News

The work of the Braillists Foundation, to spread braille literacy during the pandemic, was recognised by the National Braille Press Touch of Genius Prize for Innovation announced in Anaheim earlier last month. The Braillists Foundation received a monitary contribution and an honourable mention at the 37th Annual California State University (CSUN) Assistive Technology Conference on Technology and Disability.

Dave Williams, Chair of the Braillists Foundation, said: “We are thrilled to even be considered for NBP’s Touch of Genius. Massive thank you to the judging panel and huge congratulations to our amazing team of volunteers for all your incredible hard work spreading tactile literacy, especially amongst those denied this opportunity elsewhere. Braille enables blind people to read and write by touch freeing our ears to access the people and places around us, to find our own voices and gain greater confidence and independence.”

Over the past two years, the Braillists Foundation has delivered hundreds of classes online, presentations, and resources for thousands of braille readers across the UK and around the world. The UK-based charity, formally established in early 2020, has provided opportunities for beginners to learn braille, practice sessions, get help and support. The Braillists community provides a safe space where learners can access peer support and encouragement, boosting motivation and engagement at a time when many feel discouraged due to dwindling eyesight. The opportunity to learn a skill like braille is rewarding in itself because of the transformative power and benefits it can bring to its users.

The Braillists Foundation has ambitious plans for the future. They are hoping to offer an on-demand version of Braille for Beginners so people will not be tied to a specific class schedule. They are also planning to enhance their braille learning classes to include contracted braille, and perhaps maths and science.

Notes

• The Braillists is a grass-roots community connecting Braille readers with Braille technology developers and funders. We believe Braille has the potential to transform the life of any blind person who has the opportunity to learn it. Our Aims are to:
  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.
• The Touch of Genius Prize for Innovation is an annual prize awarded to a project, or projects, that show the most innovative idea in the field of braille and tactile literacy. Innovators have come from all over the world in the fields of education, technology, engineering, tactile graphics, and literacy. This is the only prize to foster and reward innovation in the area of braille and tactile literacy for the blind and deaf blind communities.

Please direct non-urgent enquiries to [email protected]. Media enquiries call +447890396117

The International Council on English Braille (ICEB) is pleased to confirm that the midterm meeting of the Executive Committee will be held from Sunday 5th June to Thursday 9th June 2022. The event will be held daily online via Zoom at 20:00 UTC. The virtual meeting will bring the Executive Committee together to discuss ICEB business, including updates on work undertaken by ICEB committees. The meeting will include additional presentations on braille and reports from the member country representatives to ICEB. Observers are welcome to attend.

The deadline to register is the 13th of May, 2022. The meeting agenda, as well as committee and country reports, will be provided to registrants in Word and BRF formats. Visit www.iceb.org/register to complete the registration form.

Those interested are also invited to follow @ICEBbraille on Twitter and the hashtag #ICEB2022 for updates.

Thanks are extended to Braille Literacy Canada (BLC) for hosting the meeting in collaboration with ICEB. We look forward to connecting with you all in a week dedicated to braille!

The International Council on English Braille (ICEB) was formed in 1991 and provides a forum for international cooperation among those countries that use English-language braille by assisting countries to establish standard-setting bodies in relation to braille codes and practices; working towards the development and adoption of international minimum standards for the production and teaching of braille; and facilitating the exchange of braille materials between member countries. Its members currently include braille authorities from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. To learn more about ICEB, visit http://www.iceb.org or write to [email protected].

The Queensland Department of Education’s Statewide Vision Impairment Services team is pleased to announce that our Braille Letter Songs are now available online. The 26 Braille letter songs include the braille dot numbers and alphabetic word sign contractions for each letter of the English alphabet. Dot numbers are linked to consistent musical pitches to ensure that each song has a unique melody and to assist with the memorisation of each letter’s braille formation.

The songs can be found on Soundcloud here.

American Printing House for the Blind, 6 April 2022

Imagine reading an interesting article or editing a hefty document with no way to navigate by page or heading, only able to scroll down one line at a time. Braille readers experience this tedium whenever they access digital braille files, making reading at home, in the classroom, and in the workplace a slow process. We think it’s time to take the braille file into the 21st century. In collaboration with leaders from across the field, APH is developing a new, revolutionary braille file standard that will be accessible on both braille displays and embossers and will change the way students, teachers, and transcribers interact with braille and tactile graphics. We’re calling it the eBRF.

For more information, read the article on the APH website.

The American Printing House for the Blind is pleased to announce the release of an update to its popular Send to Braille application. This is a simple tool which adds options to the right click “Send to” menu to translate documents into braille and vice-versa.

This new version incorporates the latest versions of Liblouis and Pandoc, the two tools which power it. It will now handle UEB translation much more effectively and it supports translating multiple files at once.

You can download Send to Braille for free here.

This is open source software. If you are a programmer, the source code is available on Github, and this new version has been detached from the internal build system at APH so it is now much easier to contribute code. The Send to Braille team welcome any and all contributions which will improve and extend the functionality of the software.

Finally, the changes under the hood in this new version make it much easier to keep Liblouis up-to-date, so updates should be more forthcoming in future.

Have you learnt grade 1 braille and want to know where to go next? Are you learning grade 2 braille but need some help?

If so, our new “Braille Improvers” session is for you!

It is not a braille lesson, but we will share useful resources, tips and tricks, learning strategies and answer your questions.

This session will take place on the first Tuesday of the month at 7:30 PM in April, May and June. If it is successful we will consider making it a regular fixture in the Braillists calendar. Anyone is welcome, but it is particularly designed for people who have completed our recent Braille for Beginners course.

We ask that questions remain relevant to an audience that is not especially familiar with braille. Complex coding or technology questions are better suited to our regular Braille Bar, which will continue after the Easter break.

Join Braille Improvers here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81357924044?pwd=d3pFRHZJNXpaM0ZYc2drREpFYUNmZz09

Or, to join by phone, use these details:

• Phone number: 0131 460 1196
• Meeting ID: 813 5792 4044
• Passcode: 123456

The Sight Loss Friendly Church team at Torch Trust present regular webinars for churches, entitled “Focus On …”. They concentrate on various aspects of welcoming, including and empowering blind and partially sighted people in their congregations. In October, in recognition of National Braille Week, the focus was on braille, and the archive has just been made available on their Youtube channel.

You can watch Focus On … Braille here, and if you are part of a church congregation or know someone who is, please share it with them too!

An earlier webinar concentrated on accessible digital documents, for both on-device consumption and conversion into alternative formats including braille. You can watch Focus On … Making your Documents Accessible here.

Our Book Club is a friendly and supportive group where you can practice your braille reading in a safe space. There are three groups to suit various ability levels and we are always on the lookout for new members.

We are particularly interested in hearing from people who are new to braille or who have just started learning. We have already invited everyone who has completed our recent Braille for Beginners course, but if you’re learning braille elsewhere you would still be welcome.

We will be starting new books on Thursday 5 May at 6:00 PM, and if there is enough interest we will open a fourth group to allow beginners to have more reading time. The first new book for the new group will be “A Place for Pluto”, and following that the group will have the opportunity to choose its own book. One suggestion put forward so far is “Winnie-The-Pooh”.

To express your interest in this new group, please contact Melanie Pritchard by emailing [email protected].

The Braillists will be taking a break over the Easter period. Our final session before the break will be a Book Club social on Thursday 7 April, and we will return on Saturday 30 April with our face-to-face event in Bristol. Our first online event will follow on Tuesday 3 May.

The annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference took place last week in California, and there were lots of exciting braille and tactile graphics announcements.

This Tuesday, we’ve assembled a line-up of braille-using panellists who attended the conference who will talk us through what was announced and give their first impressions of the new products they saw.

The event starts at 7:30 PM BST and you can register for it here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYpcO-sqzktG9TvgYRqSttK4_cqV7zNAiby

To join by telephone, please use these details:

• Phone number: 0131 460 1196
• Meeting ID: 824 7645 2710
• Passcode: 123456