World Braille Day Special

Introduction

The last few weeks have been spent rushing around, emails flying to and fro, as we finalised the details for our first ever in-person conference. But now we are here, with only one night to go, and I feel an immense sense of excitement and a small amount of anxiety. Creating an event that braille users will enjoy has been the primary goal of the whole team, and there are so many decisions that have been made behind the scenes that I hope will make the day a wonderful experience for all.

Braille first has always been our philosophy. Everything must be accessible for touch readers, and a huge amount of effort has been put in by Matthew to ensure that not only will we have beautiful hardcopy braille programmes, but that whatever electronic braille display you use, you will have a programme which is designed specifically to work with your type of display. We have compared notes on who is bringing what weird or fascinating braille product for people to play with, and excitement has been building as it seems we will have more and more fantastic items as part of our heritage display.

How lucky that we will host this event at New College Worcester. Many of you will have a personal connection with NCW as I do, and I hope that for those of you who don’t, you will be kind enough to indulge those of us who do. Apparently, we never stop talking about it. So please, bear with me for what I promise will only be a couple of paragraphs.

I arrived at New College Worcester as a curious child who loved to read, and who would spend long hours escaping into the worlds hidden within the pages of books. New College nurtured that love of reading, and I will forever feel immense gratitude towards Cathy Wright, the librarian who always had a wonderful book recommendation ready whenever I asked, and who still suggests titles that I will enjoy today.

I don’t believe I would have performed as well in my exams if it wasn’t for braille and the excellent education I received. Although it had become possible to perform many tasks using technology, access to science and mathematics was still fairly poor. With braille, I had equal access to all subjects, and I was supported by teachers who had the skills to bring out the best in me, not that I always made this easy for them.

Braille was and is everything to me. Being surrounded by books had a profound impact on my life and I’m sure the lives of many other former and current students. It is so easy for print readers to take for granted the joy of reading, to the extent where they may not even notice they are reading a sign or advert if they pass it. Braille readers cannot say the same. For those of us who have had the enormous privilege of spending even a little time in a place where there is an abundance of braille, it is not an experience you quickly forget.

I am so thrilled that we will host our first ever conference at New College. The opportunity to bring braille users, teachers, producers, and technology companies together is one we must value and build on if we are going to improve literacy for blind people. My almost obsessive interest in the history of blindness and blind people has led me to realise that we have a long history of organising. It was blind people who came together and determined that braille was the best tactile reading method, after extensive testing. It was blind people who developed some of the most ground-breaking ways of rehabilitating newly blinded soldiers in the two World Wars. Blind people are leaders and innovators, and it feels absolutely essential to me that we remember this, creating spaces where we can share our knowledge and skills with each other.

The dreadful weather has definitely resulted in a little trepidation about the state of our conference. I’m sure whatever happens, it will prove to be a truly unique event and one which we will be thinking about for many months after. It sounds a little reductive to liken the struggles of blind people throughout the generations to the inconvenience of a little bad weather. However I believe that we are used to working our way through less-than-ideal circumstances, and we will make the best out of the day whatever weather we get.

Returning to the Braillists has been a wonderful experience for me, and I’m grateful that they put their trust in me to help with the organisation of this conference. I look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow, and to meeting the rest of you in the near future.

Connor Scott-Gardner