Day 2 update from Brazil!
“The main highlight today was the presentation on the Braille 200 campaign with speakers passionately talking about the importance of Braille. We will publish link.
We are very excited about our presentation… 9am Wednesday Brazil time, and 10pm Wednesday Eastern Aust time. Thanks to sponsors NV Access, LWB and Achieve Foundation.”
Hmm, encoding #braille into music tones has recently been featured in the #braille200. I think it's nice for fun. Still I'm wondering if some of you might be able to understand it in real time.
The #Braille200 event on Tues evening at the British Library was brilliant - to have so many Braille enthusiasts together is very rare, and there was a relaxed atmosphere of celebration; with wine, canapes and lovely background music. Braille doesn’t get this type of VIP treatment very often! The message that I took away from the engaging panel event was very much that Braille is part of the toolkit for a blind person, no one is expecting you to use it exclusively - when your hands are tired, use audio and when audio gets overwhelming, use your hands. The fact is that some tasks lend themselves better to one or the other. It’s all personal choice.
I also enjoyed looking at some items from the library archive, including a handmade Braille book by Stevie Ronnie with beautiful binding and a children’s Braille book, by Polly Edman, that had tactile thread winding across the pages to make it interactive.
I also had fun trying out the Dot Pad again and got my hands on the Monarch too (they both display graphics as well as being multi line Braille displays) - way too expensive, but hey, a girl can dream! Tech like this represents the future so fabulously, showing that Braille is both a reading and writing medium, but now also has the potential to help blind people understand graphics and charts more easily and allow them to be creative themselves.
I bumped into several people I know which was lovely and I’m sure there were plenty of others there that I didn’t find, the joys of trying to socialise when totally blind!
There were about 230 guests and it felt so special to be able to attend this event, one of the many events being organised to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Braille.
I’m sure there’ll be many podcasts coming out from the RNIB about the event but the link below gives a taster, with many interviews recorded on the night:
#blind #PartiallySighted #LowVision #Deafblind #Braille #Disability
United Blind Leaders
Peter Vágner
Sarah Matthews
Eventua11y