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I did something pretty cool last Monday
Jan. 12th, 2015 07:22 amI typed in Braille!
We had an in-service training, Blindness Awareness, during which I: tried to sew with blinders on, made a banana split sundae, counted change and folding money, and swept rice off a floor. The second section had us using canes to navigate hallways and stairs, then finally I used a Braille embosser to write the alphabet, my name, and my phone number.
Names are interesting because my last name contains a contraction and can be done in one fewer words. Numbers and capitalized letters have a prefix to show what's going on.
Printed (American) Braille is a matrix of dots, two wide and three high for six positions. The Braille embosser resembles a typewriter but performs more like a piano or organ, in that you hit chords to get the multiple points in one character. If you think of the matrix as being 1-3 in the left column, top to bottom, and 4-6 in the right column, the keyboard layout layout is one row representing 3 2 1 (space) 4 5 6. The line feed is a button, but the carriage return is a knob that you have to pull back to the left margin.
But the cool thing? To erase a mistake, you space over a character or two and use a hard plastic thingie to gently press the errant dot back flat, then backspace (for which there is a key) and type the correct character. I emphasize gently, for although the paper is thick, it is easily torn.
I previously interviewed our librarian for a paper for class, and learned quite a bit. The most stunning was seeing one of the later Harry Potter books on a shelf, and the only things on it were one copy of the book in larger print and one in Braille. The Braille edition cost $250, is printed in 18 volumes, and takes a good 15" of shelf space. And if one volume is lost or damaged, you can't replace just that volume, you can only order a whole set.
But the most interesting thing that I learned was a fact that hadn't occurred to me: Braille print wears out. If it's print, eventually the dots will wear down to the level of the paper and the page will be unreadable. I hadn't considered that. That being said, there is a printing process that prints the Braille pages on plastic, which would last a good long time.
We had an in-service training, Blindness Awareness, during which I: tried to sew with blinders on, made a banana split sundae, counted change and folding money, and swept rice off a floor. The second section had us using canes to navigate hallways and stairs, then finally I used a Braille embosser to write the alphabet, my name, and my phone number.
Names are interesting because my last name contains a contraction and can be done in one fewer words. Numbers and capitalized letters have a prefix to show what's going on.
Printed (American) Braille is a matrix of dots, two wide and three high for six positions. The Braille embosser resembles a typewriter but performs more like a piano or organ, in that you hit chords to get the multiple points in one character. If you think of the matrix as being 1-3 in the left column, top to bottom, and 4-6 in the right column, the keyboard layout layout is one row representing 3 2 1 (space) 4 5 6. The line feed is a button, but the carriage return is a knob that you have to pull back to the left margin.
But the cool thing? To erase a mistake, you space over a character or two and use a hard plastic thingie to gently press the errant dot back flat, then backspace (for which there is a key) and type the correct character. I emphasize gently, for although the paper is thick, it is easily torn.
I previously interviewed our librarian for a paper for class, and learned quite a bit. The most stunning was seeing one of the later Harry Potter books on a shelf, and the only things on it were one copy of the book in larger print and one in Braille. The Braille edition cost $250, is printed in 18 volumes, and takes a good 15" of shelf space. And if one volume is lost or damaged, you can't replace just that volume, you can only order a whole set.
But the most interesting thing that I learned was a fact that hadn't occurred to me: Braille print wears out. If it's print, eventually the dots will wear down to the level of the paper and the page will be unreadable. I hadn't considered that. That being said, there is a printing process that prints the Braille pages on plastic, which would last a good long time.
