Learning braille
Braille is a system of raised dots which enables blind people of any age to read with the tips of their fingers. The characters are made up of variations on the domino six in its upright position. These dot patterns correspond to the letters of the alphabet, numbers, punctuation and some common letter groups such as THE and ER.
Sensitive fingers are needed for reading braille, although even those with a less acute sense of touch are pleasantly surprised with how quickly their sensitivity increases with practice.
Learning braille has given power and independence to many blind and partially sighted people across the world. Contrary to widespread but mistaken belief, it is not extremely difficult for anybody over 60 years old to learn braille.
There are two grades of braille. Grade 1 is a straightforward letter for letter translation from print and includes the alphabet, numbers and punctuation marks. Grade 2 additionally has special signs for combinations of letters together with a shorthand system, which reduces the size of braille documents by about 25%, and generally increases reading speed. There are special codes for music, mathematics and foreign languages.
Braille for adults
- The RNIB braille courses and reference material for adults has a wide range of resources for learning Grade 1 and Grade 2 braille for both touch readers and sighted readers.
- Courses and materials for learning Welsh braille are also available.
- RNIB and Scottish Braille Press both provide braille magazines useful for practice.
Children and young people
RNIB provides courses for teaching children and young people to read braille. Braille teaching courses for young touch readers range from materials for infants to children around 14 years of age.
ClearVision offers over 14,000 adapted print picture books, mainly for pre-school and primary-aged children. The books have been specially interleaved with braille on clear plastic sheets so that pictures and text are not obscured. The books are chosen from popular fiction and non-fiction. Their purpose is to enable blind and partially sighted children, who are learning to read through braille, to share print books with their sighted families, classmates, teachers and friends. They are also useful for blind adults wanting to read with sighted children.taneous braille and print.
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- Date: May 2009