Last Words

I have accomplished just about every thing I've wanted to with learning braille. I feel as if this was a great experience to learn something new. I will continue to practice braille regularly in order to get ready for my final presentation on the subject of blind children. I am also planning on making a small children's book written in braille that I plan to show to my class during my senior project presentation. Thank you to all who have read my blog.

NUMB3RS

Learning single-letter contractions takes a lot of work. I guessed it would be challenging and I was right. Every letter abbreviated a bigger word.
The next thing would be to learn two-letter contractions but i'm going to skip to learning numbers because I just want to learn basic braille for now. Just Enough to Know Better teaches more in depth with braille if one wanted to go that far.
Numbers 1-9 are the same as the first nine letters of the alphabet and zero is a j. To transform these letter into numbers, you place a number sign in front of them, like this:

When writing double or larger digits, you place the number sign in front of the first digit only.

Single-Letter Contractions

I've been having blogging problems on certain computers so I haven't been able to update in a couple of weeks. Well, I've been praticing contractions and I have them down pretty good. The book i'm learning braille out of shows some examples of contractions but i'm sure there are more in braille reading. In the last week I have started working on single-letter contractions. Single-letter contractions are letters of the alphabet which are used to represent WHOLE WORDS when they stand alone. For example, the braille letter b  standing alone represents the word but. I couldn't find many examples on online but heres the best one I've seen.

Cool Braille

I've been looking around on the internet and found some pretty cool things in braille that I thought people might be interested in seeing or knowing about.

__________________________________________________

Braille Art

A woman with innumerable black dots of braille on her naked body rests on an illuminated box as spectators look on during the performance art show "Consultation," at the ongoing Contemporary Art Exhibition in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu Province on December 16th.      

                                                    This is pretty cool. It says JOY.

_________________________________________________

Braille Jewelry

____________________________________________________

Braille Tattoos

I think this looks pretty painful to get. The site I seen it on said it has to implanted. Ouch!

 

 

 

 

C o n t r a c t i o n s!

I was starting to think reading braille wasn't going to be that hard because once I memorized the formation of the dots and punctuation, reading it wasn't so bad. Now its time to add in contractions. Contractions are groups of letters that appear so often in print that they are represented by a letter(s) or special symbol in braille. It's like short hand. Here are some common words that are contracted in braille: AND, FOR, THE, WITH, BUT, and CAN.

      I haven't started to practice reading braille with contractions added in but I'm guessing its going to be more of a challenge. 

Learning A Little More About Braille

I've found some helpful information on http://www.nationalbrailleweek.org/page/braille-facts about braille that I thought people might like to read.

What is Braille?

Braille is the system of touch reading and writing that utilises raised dots to represent the letters of the print alphabet for persons who are blind or visually impaired. The Braille system also includes symbols to represent punctuation, mathematics and scientific characters, music, computer notation, and foreign languages.

---

Why is Braille used?

Braille is not a language. It is a code by which all languages may be written and read. Through the use of Braille, people who are blind are able to review and study the written word. It provides a vehicle for literacy and gives an individual the ability to become familiar with spelling, punctuation, paragraphing and other formatting considerations.

---

Who uses Braille?

Braille is used mainly by people who are blind, deafblind or visually impaired. It is critically important to the lives of these people as the ability to read and write in Braille opens the door to literacy, intellectual freedom, equal opportunity, and personal security. Teachers, parents and others who are not visually impaired ordinarily read Braille with their eyes.

Can't Forget Puntuation

Ok, so I think I pretty much have memorized the alphabet so a couple days ago I’ve moved on to the next thing in the book Just Enough To Know Better, which is memorizing punctuation. There are dots that represent a capital sign, comma, period, question mark, parentheses, brackets, colon, and a few more. I think learning punctuation was a little harder than the alphabet because they don’t have patterns such as the alphabet does. Now that I know the alphabet and punctuation I can start to read simple sentences such as the picture below, which reads i love you.

I love you

26 Letters of the Alphabet

I've borrowed the book Just Enough To Know Better ( a braille primer) by Eileen P. Curran, from a center in my area that specializes in working with blind children. I'm making a commitment to learn to read braille, even if it's just the basics, over the time period of 6 weeks. I'm very interested in getting to know how blind people deal with everyday things we all do such as brushing our teeth and combing our hair. Blind children especially hold my interest because they have to struggle to learn how to do ordinary things that most sighted people do everyday. Blind children, unlike blind adults who have been blind for a number of years, are not use to finding a way to handle their everyday business such as adults who have adapted to being blind.

I think it would be great if people who have never thought of learning to read braille could attempt to learn. Learning braille wont stop blindness but it sure will show the blind that someone cares enough to see the world as they do, even if it's only through your hands.

So far i have been working on memorizing the 26 letters of the alphabet. Just like in our early school years when we had to practice writing and memorizing the alphabet, you have to memorize what each braille letter looks like. Every letter, sign, or punctuation mark is represented by a braille cell, which is a unit of six dots .  I've made flashcards with each letter on a card to help me memorize them. I am going to be practicing to memorize the formation on each letter and its feel. In a few days when I feel ready I will try to read whole sentences. It's a little challenging so wish me luck!

                                                                                                   Example of the braille alphabet

Example of a braille cell