Beyond Bump-Ons: Creative Approaches to Tactile Marking (Extra 76)

Do you need an easy way to identify your shampoo from your hair removal cream? Do you want to avoid accidentally feeding dog food to your dinner guests—again? Does your granddaughter complain that you’ve covered up the print label on her favourite midnight snack with your “special dots”?

Our sense of touch can give us much more information about our environment than we may think. Naturally, there’s braille, but how else can we use this powerful tactile sense to make things easier at home and further afield?

In this Masterclass, Matthew Horspool and Chantelle Griffiths joined forces to take you on a tactile journey to help you master your sense of touch for the simple, yet powerful purpose of identification and marking.

They covered:

  • How everyday office stationery can save your sanity when travelling.
  • How a simple rubber band can turn nightmare neighbours into amicable allies.
  • How to use braille in fun and creative ways, even if you’re not yet a confident braillist.
  • Why you need to own hair ties, even if you have no hair to tie.
  • How texture and orientation work together to create a customisable system for identification that anyone can use.
  • And so much more!

Whether you’re newer to sight loss or blind since birth, there’s something here for everyone. Join us to learn how to level up your tactile marking skills, and create unforgettable experiences for yourself and others, for all the right reasons.

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Revitalise your Braille Reading Technique (Extra 59)

Whether you’re new to braille or an experienced braillist, reading is an important and fundamental process. To fully appreciate the brilliance of braille for use in daily life, reading is something you should enjoy and feel comfortable with. But what can you do to improve your reading skills once you have learned all the letters and perhaps some contractions as well? How can you enhance your reading speed and accuracy even if you’ve been doing braille for a while?

On Tuesday 20 June 2023, Chantelle Griffiths, Co-Founder and CEO of New Zealand’s Tactile and Technology Literacy Centre, shared some practical tips and tricks to get you on the right track with your reading, no matter how much braille you’ve done or where you are on your braille journey. There is something here for everyone.

We learnt:

  • What actually happens when we read and how reading by touch is different — or not — from reading visually.
  • How to press the “reset button” for your fingers and brain when you’re just not feeling it. Literally.
  • The fundamental braille technique you didn’t know you knew and how it enhances your reading.
  • The three C’s of braille reading; what they are and how they work together to help you connect the dots between your brain and fingers.
  • How playing the viola relates to reading in a straight line and how you can experience something similar yourself, even if you’re not a musician.
  • How to start from exactly where you are and enjoy the process.
  • Lots more practical tips, ideas and experiments you can try on your own.

This was a very practical session. If you’d like to follow along with the recording, please have some hardcopy or electronic braille handy and a couple of random objects that feel nothing like braille.

For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.

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An Introduction to the Orbit Reader (Extra 58)

The Orbit Reader range is now very extensive and comprises the Orbit Reader 20, the Orbit Reader 20 Plus and the Orbit Reader 40. On Tuesday 30 May 2023, James Bowden, Braille Technical Officer at RNIB, talked us through what these products can do, how they work, and the differences between Orbit Readers and other braille displays and notetakers.

We learnt:

  • The differences between the Orbit Reader 20, 20 Plus and 40
  • How Orbit technology differs from traditional braille display technology
  • How to find and open files
  • How to find text within a file
  • How to use the editor
  • How to transfer files between the Orbit and a computer

For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.

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