Welcome to the Braillists

Latest News

  • Updates to our Website

    As is becoming customary of late, we have taken the opportunity to continue to refine our website over the Easter holidays. Here are the highlights:

    • We have significantly streamlined the design of our Projects page, corrected errors and added new content.
    • Our Groups page has been similarly redesigned, so the overall structure of the website is much less complex and menus should be easier to navigate.
    • Our Partners and Sponsors page now reflects our grant from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, alongside a number of other small changes.
    • There is no longer a technical error on our Forum page.
    • Our Newsletter Archive has been brought up-to-date.

    In addition, a few months ago, we quietly added a search facility to the website which a few users have been testing for us. It seems to be working well on the whole, so we would like to take this opportunity to formally announce it.

    Finally, we are making significant changes to our content database and hosting infrastructure behind the scenes which will make search results even more relevant, allow pages to load faster, and pave the way for exciting upgrades to our website in the not too distant future. Watch this space for more announcements soon!

    In the meantime, although we don’t expect our changes under the hood to have an adverse impact on visitors, things do inevitably go wrong from time to time. If you do experience any problems, please write to us at [email protected] so we can put them right.

    We hope you enjoy browsing our website and look forward to hearing your feedback.

  • Announcing Our New Braille Clinic

    Taking place on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month at 7:30 PM

    Have you read a sign in braille, but dont’ know what it means? Have you needed to write a sign in braille, but don’t know which dots to use? Are you struggling to tell one braille sign from another?

    We’ll be able to help you with all these problems and more in our new Braille Clinic: an opportunity to talk to our in-house braille experts and have your braille questions answered.

    Our first clinic takes place this coming Tuesday, 13 April, at 7:30 PM in the UK. Future clinics will take place on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month.

    No registration is required, and the clinic is open to beginners and advanced braillists alike.

    As well as the braille code itself, we also invite questions on braille equipment, technology, paper and other consumables, reading material and anything else related to braille. If we can’t answer your question straight away, we’ll try to find an expert who can follow up with you afterwards.

    Our Braille Clinics will not be recorded, but if you can’t make the session and you have a particular question you’d like answering, you’re welcome to email it to [email protected] and we’ll forward it to the appropriate person.

    To join us on Tuesday at 7:30 PM, use this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88035088878?pwd=NHdkR2s1aDZsV1RCUmpQNWh3YWNaQT09
    Meeting ID: 880 3508 8878
    Passcode: 123456

  • Listening to Braillecast on your Smart Speaker

    We’ve been making some changes under the hood to try to make it easier for people to listen to our Braillecast podcast on smart speakers, especially those powered by Amazon Alexa.

    Unfortunately, we still haven’t found a perfect solution. However, as a temporary workaround, we have added some more keywords to our feed title so that it now reads: “Braillecast: Connecting the Dots for Braillists Everywhere”.

    Smart speakers should have now registered this change, so if asking for Braillecast doesn’t work, try asking for “Braillecast Connecting the Dots” or other permutations of keywords from the feed title.

    On Alexa devices, the following phrase seems to work the most consistently: “Alexa, play the podcast Braillecast, Connecting the Dots for Braillists Everywhere.”

    We are continuing to work on a better long-term solution, but we hope this change makes our podcast more accessible in the meantime.

    P.S. we’ve also received a message from HumanWare to say that they have fixed a known issue with our episodes not downloading properly on Victor Reader Streams. If you’re a Victor Reader Stream user and you’ve been having trouble with our podcast, please try again, and let us know at [email protected] if it still doesn’t work for you.

  • A New Chapter for Clever Cooking

    Almost a year ago to the day, in the height of the first UK national lockdown, we launched our Clever Cooking group. A vibrant and enthusiastic community quickly emerged and, in spite of many changes, it’s still going strong today!

    It’s now being facilitated independently by a group of Clever Cooking members, who are currently deciding when the sessions will take place and what topics will be covered. They are always on the lookout for new people to join the sessions, so if you’re handy in the kitchen or want to improve your culinary skills, please get in touch with them.

    Their email address is [email protected]. Once they’ve heard from you, they can add you to their mailing list where they will announce the date of the next session once it’s been decided. If you provide your mobile number, they can also add you to their WhatsApp group.

    We’re really pleased to see this community continue to flourish.

    Happy cooking!

The Braillists is a grass-roots community group connecting Braille readers with Braille technology developers and funders.

Braille is a simple code for representing written language. Almost anyone can learn the Braille alphabet and numbers in under an hour.

We believe Braille has the potential to transform the life of any blind person who has the opportunity to learn it.

Our Aims

  1. Promote the value of Braille as a proven literacy tool that enriches the lives of blind people.
  2. Support efforts to make affordable Braille and tactile reading technologies available to all blind people irrespective of education and employment status.
  3. Provide an open forum for the exchange of ideas about the development of future Braille technology.

Join our announcements only mailing list to receive occasional newsletters.

Join the conversation and meet other Braillists on our discussion forum.

Connect with us on Twitter (@Braillists) or like us on Facebook for up to the minute Braillists news.

Listen to some braille-related audio on Soundcloud (braillists).

Resources

Please see our Sponsors and Partners for information on organisations who are supporting us.