Hadley School Lectures

Lots of great info here, both about Braille and blindness/low vision issues in general.

Lectures

More Braille Stories

I was a Freshman in college, scheduled to participate in a tour of the library with my introductory English class. As a group, we were standing haphazardly around in the lobby waiting for the rest of the group to appear and the tour to begin. Near the spot where I was standing stood a table display with a map of the library and on the lower edge of the table there ran a long row of Braille, presumably explaining the visual contents of the map to any blind students who happened upon it.

As I waited I idly ran my fingers over the row of dots, enjoying the texture. The tour guide, a library employee saw me and challenged humorously, “What does it say?”

I jerked to attention and running my finger slowly over the dots, I read:

For assistance in the Library, the circulation desk is located 30 feet behind you or the information desk is located 20 feet in front of you.

To my great delight, the tour guide’s mouth dropped nearly to the floor. “In over fifteen years of working here, you’re the first person who ever answered that question,” she said when she finally regained her voice.

I laughed and agreed that it was unusual to be able to read it.

Even more humorous is catching all of the mistakes people inevitably make when using Braille. For instance the picture above is supposed to say “stop” using Braille letters. Unfortunately, someone mistook an “r” for an “s” so it actually says “rtop”. I have seen drinking fountains that say “puse” instead of “push” and signs that direct people to the “emergencAND exit”. I figure, well, they tried.

Learning Braille: My Beginning

When I was five, my best friend who live two houses down was Deaf, so I learned some ASL in order to play with her. Later I moved and lost touch with her, but my interest in people with disabilities expanded to include wheelchairs, Braille and almost any kind of adaptive technology.

I was in seventh grade when I discovered a fellow schoolmate with a white cane. Being the strange child that I was, I decided it might be fun to become pen-pals, even though we went to the same school. So one evening I pulled out the ancient 1964 Encyclopedia Britannica that lived in our basement. I think Dad had picked it up at a yard sale somewhere for a few dollars. To my delight there was an entry on Braille that even included the alphabet. I was determined to contact this girl via her own written language, so I set to work.

Hi, My name is Erin and I’m in seventh grade. If you want to write back, my locker is number 547.

Once I had composed this brilliant piece of literature, I set about translating it using the chart in the encyclopedia. I was hampered by that fact that I had no Braille writer, so I used a pad of paper and a sharp pen to press the dots. With no guide, they traveled haphazardly all over the page and I wondered if she would even be able to read them. Braille doesn’t lend itself to handwritten work.

Also, I didn’t know how to make capital letters, punctuation or numbers. So it actually read: hi my name is erin and im in seventh grade if you want to write back my locker is number five forty seven

But I finished my note, taking half an hour to write the two sentences on lined notebook paper. The next day at school, with my heart hammering and the note in my bag, I took the east stairwell, a route I never used, in hopes I’d see her. I was immediately rewarded because she did indeed pass me.

“Hey,” I called, “I have a note for you.” I shoved it into her hand and fled, terrified. What she must have thought, a stranger emerging out of the crowd of students to hand her a note, I never found out, although we did later become friends.

I waited, half in hope, half in shame for a return note in my locker. Of course she couldn’t read it, I thought. It was so messy and not even on real Braille paper. And how stupid she must think me, wanting to be Braille pen pals.

It turns out she was glad that someone cared to learn “her” language. More like a typeface. Braille is English, just in code. It’s not a different language. But she thought the idea of being pen pals was great fun and so, apparently, did her Braille teachers who were probably thrilled at some interest in it from a peer. She was the only blind student in the district, as far as I know.

It was only a few days later that I got a return note in my locker. It was written on a scrap of Braille paper in neat, machine-punched Braille. It told me her name and that I could leave another note for her in my locker. It was just a little bit cloak-and-dagger, these coded exchanges and I enjoyed having some excitement aside from the dull Junior High routine. She had put a small piece of clear tape on my locker under the latch, unnoticed by anyone else but allowing her to quickly identify mine in the long row of metal lockers.

In order to write back, I needed some method that was more efficient than a pen pressed into layers of notebook paper. Using the note she had given me, I carefully cut out the rectangular letters she had written so I’d have the right size for each letter and taped the square-holed paper over the widest rubber band I could find to make a soft surface on which to punch dots. Then I dragged my encyclopedia out again.

Luckily she had written using only the alphabet. The encyclopedia did not even give me the benefit of numbers so I felt like I’d barely dipped my toe into the knowledge of the Braille code. It still took me about five minutes per word to encode my message but I wrote back, explaining that I didn’t know much Braille but I’d love to learn.

Several days later I found another note explaining numbers. I was ecstatic. I set to work learning the alphabet and numbers in earnest. Once I had them memorized I found the words and sentences coming much easier.

The next note I received added a new element: a dot before each capital letter. It took me a long afternoon of puzzling over that dot before I figured out what it meant. But like a scientist who makes great discoveries, I got it and then proudly used it in my next missive.

We continued to exchange schoolgirl notes for several months. Rarely did we meet and talk but at last we did and began exchanging the notes in person. We ended up going to one another’s houses after school and became friends, although she looked down somewhat on me, a lowly seventh grader, from her heightened experience of ninth grade. It’s how Junior High goes.

We eventually parted ways at the end of the year, resumed our friendship briefly in high school, then she moved away and I have never seen her since. But my love affair with Braille has continued unabated to this day. The day I received my first Braille slate and could finally abandon my home-made one and create smooth, perfect Braille letters stands out in my memory.

I ordered a Braille dictionary from the Idaho Commission for the Blind who wanted to know who in my family was blind and needed it. I didn’t know what to tell them. I figured “I’m sighted and weird” would probably suffice. Unlike most sighted people I forced myself to read by touch alone, slogging through learning all the short forms and abbreviations. Since I am not blind, I couldn’t order books from the national printing houses, but I found other sources where I could buy books. (See below.) I learned to read it fluently and I still practice often, reading usually in bed where I don’t need to bother with a night light and where after a long day of computer-induced eyestrain and myopic blurriness, I can relax in the soft darkness and read.

Two years ago I decided reading wasn’t enough and I wanted to qualify to transcribe it for others who needed it. I applied to the Library of Congress and began their correspondence training course. I got more than I bargained for, though and I had to quit halfway through when I couldn’t keep up. I plan to finish it at some point when I have more time to study. There is an amazing amount of code and lots of special rules to memorize.

So there it is. After all these years I still love Braille and if my reading speed was just a little faster and materials more available, I’d almost prefer it over print. It breaks my heart that only 10% of blind children are being taught Braille since audio books and other technology have nearly replaced it. But like ASL it was developed by people who needed and wanted it, not by sighted teachers who don’t want to bother with it. So hopefully it will stay alive and in use in spite of those who call it outmoded and cumbersome.

What is Braille?
Braille Bug

Buy Braille Books (or donate)
Seedlings Braille

Free Bibles in Braille (or donate)
Lutheran Braille Workers

Writing Braille

perky duck window with braille

In my quest to get my transcription certification, I have had to learn to write Braille using Perky Duck on the computer.  I suppose it’s faster than using a Brailler and re-doing the entire sheet every time I make a correction, but I really dislike the look of visual Braille.  Since I read by touch exclusively, I’ve had a miserable time getting used to the jumble of confusing dots when I look at a screenful of Braille.  I suppose that I could do everything for the transcription course by touch, but I’m afraid it would take so long I’d never finish it.  Maybe instead it would increase my Braille reading speed and comfort level.

A Little Braille Humor

Google doing their part

Google makes their RSS feed reader more accessible

The Dark Arts

http://www.dialogimdunkeln.at/idee_en.php

Only few people have an idea of what it is like to be blind. They cannot imagine a life without sight, picture blind people as needy veterans that met a dark fate and are dependant on the mercy of others. They rely on visual impressions.

Vision alone seems to be the key to the world – a world where televisions and computer screens seem to have ushered in an age of vision. We think, speak, we even dream in pictures, voraciously devouring everything there is to see. Beauty is something to see – what cannot be looked at appears dull, is hardly realized as being part of our life.

Even in everyday language, blindness connotes negative attributes. You are up a blind alley, blind with rage, blind to a solution. Blindness, it seems, is synonymous to disorientation, faultiness and ignorance.

As soon as you are confronted with blindness in everyday life, however, this stance no longer seems comprehensible. Being blind sure means being left out of many things, means conforming oneself to a visually-centered society. It does, however, not mean desperation and loss of the pleasures of life, because a different way of perceiving the world replaces sight.

This gives life a new, non-visual quality. Things are not only beautiful because they look nice. Instead, all their invisible elements contribute to the foundation of comprehension. The texture of a cup, the character of a road, the noise in a cafeteria, the wind patterns of a city, things that were always present, gain importance and add to the perception of the world. What a paradox, to relearn seeing by not seeing.

Out of this tension, “Dialog im Dunkeln” was born, an exhibition that tries to take the ideas and non-visual observations of blind people as a source for discovering the invisible in us and all around us. “Dialog im Dunkeln” sure is no “everyday” exhibition. It is a platform for communication and cultural exchange, an opportunity to risk a change of perspective and to gain experience without being patronized.

The concept of “Dialog im Dunkeln” was successfully realized around the world. Always there are blind guides escorting visitors through lightless rooms representing scenes of everyday life like a public park, a busy intersection, a boathouse or a bar. Tours take place as a three hour part in management trainings of multinational enterprises or as a several-year-long employment measure as presently takes place in the Speicherstadt in Hamburg, Germany.

Now here in Vienna many blind and visually impaired people will open the audience’s eyes to show them that their world is not dull but different.

Andreas Heinecke, Geschäftsführer Consens GmbH

The Blind Painter

More Braille!!!

I was talking to a friend the other day whose dad is blind.  He has Macular Degeneration and has been legally blind since the age of three.  He doesn’t use Braille, however.  I can see why he might want to use his magnifying glass for most things, but I’m willing to bet the bank he was discouraged from learning Braille as a kid.  ARGGGHHH!  Maybe he did try it a didn’t like it.  Who knows.  But I wish that everyone had the opportunity to read and use Braille and that it did not have the stigma of “It’s too hard to learn” attached to it.  It is NOT too hard!  It’s NOT too hard to feel or to learn the short forms.  It’s useful and cool, albeit not in the sort of way that some people approach it, as if it was a souvenir and you learn the alphabet and then you can read the signs on the elevator.  No, I mean as a real, viable way to read.  A valid alternative to recorded voice, which also has its pros and cons.  We need more demand for Braille, resulting in more and better production of Braille which results in more widespread use and acceptance of it.  Sign Language is finally gaining acceptance after being the black sheep of the deaf education community for so many years.  Why not Braille?

Braille Graffiti

 Portland

“You don’t have to be blind to see that the writing is on the wall”

Paris

“L’art touche”

Wouldn’t braille graffiti be more likely in a lavatory at a school for the blind?  “For a good time, call Suzy Schoeffler 555-5555″