, rehabilitation officers, sight loss agency staff, friends and family (and colleagues, in some cases) of the braillist)
This episode features a couple of interviews that we recorded at the recent Sight Village South East exhibition. We also hear one person's perspective on the ElBraille. * Jenny Axler, Technical Support Manager at Hims and Stuart Lawler, Manager of Sight & Sound Ireland, join us to discuss the BrailleSense Polaris and Polaris Mini, QBraille XL, and the fifth generation Focus line of braille displays from Freedom Scientific. * Sean Randall from New College Worcester was loaned an ElBraille in 2017, to be tested by himself and his students. His thoughts were captured in this interview which, in spite of being a few years old and based on an older model of the product, is still broadly relevant. For a snapshot of ElBraille as it was in 2017, listen to episode 141 of the FSCast podcast, or for a demonstration of the 5th generation version, listen to episode 16 of the Sight & Sound Technology Podcast. * Finally, Liam Smyth from Bristol Braille Technology CIC brings us the exciting news that Canute 360 is now available for purchase from Techno-Vision Systems for £1895. We also find out a bit more about the user interface and hear what it sounds like when it refreshes.
Chapter markers have been inserted throughout this episode to aid navigation.
4 January is Louis Braille's birthday (he would have been 211 this year if he was still alive). It's no coincidence, then, that, since 2019, the United Nations has formally celebrated this date as "World Braille Day", an international day of observance "... to raise awareness of the importance of Braille as a means of communication in the full realization of the human rights for blind and partially sighted people." In spite of its recency, it already feels firmly established in the calendars of the sight loss industry, attracting a great deal of online publicity this year. Perhaps that's because, for many, the significance of Louis Braille's birthday predates the UN's intervention: organisations in the United States of America have observed National Braille Literacy MOnth in January since at least 2011, and Royal Blind's National Braille Week in the UK was held in the week containing 4 January until 2013. (It's now held in the second week in October to coincide with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness's "World Sight Day", held on the second Thursday in October.)
One of the more creative announcements to spring from this year's World Braille Day came from VICTA, a national charity in the UK that provides support to blind and partially sighted children and young adults (aged 29 or under) and their families. They've launched their first ever competition to challenge children and young people to push the boundaries of their creativity and use the braille system to produce a piece of art. Blind and partially sighted 0-10-year-olds are invited to present a creative way of displaying their name in braille using different objects, whilst 11-29-year-olds should find a way to use braille to create a picture. £50 and £25 Amazon vouchars are up for grabs respectively for the winners and the runners up in each category, and chosen finalists will be displayed in a booklet and an online gallery. Entries close at 5:00 PM on 31 January 2020.
We spoke with Luke Wakefield, Head of Activities & Strategic Programmes at VICTA, about the competition and the charity as a whole.
We hear from Kristina Salceanu, founder of Advent Of Change about their braille advant calendar. It's available for £29.95 online via both Advent of Change and John Lewis and it's also available at John Lewis's Oxford Street store.
We're back! And we start our new series with an overview of the braille landscape, including: * Royal Blind's resources for National Braille Week (7 to 13 October 2019) * The seventh General Assembly of the International Council on English Braille, 11 to 15 May 2020 at the Google Academy in central London, in particular the call for papers. * Braille On Display updated for 2020 * Lego Braille Bricks and accessible instructions * Mattel Braille Uno (also available from RNIB) * Advent Of Change braille advent calendar * Sight Village Southeast, 5 and 6 November 2019
In this episode, we talk with Holly Scott-Gardner about studying Spanish, living abroad and the impact of braille on these pursuits.
we also discuss: * RNIB released the Orbit Reader 20 in the UK (product code HT358) on 8 August for £449, or £399 for Connect members. * AFB Accessworld Review of the Brailliant BI-14: HumanWare's Latest Step Toward Smart Braille Displays * Apple iOS 12 introduces quick navigation in braille in web pages. To assign keys, go to + Settings + General + Accessibility + VoiceOver + Braille + (the name of your braille display) / More Info + Braille Command + Navigation * Borivali has become the first railway station in mumbai with braille-friendly platform indicators * Paper presented at the 4th General Assembly of the International Council on English Braille entitled "Considerations for Embosser Produced Tactile Graphics": MS Word and Duxbury Braille * National Braille Week is organised by Royal Blind and runs in the second week of October, coinciding with World Sight Day. * Sight Village South East, London, Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th November 2018
Where do new Braille signs come from? Who decides? Do we need a new Braille file format?
We hear from James Bowden, a highly regarded Braille Specialist with RNIB. James is a member of the UK Association for Accessible Formats (UKAAF) and represents the UK on the International Councel on English Braille (ICEB), which met at ChildVision">, the National Education Centre for Blind Children in Ireland, this April for its mid-term executive meeting. We discuss the new sign for a tick, requirements for reading electronic braille files and the 2018 Braille Essay Writing Contest. * Braille resources from RNIB (Call 0303 123 9999) * BrailleMe * Canute Braille eReader * Orbit Reader 20
California State University of Northridge held their 33rd International Conference on Technology and Disability in San Diego this March. BrailleCast made a whistle stop tour of the exhibit hall to discover what new braille and tactile reading products could be making waves in 2018.
We'll hear about the tactile graphics Display that enabled blind students to touch a total solar eclipse, we learn about a metric braille caliper, we hear about the latest low cost braille tech from India, and we get hands on with a paperless braille slate from South Korea.
We'll also learn about Spanish product Braibook, hear about improvements to the Mountbatten Brailler, discover a new 20 cell braille notetaker from HIMS, play Braille music with HandyTech and, following mixed response to the Dot Watch, what's next for the Dot Corporation? In Other Braille News from CSUN: * VFO has refreshed their Focus line of refreshible braille displays. * Brailliant BI14 from Humanware is now released.
In this episode we hear from Scott Davert from the US. Scott is a braille advocate and deafblind specialist and sits on the Disability Advisory Committee of the Federal Communications Commission. As well as this, he actively promotes braille in the Applevis community, and has recently written a series of braille display reviews which have been published by Accessworld from the American Foundation for the Blind. In the UK, his expertise are shared through the RNIB Connect website. The conversation covers a wide range of braille issues including the state of braille, quality control issues faced by blind students, and a round-up of some recent braille products. Links of Interest * Reach out and Touch the new Braille Features in iOS 11 Podcast on AppleVis * New iOS 11 accessibility features for people with sight loss on RNIB Connect * Feel This: Current State of Braille in Narratorfrom Access World magazine * VarioUltra User Group on Free Lists * Subscribe to the Orbit Reader 20 email list by sending a blank email to or20-subscribe@tech.aph.org * FCC Disability Advisory Committee * Help on installing and enabling BrailleBack from Android Accessibility * Help on pairing a braille display with your Fire Tablet from Amazon * Dot Watch * APH product page for Orbit Reader 20 * Braille Me * Blitab * Canute from Bristol Braille Technology CIC * Actalino from Help Tech * New Focus braille displays from Freedom Scientific * New Brailliant braille display from Humanware * Recent posts by Scott on AppleVis
Paul Sullivan of the Bristol Braillists speaks with Alan Thorpe from EYECAN about manual braille writing equipment. Alan shares tips on caring for your Perkins Brailler and how the design has endured for over half a century.
We also discover other historic Braille Writing machines including Pike Glouser, a British machine from the first half of the 20th century.
EyeCan http://www.eyecan.org.uk/ History of the Perkins Brailler http://www.perkins.org/assets/downloads/research/history-of-brailler-11-17-09.pdf Braillists Foundation http://www.Braillists.org
In this episode, we have a detailed chat about the Orbit Reader 20, the long-awaited and eagerly-anticipated low-cost Braille electronic reading device. In Braille News: * a variety of discounts and pricing information due to site village: 1. Sight and Sound Technology have announced discounted pricing for VFO products for the duration of the exhibition season. 2. Humanware have set the UK price for the Brailliant BI14 at £845.00 3. The price of the Duxbury Braille Translator is to increase as of August 1st, for the first time in over 20 years. * Sporting Lisbon (the Portuguese football team) have unveiled a shirt with the club motto in Braille * The European Parliament approved a new Copyright motion on July 7, eliminating the need for permission from publishers to be sought before making accessible copies of their written works. * Paul Sullivan of the Braillists Foundation is hosting a small exhibition of historical Braille devices alongside a chance to get your Perkins Brailler cleaned and serviced. Perk up your Perkins takes place on 28th and 29th September in Bristol.
Dave williams and guests catch up with all the latest news from last month's UKAAF AGM, explore issues facing blind students needing Braille in higher education, and we debate the value of the survey from the International Council on English Braille. In Braille News * CNIB has begun shipping the Orbit Reader. APH and the RNIB are expected to follow suit in the coming weeks. * Another afordable Braille display is in the works - InnoVision have released the Braille Me refreshable Braille display. * The Braille Institute in Los Angeles recently hosted the Braille Challenge Finals. * Apple have released the first public beta of iOS 11 with some welcome enhancements for Braille users. CoolBlindTech have been finding out what's new. iOS 11 is expected to be officially released in the autumn. * A Harvord graduate has invented a new device to help teach Braille to children. The Read Read by Alex Tavares uses tactile and speech feedback with movable Braille "tiles". * July is the height of exhibition season in North America and Europe with 3 major conferences offering manufacturers the chance to showcase their developments. Please email us at news@braillecast.com with anything you've seen, want to see or heard about.
This is Episode2 of Braillecast. Thank you for listening!
Our host Dave Williams discusses the BrailleNote Touch, interviewing several teaching assistants at schools in the UK where the Touch is used. He talks to Greg Stilson from Humanware about the product. In Braille News * As of the Windows 10 Creators Update, Braille support is now built directly into Microsoft Windows. See using Narrator with Braille in the user guide * The UEB Code maintenance committee (part of the International Council on English Braille/ICEB) are seeking input from as many people as possible on changes to single quotation marks and apostrophe marks in Braille. * Humanware have announced the Brailliant BI14, scheduled for release at the end of June. * The UK Association for accessible Formats/UKAAF will be holding its conference and AGM on Wednesday, 15th June. This year, The entire day is open to anyone with an interest in accessible formats. * Lisa Salinger of Mystic access has produced an audio tutorial for the Baum VarioUltra smart Braille displays. * A new guide has been produced which enables blind people to learn more about the upcoming 2017 total solar Eclipse over North America. * The US price has been announced for the Orbit reader 20. * The Braille Legacy musical highlighted last month has divided opinion amongst theatre critics. Contact us on twitter @braillecast, or by email on news at braillecast.com if you have seen it, or just have an opinion of your own to share.
This is Episode 1 of Braillecast, a Podcast produced by and for Braillists everywhere.
Our host Dave Williams interviews Megan Paul. Megan's essay, "The Bumpy Road", won the Junior category of the 2016 Onkyo Braille essay competition. In this chat over a cup of tea, Dave talks to her about the essay and her views on Braille more widely. In Braille news: * The world premiere of a musical entitled "The Braille Legacy" is being staged at the Charing Cross Theatre London until Saturday 24 June. Directed by Tom Southerland and starring West End star Jérôme Pradon, it depicts the life of Louis Braille. There will be two audio described performances on the afternoon of 27th May& the evening of Monday 29th May. To find out more, follow @braillelegacy on Twitter or contact the theatre box office on 02079258040 or by email at boxoffice@charingcrosstheatre.co.uk. * The RNIB in the UK and other blindness organisations around the world are accepting entries for the annual Onkyo Braille essay competition. This year's themes include "Amusing stories about Braille" and "The future of Braille", and cash prizes of up to $2,000 USD are available. download an entry pack in the UK by visiting the RNIB. * Apple recently released iOS 10.3 with a number of Braille fixes, notably better focus within the Mail and news apps when using Braille displays, and stability improvements for the Focus models. Some iOS users are still reporting connectivity issues with certain Braille display manufacturers, specifically the EuroBraille offerings. * A year after the initial release of the BrailleNote Touch, HumanWare have released KeySoft version 3.0 with better document-switching, extra voices and more Braille tables. * Baum VarioUltra customers can now download a public beta of firmware version 1.4 which includes initial support for Unified English Braille translation along with other bug fixes. * And finally, RNIB have moved their "Wear Dots… Raise Lots" month from October to May. The month seeks to improve awareness of braille whilst raising money for RNIB. They are now sending out fundraising packs on request.