Category: Uncategorised

N.B. this article is for historical interest only. All Perkins Braillers have now been taken and there are no more currently available.

Our partner organisation, Vision Through Sound, which has been managing our free equipment, has been offered a sizeable donation of Perkins Braillers from Portsmouth Association for the Blind, with logistics support from Bristol Braille Technology CIC.

Stephanie Sergeant, Proprietor of Vision Through Sound and well-known to many readers of this Newsletter, has generously agreed to make some of these machines available to Braillists members on free, long-term loan. They will be offered on a first come, first served basis, but with priority given to people who are learning braille.

It is possible that the first few machines will be available to collect at the Braillists’ “Braille and Beer” gathering next week. If you’d like to reserve one, please email Stephanie at [email protected].

We would like to place on record our heartfelt thanks to Vision Through Sound for allowing our readers to take advantage of this fantastic offer, and to Bristol Braille Technology and Portsmouth Association for the Blind for making this initiative possible.

We were extremely saddened to receive the message below from Mobeen Iqbal. Although Jim was not himself a member of the Braillists community per se, he was involved in a number of braille-related projects in his lifetime and many readers will have known him.

It is with great sadness that I report the death of Jim Taylor. He was resting after his breakfast. A member of staff looked in on him and he had sadly passed away peacefully in his sleep. I know that Jim touched the lives of many people. I have been in touch with Jim regularly over the last 10 years. He always looked on the bright side of life, a quality I greatly admired. His knowledge of Braille and music was admirable and second to none. He was very ill over the past couple of years. Jim, Your life was a blessing, your memory a treasure. You are loved beyond words and missed beyond measure. May you rest in peace. You will always be remembered in our prayers.

As part of the Sight and Sound/Freedom Scientific “Home Use” programme, the Focus 14 Blue 5th generation is currently on sale for £925 (reduced from £1295), whilst the Focus 40 Blue 5th generation is on sale for £2120 (reduced from £2650).

These discounts are valid until 31 August. Please use the links above or call Sight and Sound to order on 01604 798070.

As part of their “Unpacking Tech that Makes you Feel at Home” series, join Sight and Sound for a webinar all about the fifth generation of the popular Focus Blue braille displays. The session will be presented by Ron Miller, Blindness Technology Product Specialist at Vispero (manufacturers of the Focus line of displays), who is himself blind and a braille user.

The session will also cover other hardware products from Vispero including the Pearl camera.

Register for Unpacking Tech that Makes you Feel at Home: https://zoom.us/w/91508728603

The BrailleSense 6 is an extremely powerful and sophisticated device, offering all the features of modern Android smartphones and tablets with the traditional note-taker look and feel. Join Sight and Sound Technology for a series of four webinars where you can find out more about this incredible machine and start to learn how to use some of its features:

• Monday 23 August: Setting up and using email
• Tuesday 24 August: Using Google Drive.
• Wednesday 25 August: Downloading Android apps.
• Thursday 26 August: Using new features: Dictionary, Bookshare and Web Radio.

All the sessions run from 2:00 PM-3:30 PM, and you can register for them using this link:

Register for Getting to Know the BrailleSense 6: https://zoom.us/w/99064307639

Just in time for the holidays, we’re delighted to announce that all of our Masterclasses in the “Braille for Academic and Career Development” series have now been transcribed. We also have handouts for some of our more recent Masterclasses. All of these have been added to our Media page and we will continue to add resources as they are made available to us.

We have also brought our Newsletter Archive up-to-date.

A message from Roger Firman of Golden Chord

If at any time you have hardcopy braille music you no longer need, please could you contact Elaine Vonberg, email: [email protected] who will find a new home, possibly in countries where braille music is hard to come by.

Elaine is UK-based but we wouldn’t wish to deny people from other countries making a contribution.

A couple of weeks ago we promoted an event from the American Printing House for the Blind on braille displays. The recording of that event can now be found on their Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awK65MHHu14

We’d like to gently remind you that there are now only three more weeks of events until our summer break. We will finish with the Book Club on Thursday 29 July and restart with the Book Club on Thursday 2 September. We will not be checking emails or running events during this period, but you are welcome to continue to use the Forum and listen to Braillecast.

Hosting our online events continues to be an enormous pleasure, and we’re overwhelmed by the response to them from the community. We’re particularly excited by the possibilities which have opened up thanks to our latest grant from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.

We’ll start working on this in earnest from September. To allow us to recharge our batteries before then, we will be taking a break during the entire month of August. Our last event before this will be the Book Club on Thursday 29 July.

During the break, our Forum will continue to operate, alongside the closed Google Group that we run for regular attendees of the Book Club. We will also continue to publish new episodes of our Braillecast podcast, using material that we recorded earlier in the year but have not yet had the opportunity to publish. However, our Help mailbox will not be monitored and no events will take place.

We will re-open where we left off, with the Book Club on Thursday 2 September.

The last newsletter prior to the break will be published on Friday 23 July, after which you will not receive further newsletters until Friday 3 September. Regular attendees of the Book Club will receive a reminder about the session on 2 September via the Google Group in the usual way.

We hope you have a relaxing summer.