h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was considering writing a Braille article and then came across yours. It's looking good so far! If you decide to expand it further these links may come in useful to you:

http://www.brl.org/
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=168674
http://www.rnib.org.uk/wesupply/fctsheet/braille.htm
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille
http://www.education.bham.ac.uk/onlinelearning/braille/studyzone.htm
http://www.brl.org/music/index.html
http://www.braille.org/papers/lorimer/title.html
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2800.pdf

You might want to add a bit about how they went on to develop extended types of Braille with contractions of common words and symbols for punctuation and numbers. Also there is eight cell Braille which is two columns and four rows, haven't found much on that though.

Hello mengfish!

As you can probably see, my entry is nowhere near finished. I want to finish explaining the letter system, then explain why grade 1 is not enough. I'm not going to list *all* the Grade 2 stuff - I don't mean this to be a teach yourself execrise, but I'd like to introduce people to a few of the varieties, such contractions, composites, lower wordsigns, ad so on, as well as the logic behind them (such as *** and a six dot for the -h combinations)

I'd like to introduce the concept, of musical, mathematical, measurements, roman numerals, etc, just to show how sophisticated it can be....

I also want to give a lttle idea about American Braille, New York Point, etc, to show how complex it's all been!

If you stick around, I'd love to get your opinion as it all progresses

Cool .. I look forward to seeing it as it comes along. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on your article to see what I can learn.

I'm trying to learn Braille at the moment, just 'cause it looks interesting and it is becoming ever more prevalant. Hopefully I won't ever need to use it on a regular basis ..

I've known it since childhood. People say to me "Gosh that must be a useful skill' but it isn't. Other than writing to blind relatives (most of whom are now deceased) I've used it maybe three times, and that's in a reasonably relevant line of work!

But, as you say, it's an interesting system, which is one of the main points I hope to get across.

See you round!

:-

A nice potted history of Braille and a great introduction to what it looks like.

I've always wondered why the letter W is out of sync with the rest of the Braille code. If you take a look at letters K to T in the Braille alphabet you see that they are the same as A to J with a dot 3 added.

When we get to the letters U to Z the mathematical pattern breaks down thanks to that W.

The letter U is an A with dots 3 and 6 (the lowest dots) added. W doesn't have a dot 3 and by rights (if following the pattern should look like a Braille X does. If we fell into the right pattern then a Z would look like what a grade 2 AND-sign (everything bar the dot 5) currently looks like.

Am I dull?

Someone told me it was something to do with the fact that the letter W was added later to the French alphabet. I mentioned this once to a French friend of mine at university and she laughed wildly at me though. I do have vague memories of my french teacher at school saying there are few Ws in the French language and it was only because the odd words such as Le Weekend found their way into French parliance that a W made it into French at all. Any thoughts?

Also think it would be good to mention BAUK - the Braille Authority of the United Kingdom www.bauk.org.uk who have an uneasy relationship with Braille users - as do other national Braille orgs such as BANA in North America.

They police the Braille code and try to hone it. This upsets a lot of blind people especially back in 1998 when BAUK attempted to add capital letters to Braille (as in America) which caused an outrage ... and the proposed braille changes of the 80s that would have warped the alphabet (can you imagine someone officially altering the print alphabet? It would be considered mad and pointless)

Clearly new Braille codes for things like the Euro sign need to be thought about and created ... equally the now very very common at-sign (@) seen in email addresses. Braille has to change with the times.

And in terms of Braille and blind history / culture ... I think it would be very important to mention that when nannying charities (owners of the means of production of Braille, as Marks would have put it) produced Braille in the early days (I'm talking right up until the 1980s really) Braille books were often censored to take out sexual references and bad language ... and other extremely patronising amendments were made to try and make the understanding of literature more easy for the poor blind people. For instance a book on Egyptology was produced with all references of The Nile changed to 'The Thames' because the Braille transcriber thought that the blind might not have heard of a river so very far away as the Nile.

Talking book catalogues also make a big fuss about books "not suitable for family listening"

Thank you for taking a look at this, especially as the code is gaussed at the moment. I am still working on it, though intermittently. As I said to mengfish, and as you seem to, I find the history of the development of braille fascinating, but I'm beginning to think that it merits a separate entry! This one really started from trying to explain to a colleague that Braille was more than just join the dots to make letters.... what do you think about a 'developmental' entry?

Hi, I'm very new around here so is 'developmental entry' an H2G2 term that I don't yet know? Or are you just refering to the 'development of Braille after it's invention' kind of thing?

Thanks ...

Hi Bagel - yes, I just meant an entry on the developmental issues of Braille (I dreamt about that whole @ sign business last night, thanks to you!)

Well I do use Braille... Not exactly everyday, but quite a bit... I'm so glad that they arn't producing many/any books with the 'capitilisation' in, I mean, its slow enough to read anyhow Guess I'm out of practise Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, for example, the most recent book I've read in Braille, takes up Four* volumes... All from what is a pretty-small paperback print book Could also mention things like the 'Perkins' machine, used for 'manually' producing Braille; kind of like a Braille typewritter and Braille embossers; like a printer you attach to your computer, but which prints out in Braille, (and which are rather expensive and incredibably loud!) I get my bank statements in Braille, and British Gas send me statements and stuff in Braille too Very handy for some things, not so handy in terms of transporting large volumes of it about; I find Audio books easier as they don't take up entire rooms in my house if I want a lot of them Also, it is, I think, still only a pretty small percentage of blind people who read Braille; mainly as the majority of blind people loose their sight very late in life and don't learn it

Hello 2legs - what a lot of things I didn't know about you!

In my last job One of my roles was to produce 'accessible' (dreadful term) information for the public, and despite being a Braille fan, I had to fight a lot of ignorance from my superiors whose immediate thought was sight problems = braille. So I hunted out the stats. Something like 70% of registered blind do not read Braille, but can be catered for by large print, audio and Moon (I like Moon: it feels like an alphabet from centuries into the future.) The other way we oftened help braille enquiries was to send emails that could be read aloud by software on their PCs, or that they could blow up to the size that suited them.

I've seen Braiile embossers on the telly, but never met one in real life: surely they've got to get better as technology improves? And do you know what they call those machines you can attach to a computer which produce braille line-by-line by poking prongs up through a metal strip? They look sore to the fingers if you ask me, and I wouldn't be able to cheat by turning the page over and reading the back - because I was taught by my granny on an old Brailleframe, I still tend to flip Braille and 'cheat' if ever I come across something tricky. My granny, who had some sight when young, used to say that her (totally blind) teacher could always tell if she was 'reading with her eyes' - must have been the rustling noise.

Anyway - I've seen a Perkins, but never had a try. My level of technolgy extends as far as reversed Stainsby - if you know what I mean. It's got a crab movement carriage, and the keys etend eiother side, but cross over, so although you're working with the back of the paper facing you, you press the keys as you the letter the right way round - does that make sense? I'fd learnt Braille a long time ago with a simple frame and style, and it made my head hurt to switch over! I was given the Staisby by an adopted aunt, so it's very precious to me. It comes in a neat little carry-case, and it's just redolent of a trime when things were built to last. I've no idea how old it is.

What a load of waffle - you can tell I've had a glass of wine! How many pagesa doesa a Braille bank statement take up?

I'm not sure if I've seen that machine; the Braille embosser I've got I guess* works by 'punching' 'pins' up and part way through the paper, to create the raised dots which is why its very loud; naturally it s very mechanical a thing Oh, and that Stainsby sounds like a rather old piece of equipment to me; I'm not sure if I've ever seen one of those; I've been blind since '93, and started with the Perkins machine Don't think I've ever seen moon, I'll hae to try and get hold of some Braille 'displays' for computers are still bonkers expensive; I don't think they will ever come down in price, at £4,000 they are out of the reach of most individuals, and you only end up with a single line of Braille at the most on them I'm not a big fan of them Reminds me actually; my Braille embosser for the PC is in need of being repaired again ; Its about the cheapest model on teh market, and I've had it five years, perhaps more its not been used much, but the 'memory' on bored it, keeps seeming to fail, and I've sent it back once already for them to 'redo' the memory thing on it (you can tell I'm not really that* technical)

I've read about Stainsby models dating back to the 1930's, but I've no idea if my one is that old. I got it from my Auntie Lil, and given how old she was it's quite possible, but she's dead now, poor soul, so I'll never get the chance to ask her...

Do any of the Braille charities provide support for getting Braille reading equipment of computers? I know the RNIB is not the most helpful of groups at times (they insist on sending text invoices to my aunt) but someone should be helping... My aunt is gamely trying to get the hang of read-aloud software on a computer in her 60's - I don't know if she'll ge far. She's been sight-impaired all her life, but though taught Bralle as a child, she preferred to use a typewriter for as long as she had some vestiges of sight, and only started to use Braille again 10 years or so ago. reassure yourself that you're probably doing better than her!

Did you find Braille difficultto learn? How old were you at that point?

I was 16 when I lurnt to read braille, started learning whilst I was still in hospital, and it took about six months to do both 1 and 2, though took a while longer to get fluent at reading it with any degree of speed If I read it more often I'd be a lot quicker Ahh, I think the things you were talking about that you attach to computers that have the pins that pop up are the Braille Displays; fantastically expensive, I think the cheapest is about £3,000, and no, there isn't really much help in getting the equipment; I got my eqiuipment through the Disabled students allowance, which is availible for students at universitys, funded by the education authority, I found Braille fairly easy to lurn I guess, but I was pretty young I think some local authorities lend out things like the Perkins machine; I had one loaned to me, till I started University, where I bought one from the money availible Its a red one I think