Do you know I don't think I've ever actually encountered a braille book! I'm never sure how appropriate it is to ask questions about accessibility so I won't, but I have so many questions!
Ask away. I was born 100% blind and spent a decade teaching high school. I can guarantee that I have had all the embarrassing, crude and rude questions you can imagine and then some. I'm a proponent of the educate first, be offended later school.
Lol. I wasn't thinking of any rude or crude questions! Basically yes I wanted to know if you learned braille earlier or later in life (ie post-written word) and whether you read braille braille or tactile books (or both). I enjoy learning new 'languages' and would be fascinated to know whether it's something I could intuitively pick up or basically like starting again from scratch. I'd also be interested if it's direct translation or it there are shortcuts / iconography. Is it direct letter to letter or are you skimming whole words..... 'the' / 'here' / 'there' etc?
I learned Braille as my first writing system, so I visualise letters that way, even though I *know* they don't look that way. Braille is really a code to represent print.
The first level of Braille is called "uncontracted", and that is a direct letter-to-letter reproduction of the written word. if I wanted to ask > "How are you today?" I'd write > "⠠⠓⠕⠺⠀⠁⠗⠑⠀⠽⠕⠥⠀⠞⠕⠙⠁⠽⠦". Which if you count you'll see is similar to the print, except the first character is a capital indicator telling us that the h in how is uppercase.
After that you can move onto "contracted" Braille, where there are short forms, contractions and word signs. For example, our question now becomes > "⠠⠓⠪⠀⠜⠑⠀⠽⠀⠞⠙⠦" here, the "ow" of "how" has merged into a "⠪" (an o-w sign), the letter y by itself stands for a you, and "td means today. a bit like early text-speak.
disclaimer, I am doing the Braille blind so can't 100% verify my output by touch at the moment.
Go for it, questions very welcome. there's a cool website you can learn from called UEBOnline if you want to go further. Physical equipment for showing Braille electronically is very expensive unfortunately. if you want to just write Braille though, [Perky Duck](duxburysystems.com/perky.asp) is free
@cachondo very cool, thanks for the explanation. I have a little experience with American Sign Language as well as Signed English, and the differences between them have some similarities to your Braille examples.
Could you take a picture of the contents page of your kindle? I don't know if that's possible but I didn't even know about screenreaders before I came here so I'm assuming you have some magical device for that!
Sean Randall
in reply to Ben • • •And my Kindle is great for reading, not so good for showing.
spanghero
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Sean Randall
in reply to spanghero • • •Ben
in reply to Sean Randall • • •@cachondo @spanghero
I'll be honest - would still be very interested
Ben
in reply to Sean Randall • • •@cachondo
Do you know I don't think I've ever actually encountered a braille book! I'm never sure how appropriate it is to ask questions about accessibility so I won't, but I have so many questions!
Sean Randall
in reply to Ben • • •I'm a proponent of the educate first, be offended later school.
Ben
in reply to Sean Randall • • •@cachondo
Lol. I wasn't thinking of any rude or crude questions! Basically yes I wanted to know if you learned braille earlier or later in life (ie post-written word) and whether you read braille braille or tactile books (or both). I enjoy learning new 'languages' and would be fascinated to know whether it's something I could intuitively pick up or basically like starting again from scratch. I'd also be interested if it's direct translation or it there are shortcuts / iconography. Is it direct letter to letter or are you skimming whole words..... 'the' / 'here' / 'there' etc?
Sean Randall
in reply to Ben • • •I learned Braille as my first writing system, so I visualise letters that way, even though I *know* they don't look that way. Braille is really a code to represent print.
The first level of Braille is called "uncontracted", and that is a direct letter-to-letter reproduction of the written word. if I wanted to ask
> "How are you today?"
I'd write
> "⠠⠓⠕⠺⠀⠁⠗⠑⠀⠽⠕⠥⠀⠞⠕⠙⠁⠽⠦". Which if you count you'll see is similar to the print, except the first character is a capital indicator telling us that the h in how is uppercase.
After that you can move onto "contracted" Braille, where there are short forms, contractions and word signs. For example, our question now becomes
> "⠠⠓⠪⠀⠜⠑⠀⠽⠀⠞⠙⠦"
here, the "ow" of "how" has merged into a "⠪" (an o-w sign), the letter y by itself stands for a you, and "td means today. a bit like early text-speak.
disclaimer, I am doing the Braille blind so can't 100% verify my output by touch at the moment.
Ben
in reply to Sean Randall • • •@cachondo
Thank you for this. I find it really interesting and hope you don't mind me boosting?
Sean Randall
in reply to Ben • • •there's a cool website you can learn from called UEBOnline if you want to go further.
Physical equipment for showing Braille electronically is very expensive unfortunately.
if you want to just write Braille though, [Perky Duck](duxburysystems.com/perky.asp) is free
Perky Duck free software
www.duxburysystems.comSean Randall
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Unified English Braille (UEB)
iceb.orgacm
in reply to Sean Randall • • •econads
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Sean Randall
in reply to econads • • •econads
in reply to Sean Randall • • •