Guide How chess, cards, and other games actually get adapted for blind players In most adaptive sports, players get grouped into classifications based on the type or severity of their impairment before competition even starts. Chess skips that step entirely. A blind player and a sighted player can sit down at a board and compete…
Guide Why braille books cost so much more to produce than print National Braille Press has stated plainly that producing a book in braille costs 3 to 4 times more than producing the same book in print, and then sells its own titles at ordinary print prices anyway, absorbing the difference by cross-subsidizing from an…
Guide How blind people identify paper money, and why US bills still don’t help For decades, the US dollar and the Canadian dollar were the only 2 major world currencies whose bills didn’t vary in size by denomination at all. Every US bill, from a single dollar to a hundred, is the same size, the…
Guide How picture books actually get adapted into braille for children A French teacher named Claudet spent 20 years working out what actually makes a tactile picture readable by a child’s fingers rather than just present on a page, and in 1994 he founded a nonprofit, Les Doigts Qui Rêvent, meaning Dreaming Fingers, specifically to…
Guide What ADA law actually requires braille signage to look like A restroom sign has to carry braille under federal law. The sign pointing toward that restroom from down the hallway generally doesn’t. That distinction trips people up constantly, and it’s the first thing worth getting right before looking at the physical specifications themselves, which…
Guide How deafblind people actually communicate, and where braille fits in In 2007, 3 deafblind colleagues working at the Deaf-Blind Service Center in Seattle, aj granda, Jelica Nuccio, and Jackie Engler, ran into a specific, recurring problem. American Sign Language relies heavily on facial expression and visual space, so using it as a deafblind person…
Guide How braille is actually taught, before a child ever reads a full word Before a child learns a single braille letter, a teacher is usually working on something that has nothing to do with reading at all, hand strength. A Perkins Brailler requires as much as 3 pounds of force to press its keys,…
Guide The Marrakesh Treaty: the international law that lets blind readers access books across borders On June 27, 2013, delegates meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco signed a treaty that broke a pattern nearly as old as copyright law itself. Almost every prior international copyright treaty exists to strengthen protections for rights holders. This one did the…
History Before braille: the chaotic decades of competing tactile alphabets In 1771, a French linguist named Valentin Haüy watched a public spectacle in Paris where blind people were dressed up and mocked for entertainment at a festival. It stuck with him. Roughly 13 years later, he founded what became one of the first schools for…
Guide How refreshable braille displays actually work Underneath the surface of a refreshable braille display sit rows of tiny pins, each one controlled by its own separate actuator, capable of rising and falling within a fraction of a second to form a new line of braille with no moving parts visible from outside the case….
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