Mike Stafford: A Blind Braille Teachers’ Perspective

All new full time members of staff at A2i, no matter what their position, attend a weekly external class to learn Braille. One of the teachers at the class is Mike Stafford. Mike is 69 years old, he volunteers as a Braille teacher, and has been teaching for about 15 years. Recently, he gave us some time to answer a few questions about his experience of learning and teaching Braille ….

Q: Could we find out a little about your background? Were you born blind?

MS: I was born with poor eyesight. The left eye didn’t really work at all, but I had vision in the right eye which got me through mainstream school and through 35 years work in a builder’s merchant. Then, in my early 50s, the right eye packed up as well, so I was left with no vision at all.

Q: When did you start to learn Braille?

MS: About a year after I finished work. I started to learn Braille at an RNIB rehabilitation centre in Torquay, as well as other things such as touch typing and mobility. Then I spent time at The Royal National College for the Blind at Hereford.

Q: Did you learn it relatively quickly?

MS: No, being a student of 50 odd years and learning by touch, it does take a long time and it’s quite a struggle. Whilst you can write fairly well, learning to touch read is very difficult and slow, and at times quite frustrating. It did take quite a time. I had 12 weeks at Torquay and another 14-15 weeks at Hereford. But even then it needed brushing up, which is when I came to the centre at Bristol. After a while at Bristol I took an examination, the standard English Braille examination, which I was lucky enough to pass.

Q: Did you start teaching after that?

MS: I did some voluntary teaching beforehand. But most of the teaching I did was after I passed the Standard English Braille exam. I did a lot of teaching down at the rehabilitation centre in Torquay. When I wasn’t down there I was doing an evening class here in Bristol for sighted people and an afternoon class for partially sighted and blind people.

Q: Do you get a lot of people who haven’t got disabilities coming to learn Braille?

MS: We do. They are usually either training to be rehabilitation workers or they are support workers for blind children in schools.

Q: With the development of computers, screen readers, and Daisy [talking books], do you think that the need for Braille will slowly fade out?

MS: I don’t think it will fade out. These computer systems are fine if you want to print out a typed sheet to send to somebody else. But, if you want it for your own use, then you need it in Braille. If you want reference documents, or even simpler things like labelling up your CDs, you need to have Braille to be able to do it.

If you are going to get a job, as a blind person, then you need Braille - you can’t do it without it. Well known people like David Blunkett, the ex Home Secretary, rely on Braille to do their jobs.

Q: Are there a lot of visually impaired people that can read Braille?

MS: There are. Some people can still read large print but are stipulated as being blind. However, if you look at guide dog owners for instance, then it might be as many as 60% of them that read Braille because there eyesight is very, very bad. Once your eyesight gets so poor that you can’t read print in any form - magnified, blown up or 43 times its normal size - then you can’t do it. You have to switch to Braille.

Q: How long do you think it takes to get a reasonable understanding of Braille, either with good eyesight or with visual impairments?

MS: I had one blind student who came to me with no knowledge of Braille. He was totally blind and learning by touch, but after 3 weeks of intensive lessons he had mastered Braille. He was not particularly swift at reading but he could read a book reasonably comfortably.

When it comes to a sighted person, I suspect they could probably learn it in a little bit less time. The trouble is most people learn it one lesson a week, therefore it does stretch it out for quite a long time.

Q. Could you tell us about the classes at the RNIB in Bristol?

MS: Classes are every Tuesday. We have a sighted class in the morning, then in the afternoon, we get perhaps 3 or 4 blind/partially-sighted people who are learning by touch.

This is a different, quite difficult, way of learning, which they really have to struggle through. For sighted people it’s a mind exercise - it is about retaining information. But blind people have to get the technique of reading the dots with their finger. They are all inclined to press too hard to start with, and then they flatten the dots and get frustrated. They have to learn to sensitise.

I hope to continue teaching Braille for the next few years at least, so if any of your readers are interested in learning it then just get them to give the RNIB a ring!

A big thank you to Mike for sharing some of his views and experiences.

Mike volunteers every Tuesday at the Bristol RNIB. There are two classes during the day - a sighted class in the morning and a class for blind/partially sighted people in the afternoon.

For further details about the process of learning Braille please contact the RNIB Helpline on 0845 766 9999

For more details about Braille transcription see the A2i website or call us on 01179 70 70 90.

Braille - the basics

Customers regularly order Braille products from A2i, but most have no knowledge of Braille, how it is constructed, or how it is printed. Here is a summary of the key facts …

The dots!

Standard British Braille is based on a 6 dot system - the 6 dots are positioned like the design on a domino. There are 63 symbols made up of all the possible variations of 6 dots - 26 symbols represent the letters of the alphabet, and 10 represent punctuation marks. The remaining symbols represent common groups of letters or whole words.

Transcription

There are two main braille transcription options:

• Option 1 - Transcription letter by letter - this is known as Grade 1 or uncontracted Braille. It is not commonly used, as it takes up a lot of space and is comparatively slow to read.
• Option 2 - Transcription using contractions - this is known as Grade 2 Braille. Contractions are symbols used to represent common letter combinations, for example 'er', ‘as’ and 'ing', and words such as 'and', ‘for' and ‘people’. Combinations of two symbols are also used to represent some words, for example 'through'. Also, some characters may change their meaning, depending on how they are spaced. Grade 2 Braille was developed to reduce the size of books and make reading quicker.

There are also distinctive Braille codes for Maths Braille, Scientific Braille and Braille in foreign languages.

Braille Printing

Braille ‘printers’ are called Braille embossers. There are several makes and styles available, but they are specialist pieces of equipment, that work in conjunction with specialist computer software.

Braille embossers do not use ink like normal printers. Instead they have a set of tiny hammers inside that punch (emboss) the dots into the paper as it moves through the machine.

Thicker than average paper is usually used for printing, for example A2i use 160gsm paper. Although you could use thinner paper the dots would not be durable, and are easily squashed. If you use thicker paper the dots are not so clear, and are therefore more difficult to read.

Further information

A2i produces all of the above. We transcribe to Grade 2 Braille as standard. However, we are happy to transcribe a document into Grade 1 on request, for no extra cost.

We also supply Braille Keyboards, Braille signage and Braille labels. See our website www.a2i.co.uk or contact us for more information on 01179 70 70 90.

The history of Braille

Louis Braille, is commonly known as the inventor of modern day Braille. But there is a lot more to the story. Read on to find out how it all began, and how it has become established as a world wide system …

The beginning

In 1771 a French man called Valentin Hauy came up with the idea of embossed letters for the blind. His plan was to emboss (raise) the shape of standard alphabetical letters, so that blind people could read them with their fingers. He showed his idea to the French Royal academy, and received their full support. This enabled him to collect donations, set up a school for the blind, and set up a print shop to make embossed books. One of the main nobles that attended his initial demonstration to the Royal academy was Marquis d'Orvilliers, a nobleman from a small village east of Paris.

Louis Braille

Louis Braille was born in a small town close to Paris on 4 January 1809. He first lost the sight in one of his eyes at the age of three after an accident with his father’s workshop tools. Shortly afterwards, he lost the sight in the other, as a result of an infection that spread from the first eye.

Louis Braille initially went to his local village school, but his education was restricted by the fact he could not learn to read or write. Any chance of further education looked bleak, and other blind people at the time usually ended up begging on the street. However, when he was 10 years old a local priest put the family in touch with Marquis d'Orvilliers who had seen the demonstration by Hauy, and he encouraged the headmaster of the school for blind boys in Paris to take Louis Braille on.

At the school, discipline was harsh and general conditions were bad, but the boys were taught practical skills so that they could make a living when they left school, and they were also taught to read, using embossed letters. Reading this way was difficult, but the main problem was that the boys were not able to learn to write, because of the difficult process of making the raised letters.

Then, in 1821, a visit to the school by a soldier called Charles Barbier gave Louis the inspiration to develop Braille as we know it today. Charles Barbier showed Louis Braille a system using twelve raised dots that soldiers in the trenches used to communicate different sounds at night, when they were unable to use lights. This system was finally dropped by the army as it proved to be too complex for the soldiers, but it gave Louis the idea he needed to make possibly the greatest invention known to blind people - Braille.

Over time, Louis simplified the 12 dot system to create the Braille we use today - based on six dots, like the design on a domino.

The benefits of what Louis Braille had invented were not immediately widely recognised, largely because sighted people could not understand the advantages, but Louis Braille continued to develop the system over the years and invented separate codes for Maths and music.

Louis Braille went on to become a teacher at the school he had attended as a child, but unfortunately he died at the age of 43 before Braille was widely adopted.

The Establishment of Braille

The establishment of Braille was a long and difficult journey. Some people protested against its’ usage and tried to devise new, but complicated formats. Between 1825 and 1835 in Britain alone we had Gall, Alston, Moon, Fry, Frere, and Lucas, all bringing out their own systems. In America there were Mr. Friedlander, Dr. Howe and others. Most of these competing concepts did not succeed for long.

Although sighted people did not initially recognise the benefits of Braille, Blind people realised that they could not only read Braille, but it was also a system that they could use to write independently - using a simple stylus to make the dots.

In the UK between 1868 and 1870, a committee of blind people investigated the best possible system of embossed type for blind people to read. The committee chose Braille to be the winner, and this took Braille another step closer to being accepted and implemented.
Also in 1868, the British and Foreign Blind Association was created, which printed and disseminated Braille books.

In the US the first annual grant from Congress for embossed books for the blind was granted in 1879, thus securing an important financial channel for publishing for the blind in the United States.

Braille has since become a world wide system of embossed type used by blind and partially sighted people for reading and writing. It has been adapted to almost every known language, from Albanian to Zulu.

Thanks to Louis Braille, for the first time, blind and partially sighted people began to be able to read and write independently and therefore to take more control of their own lives.

A2i produces Braille in Grades 1 and 2, Maths Braille, and Foreign language Braille. We also supply items such as Braille business cards, Braille keyboards, and Braille signage. Please visit our website, or call us on 0117 9 70 70 90 for more details.