Brailroom

An 8 year old student severely needs the use of braille to master her lessons. She is almost rebellious because she does not want to be picked on and labeled the "blind girl" although many of her fellow classmates wear glasses. What should the approach of the teacher be to the girl and her classmates? Should her academic progress be bought at a price of social isolation?

What I do is give the kid a choice. Let them know that they do have a choice and with each choice comes certain effects.

Get her alone with her parents. Explain to her that she has a choice. She can choose to use Braille to keep up in class and yes, they might call her the "blind girl." Or she can choose not to use Braille. She will start falling behind. She will be unable to answer questions in class and kids will laugh at her. She will start failing on tests and her parents will be upset. Eventually she will flunk and will be held back a year. The younger kids will know she flunked and they will call her the "stupid girl." And next year she will have the exact same choice as she does this year.

Give her a choice and let her know the negatives of each choice. I bet she would rather be known as the blind girl than the stupid girl.

because i think it would be awesome to be able to write something that only a few select people would know, but is easy to learn like cursive, rather than braille, morse code, and moon type?

runes?
ogham script?
cyrillic alphabet? like Russian.
chinese characters?

It’s on the part where he and Grace are taking samples from the tree, just before Jake is chased by the Thanator. What is written on Norm’s hat seems to be in Braille, and I copied it, but some of the letters don’t match the Braille alphabet. What does it mean?

Apparently it says 1969, which is the founding date of GAP, who made the hat.
Unfortunately, it has no reference to the film, or any special meaning at all, haha.

Are college and university-level books on Maths, Physics, Computer Science, Chemistry, and Biology available in braille anywhere in the world? Are these affordable enough? Is there any international library featuring such a collection?

If you attend school in the United States, your college or university will be required to ensure that you have textbooks in an accessible format. (The specific laws you’ll be depending on are Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.) You will not be required to pay more for your books than other students are, but you may not be able to keep them at the end of the semester. (I tend to think you ought to be, but sometimes schools borrow the texts to provide to students and have to return them at the end of the semester.) The schools have to pay to get the accessible formats — this can be as easy as having a publisher mail an electronic copy of the book or scanning a book without images, diagrams, columns, etc., and running it through OCR software, or as difficult and expensive as having a book with a lot of visual elements Brailled.

In many subjects, digital versions of texts are as accessible as Braille versions, but math, for instance, is one area where I don’t know anyone with experience who claims that there is any alternative to Nemeth Braille that comes close to providing the same level of access.

To qualify for accessible texts, you’d have to provide a copy of an evaluation, in English, explaining your need for the Brailled versions. That means that for people coming from many areas, the evaluation would end up being paid for here, and since most of us do not qualify for government-funded health care that’s a burden you might not have to assume if you want to study in some other countries. On the other hand, blindness is a lot easier (and cheaper) to establish than a number of other conditions that affect one’s ability to access print. So if you want to study in one of the above fields and you are already in the US or you can get to the US to study, there are at least options.

Braille was designed for letters of the Latin alphabet. However, Countries like China, Japan and Tibet use a completely different writing system. If so, do these countries that do not use the Latin alphabet have different braille system that they use to enable blind people read the characters? (especially as there are over 10,000 characters in these languages.)

There are many braille alphabets, designed for Arabic, Chinese etc. They are combinatory, just as we transliterate characters into pinyin for Chinese, so characters are transliterated into Braille.

Check out some of the details here:

http://www.fblind.org/eng/Arabic_Braille.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_braille

What is the pattern of laying out the dots in the braille alphabet system?

dot dot 2 bumpy dots 2 slanted dots and 1 hole dot

I’m in college and i have a special education class, the teacher said that we need to learn how to read braille for the next week, if we can’t that’s 10 points less from our final grade. So i need some tips about learning braille please. Thank You.
@Kevin Actually, that’s exactly what he plans : /

I doubt very much you understood the task. You cannot learn to read Braille in a week. Not even in a semester. You could learn to visually read Braille letters in a week. Or learn the basic gramatical structure of Braille. Or learn about the different grades of Braille. You need to discuss this with your professor further.

Im not blind, but i really want to learn. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to teach myself (i’d rather not take classes)? Are there any workbooks that someone suggests? What are the best methods to learning? Also just wondering is learning braille somethig good to put on a college application? Im 13 so i dont really have to think about that yet but im just curious. Thx to all answers

Id get a printed dot chart (one ink and one pressed) and study them. unfortunately, we are used to memorizing sight symblols, not touch symbols, so it may be hard to memorize… but id take one letter at a time and just sit down and go back and forth, looking at and feeling the letters.

-Good luck,
Rachel

I’ve recently begun to learn braille because I find it really interesting. I’ve learned grade 1 braille (the letters, numbers, and punctuation), but some sites I’ve researched say that grade 1 is not what is utilized in the real world. So what braille is on the signs in public places and such? Also, what kind of braille is published in books? Is it a combination? Thank you!

If you are a beginner you start with grade one but you can easily get to two.Fluent braille is grade three

I am registered blind but can see to an extent. i would like to learn braille but i don’t know how to go about this.
I just ordered a card with the alphabet on it

you need 1) a friend 2) a blindfold. sit down with the friend and wear the blindfold. have them move your hands from letter to letter, until you have memorized all the letters, punctuation, and numbers, etc. then, go to the library, and get a braille children s book. practice from there. keep the blindfold on. once you have taken away your sight completely, the sensitivity in your fingers is highly elated. keep thew blindfold on until you are confident. good luck!!