A braille expert who proposed to his wife using a braille scrabble board says the six-dot tactile reading system is still a major key to success for blind and partially sighted people despite leaps forward in technology.
Marking World Braille Day (January 4), Dave Williams, Royal National Institute of Blind People’s (RNIB) Inclusive Design Ambassador, says more funding is needed for braille education and more braille needed in society to enable blind and partially sighted people to have equal life opportunities to their sighted peers.
“On Valentine's Day, 2011, I suggested playing a game, as my wife’s always in the mood for Scrabble,” said Dave (pictured above).
“She read the board with my words ‘Will you marry me?’ and started looking for the right letters. Which is when I remembered that in a standard set of Scrabble, there are only two letter Ys, and I had used both. So eventually she put ‘Blank, E, S’ onto the board. I said, ‘I'll take that, that sounds like a yes to me!’
“We must all celebrate braille because of what it represents in terms of blind people being able to read for ourselves rather than be read to.
“Braille is literacy, leading to greater education outcomes, employment prospects and personal independence. Braille is very closely linked with dignity, credibility, opportunity and the emancipation of blind people, who for most of history really did not have a robust method for accurately and efficiently accessing written language.
“For me personally, braille means I can instantly identify medication, play board games with my family and friends, and I was able to read bedtime stories with my son when he was younger.
“Braille is also helpful in the built environment for reading number buttons in lifts, on hotel room doors, and increasingly reading tactile maps and signs at train stations.
“As wonderful as technology is, screen readers and audio do not provide a true form of literacy and it does not replace hardcopy braille, especially when batteries and signal let us down.”
2024/5 marks 200 years since the schoolboy Louis Braille developed the six-dot tactile reading system that would become known as braille and RNIB is campaigning to;
Ensure budgets for local authority vision impairment services are protected and increased so that all children with vision impairment can access the specialist support they need, including braille education.
Get the NHS and other organisations to commit to making correspondence available in braille to blind and partially sighted people.
Making the process to accessing alternative formats of medication packaging and patient information leaflets easier, including in braille, in line with the Human Medicines Regulations (2012), the Equality Act (2010) and the Disability Discrimination Act (1995).
Expand the use of braille on medication packaging to include medication expiry date, dosage and storage instructions, which would be useful to braille users who take medication. In addition, pharmacists should ensure that they do not cover braille on medication packaging with pharmacy labels, as this happens regularly and makes the inclusion of braille obsolete.
To encourage braille teachers and pupils to make use of RNIB’s extensive bank of braille resources including courses, learning materials and braille products – These can be found here https://www.rnib.org.uk/about-us/braille-200/
To encourage UK organisations, businesses and services to review and improve their provision of braille in this anniversary year.
To find out more about World Braille Day and the 200th anniversary of braille visit https://www.rnib.org.uk/living-with-sight-loss/supporting-others/parenting-a-child-with-a-vision-impairment/how-to-make-celebrations-accessible-for-all-the-family/world-braille-day/
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