The Braillists Foundation is newly active on both Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/braillistsfoundation) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/braillists).
We’re sharing news and stories and invite anyone with an interest in Braille to join the conversation.
You can also find us on our email forum (https://www.braillists.org/forum/) of course, where over 200 members discuss all things Braille and tactile media related.
Please note that Clever Cooking sessions are now run by sight loss charity Look UK and that from the 30th of September future Braillists newsletters will no longer advertise this event. If you’d like to continue to receive adverts for the sessions containing the session’s topic and joining instructions please email Elin on [email protected].
Thanks to everyone who completed our survey. We are currently reviewing the data we received and will publish a summary of the results and our future direction of travel once we’ve completed our analysis!
We are also pleased to announce that the winner of the survey was announced last Friday. They won a £10 Amazon gift voucher.
We’d like to thank everyone in our community for your support over the last few months. We’ve been blown away by the response to our Zoom calls, and have genuinely loved arranging them.
We have a number of small index card sized Janus interline slate and stylus (hand frame) sets available for £5 each. If you’d like to order one, please contact [email protected].
Whether you’d like to join a book club, talk more about Braille, or take part in a virtual pub quiz, we’d love to hear your ideas for how the Braillists can best support you over the coming weeks and months. With that in mind, we’ve created a survey to help us better understand the needs of our audience. You can take the survey at https://forms.gle/CkZfBLdNWHgEsSGh9
The form should take less than ten minutes to complete. As a way of saying thank you, if you complete the survey, we will enter you into a raffle to win a £10 Amazon gift voucher. The survey will close two weeks from now on Thursday the 14th of May. We will draw the winner on Friday the 15th and announce it during that evening’s Zoom call.
Several Braillists members are collaborating on a project to create LibLouis tables for the indigenous South African languages. This will have various empowering use-cases, including:
Laurent, who organises the London Braillists meetings, will be posting more on their endeavours on the forum as the project progresses – so sign up if you would like to have this news and other Braille discussion delivered straight to your inbox.
Braillists’ very own Dave Williams has amassed a great team of Braille aficionados to produce a new regular podcast celebrating the value of Braille. They have already produced four great episodes with plenty more in the pipeline.
Here’s some info from the team:
How did a student win £1,000 using Braille? What do QTVIs really think of the latest BrailleNote at school? Is the Orbit Reader low cost Braille display really worth waiting for? These questions and more are answered in the first few episodes of BrailleCast.
BrailleCast highlights the many ways Braille touches our lives, and offers a platform to share ways we can broaden Braille’s appeal.
As well as exploring innovations in Braille technology the team are eager to share your news and reviews. So if you have something to share get in touch with them through the website www.BrailleCast.com or on twitter: @BrailleCast
As well as their website, the BrailleCast podcast is available on Apple Podcasts (a.k.a. iTunes) and many other podcasting services.
The Braillists will be giving two awards in 2018. The first will be for progress in teaching and learning Braille. The second will be for promoting the availability and use of Braille or other tactile media.
The purpose of the awards is to further the Braillists’ mission “… to create and support projects that advance Braille and other tactile media, to the benefit of its subscribers and all other users of tactile media”.
The awards project is being led from Bristol by Paul Sullivan. The Braillists Community will be invited to nominate candidates for each award during the summer. A small committee will consider nominations in the autumn and the awards will be presented in March 2018.
Full details about the awards and how to nominate someone will follow shortly. Meanwhile, if you would like to join the Awards Committee, or if you can help in any other way, please contact Paul Sullivan.
Thanks to support from Bristol Braille Technology, Braillists will be participating at the following Sight Village exhibitions this year:
We will be demonstrating and talking about some of the projects we are involved in and letting people know about our activities. The exhibitions are always fun and interesting events to be part of, producing much discussion and new connections.
We are looking for Braillists to help run the stands. If you’d like to volunteer please do get in touch and we’ll let you know further details. Even if you can spare just a few hours we would very much appreciate your support.
We will also endeavour to run our popular Braille and Beer get-togethers at the end of the first exhibition day at each event – a great way to meet and converse with fellow Braillists in the convivial atmosphere of a pleasant establishment.
Braillist Paul Sullivan attended an introduction to assistive technology in Birmingham, UK with fellow Braillists Stephanie Seargent and Dave Williams. They were also joined by Braillist and Braille technology developer Ed Rogers of Bristol Braille Technology. Here is Paul’s report on the day:
On Tuesday 28th February Ed Rogers and I travelled to Birmingham City University, where we rendezvoused with Stephanie Sergeant. We were there to take part in a Technology Day for the final year FdSc Rehabilitation Studies (Visual Impairment) students. Later we were joined by Dave Williams who stood in for Ed who had to return to Bristol in the afternoon. The event organiser, Kirsty Jackson, made us very welcome and kept us supplied with tea and coffee throughout the day.
A number of other organisations had been invited to participate, including Orcam, Ultra Cane, Synaptic, GiveVision, Sight and Sound and Optelec. We were based in three rooms which the students circulated round. Ed and Dave demonstrated the Canute MK10, while I showed the students a range of older Braille equipment, including a Braille slate and a Stainsby. Steph demonstrated a Braille Sense U2 mini, a Victor Reader Stream, and an iPhone. All bits of kit not on display by the other exhibitors. Dave and I also demonstrated our different electronic Braille displays, which the students seemed to find very interesting. Their assignment was to learn more about the technology on display, and find out the advantages and disadvantages of each device.
During the day we had in-depth, one-to-one conversations about Braille and Braille technology with around fifteen students. They all knew Braille and were really enthusiastic about its potential for enhancing the lives of visually impaired people. Having got your comments on the value of Braille via the forum, I was able to give the students specific examples of just how important it is for our independence, education, employment and social opportunities.
Stephanie took the student’s contact details and we will be writing to them individually to thank them for their interest. Some of them are already members of the Braillists and we will be inviting the others to join our community.
Prior to attending Paul had asked the Braillists’ forum for input on what Braille meant to them and insights into learning Braille, etc so they could pass on more views to the students. This inspired a lot of amazing and compassionate feedback – you can read all the responses on the forum thread here.