by Jenine Stanley
“Braille displays are nice, but I’m not a very good braille reader. I doubt that I’d get much from one.”
This is how I thought of braille displays for years. Losing my reading vision as an adult, I never have developed a fluency in reading braille. Don’t get me wrong, though. I’d be lost without it. Braille has allowed me to re-enter the world. From signage to menus to programs and agendas, I can easily keep up with my sighted peers. Lecture notes, short messages and labels for just about everything — all in braille — help me stay organized. In other words, I’m a huge proponent of adventitiously blinded adults learning braille.
I’ve heard it said by some in the rehabilitation profession that if a blinded adult is not going to use braille to read books and other materials, why spend precious rehabilitation time learning it? Unfortunately, such practices leave the blind person to his or her own devices to learn, practice and put in the hard work it takes to master the code. Many people just cannot find the time or discipline to do this on their own. Conversely, others have formed braille support groups to help newly blinded people learn to read and write again. It is thanks to several such groups, comprised of helpful long-term braille readers and a burning desire to be able to communicate and stay organized that I can claim any facility I now have with braille reading.
All of that said, when it came time to replace my note-taking device, I pondered whether to opt for a braille display. If anyone had asked me even three years ago whether I wanted a braille display on my notetaker, I probably would have declined. Those dots were hard to feel and I couldn’t possibly handle them if they were moving. Valuing discretion in the use of any talking device, I had mastered using my notetaker with a headphone. This was clumsy, though, and began to affect how I could deliver information. It would be nice, I mused, to just pull up a braille phone number, address or other information as I sat on the telephone with someone, rather than having what seemed to be millions of different synthetic voices chattering away in my ear, while I searched through data files to find it. It would also be great not to have to give lectures or other presentations with a headphone stuck in one ear and a cord tethering me to a device that, if dropped, knocked over or worse, would break into a zillion pieces and take months to fix.
I was intrigued by the possibilities of a braille display but there was still the barrier of not being able to read those moving dots. Then I discovered just what reading a braille display was all about in a most unlikely way.
My previous experience reading braille displays had taken place with the Versa-Braille shortly after I learned contracted braille. I could recognize the dots but it took me what seemed like hours to read a word. Wasn’t the entire purpose of having such a display to increase one’s speed at reading? I was also afraid to push down on the dots as I did when I tried to read paper-based braille. As my touch at reading became lighter, and as I learned to recognize letters and words more quickly, I still worried about touching those movable dots.
Then it happened. I read refreshable braille in real time! My friend poked me gently during one of the general sessions at an ACB mid-year meeting. We were sitting near the back of the room, hopelessly bored, like good, concerned affiliate members. She motioned in a tactile sign language of sorts that she had written something on her braille notetaker that she wanted me to read. I swallowed hard and pretended not to want to read it. She knew that this was not a sudden attack of ethical conduct. I finally had to whisper that I wasn’t very good at reading those refreshable displays. She, being the conscientious and skilled rehab teacher she is, would not take that as an excuse to miss her brief clandestine message.
I tentatively took the device and read the first line. She motioned me to hand it back once I’d finished. She would write a line, then hand it to me. I read the line and passed it back. Soon she was writing two lines and showing me the commands to advance the display.
Before long I was snickering at her little poem about the dangers of boring meetings. Then I realized how easy it had been to read that display. Oh, I would never be as fluent as she was at it, but I could read and make sense of a silly poem in less than a geologic age. Hmm, maybe this braille display stuff could work out for me.
Price loomed large as a concern though in acquiring such a device. As a graduate student, I had neither the money nor the rehabilitation case file justification to obtain a braille display. The only one I knew of was the Braille Light and I’d heard horror stories about its unreliability and fragile nature. Then I saw the Braille Note at a summer convention.
If it is possible to lust after equipment, I surely did after this device. As I began my job search, it seemed the natural and logical thing to request this piece of equipment as one of the only things I needed from the rehabilitation system. My state rehabilitation counselor, being the forward-thinking person he is, asked me to send him a “business case” for buying the device. This meant that I had to justify in writing why I needed a braille display and why this particular display.
I am very comfortable with this practice of researching and writing such documents for things I need from this counselor. The requirement forces me to look hard at why I might need them. After listing the uses of braille, such as quick and silent reference to notes, checking of spelling without having an earphone tether, and many other reasons that were job-specific, I enumerated the reasons for choosing the Braille Note over the competing device.
In early January, I received my 32-cell display Braille Note. To say that I am now a convert to the braille display is a huge understatement. Even though my first unit had a problem and needed replacing only three days after delivery, a new unit has been functioning perfectly ever since. The technical support from Humanware was outstanding.
I now use the braille display to check time, read notes, read documents and scripts for my part-time job as a help desk specialist and easily navigate the programs within the Braille Note. I rarely use the headphone and voice when taking notes. I have even started reading a real full-length book. Reading a book in braille is something I never thought I would have the patience or dexterity to do. I do revert to the speech at times with the book, but keeping one hand ready to check spelling and such on the braille is never far from my mind.
So, if you have been thinking about braille as something that’s nice, but not really within your grasp, think again. The secret to really integrating braille into your life is to start slowly. Work yourself up to reading more and more, or writing braille more often than recording messages.
I must admit that I type much faster than I can operate a brailler or braille-style keyboard, so I have opted for the “qwerty” keyboard on my Braille Note. The beauty of it is that I can easily have that Braille-style keyboard with just a few commands, should I need it. This is truly the best of both, no, all worlds.