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The lunchtime discussion with Sight and Sound technology held last Tuesday is now available for on-demand listening. Find it on Youtube here.

In this special episode of the Blind Spot podcast for National Braille Week, Thomas Pocklington Trusts Technology Manager Darren Paskell speaks to braille teacher Norma Williams about learning braille in later life. Listen to the podcast here.

This article was written for last yhear’s National Braille Week, but it was so good that we thought we’d share it again. Read it on the Look UK website.

We were touch to have been featured in an article on Build Back Ever Better, written by Tim Dixon, a previous Braille for Beginners participant. Read Tim’s article here.

We are “the go to braille people” and “the UK’s biggest braille cheerleaders”, according to a new article from London Vision. Read it here.

Are you thinking about learning braille, but dont’ know whether it’s worth it? Did you learn braille as a child, but haven’t used it since? Do you know braille and want to use it in your daily life, but can’t work out where it will fit? Are you bamboozled by braille technology, gadgets and gizmos?

Join our panel of passionate Braillists to explore how to overcome common obstacles faced by people who could benefit from reading by touch. You will hear a diverse range of perspectives from braille learners to braille experts, technology enthusiasts to people who just need to get on at home or in the workplace. You will also have the opportunity to ask questions and contribute your own tips and suggestions.

We’ll be starting at 7:30 PM on Tuesday 12 October. The link for this event is different to usual, so you will need to re-register. This is a quick and easy process, but if you get stuck, please email us at [email protected] and we will process the registration for you.

Register for Connecting the Dots in 2021 here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIkcuCppj0vHNY35tbIeyesSozi8V43DFcT

We hope you will join us as we celebrate national Braille week.

What are you doing to promote braille? Or, more importantly, what could you do to promote braille that you’re not doing already?

We’ve had landmark successes over the years, such as making it a legal requirement to include braille on bleach and pharmaceutical products.

We’ve also seen successes which feel smaller in isolation, but which nonetheless have a big impact. Many more restaurants have braille menus now compared with 20 years ago. Braille signage in public places is more commonplace, even if sometimes it’s attached upside down!

There are undoubtedly personal successes too. Maybe you’ve built braille labelling into your routines, or someone’s sent you a braille birthday card for the first time.

Wherever you are on your braille journey, we’re inviting you to do something you wouldn’t usually do to promote braille this National Braille Week. The more creative, the better!

And if you can think of something by Tuesday evening, be sure to come to our Connecting the Dots event and share it with us!

Can you imagine a world without braille? Can you think about how braille has impacted positively on your life, or on the lives of people with whom you work? Maybe you’re a family member or a friend of a braille user and you’ve seen first-hand how this revolutionary code has made a difference.

These are the topics of a lunchtime meeting from Sight and Sound Technology to celebrate National Braille Week, collaborating with great friends and colleagues from UKAAF (the UK Association for Accessible Formats) and the Braillists Foundation. The panel will talk not only about their own use of braille in their personal and professional lives, but we will actively be encouraging audience input – we want to hear your braille stories and experiences.

In short, if you are passionate about braille and want to shout it from the rooftops, this lunchtime event is most certainly for you!

Register here to attend the lunchtime discussion from Sight and Sound: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5dj-kdPKRwWg_oH0yoTrOQ

Many readers will know that Matthew Horspool has been Secretary of the Braillists Foundation since it was registered in January 2020, and latterly has also acted as Treasurer. However, he also maintains a very busy lifestyle at Coventry Cathedral and, with the number of services and events there increasing following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions, he has decided that the time is right for him to step down from these roles. His official final day as a Trustee was last Friday, and the Board are now finalising plans for his succession.

This is not quite goodbye, though: some of the grant funding from the newly renamed Churchill Fellowship announced in June has been put towards a new role of General Manager, which Matthew has agreed to fill. Starting today, he will be working for the Braillists for the whole day on Tuesday and half a day on Friday, and in this new capacity will still be monitoring the Help address, producing the Braillecast podcast and keeping the website and newsletter up-to-date. He will also be responsible for other day-to-day management functions and driving forward some exciting new projects which we will be announcing over the coming months.

We look forward to working with Matthew in his new role and continuing to shape and develop the Braillists in the coming months.

We wish to apologise to anyone who received a “registration closed” error whilst attempting to register for our Computer Braille Masterclass last week.

During the weekend of 18 September, Zoom introduced a new feature to limit the maximum number of registrants for a meeting. This appears to have been toggled on for all meetings by default, with a limit equivalent to the maximum number of participants allowed on the host account. Since not everyone attends every session, there are more people registered for our Masterclasses than the maximum number of allowed participants, and hence no further registrations were being accepted. Unfortunately, however, Zoom did not inform us of this change and we only identified the issue yesterday afternoon.

We have now reverted the change and disabled registration limits for our Masterclasses. We have subsequently tested the registration page and everything appears to be working as normal again.

We will publish the recording of the Computer Braille Masterclass no later than Monday 4 October 2021, and would encourage everyone who was unable to register to visit the Media page or subscribe to the Braillecast podcast to obtain this recording.

Once again, please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused, and rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to ensure that such problems do not occur again in the future.