2014-02-05-Braille Toolbox
Seminars@Hadley
Toolbox for Braille Presentations
Presented by
Donna Hernandez
Susan Fisher
Moderated by
Doug Anzlovar
February 5, 2014
Doug Anzlovar
Welcome to Seminars @Hadley my name is Doug Anzlovar and I will be your moderator for today’s seminar. Today’s topic is Braille Exchange, our quarterly series and the topic for today is Toolbox for braille presentations. I’d like to introduce you to and welcome our presenters, Donna Hernandez and Susan Fisher. Donna and Susan are veteran Hadley brailleinstructors. Donna teaches braille courses for sighted professionals, while Susan teaches braille courses for both our sighted professionals as well as our tactile audiences. I’m going to go ahead and hand the presentation over to Susan.
Susan Fisher
Thank you, Doug and thank you all for coming. One of the things that Donna and I find really helpful when giving the talk about braille is to get as much information about your audience as possible. Most importantly find out what are their goals. For example, our goal for this seminar is that you, the participant, come away with enough ideas and information so that you’ll be confident when asked to give a talk about braille. We hope to make giving braille presentations fun for you as the presenter as well as fun for those in your audience.
It’s important to introduce yourself to your audience and tell about your background in the field. Audiences like to hear about the presenters. Explain that sighted people who read braille most often learn to read by sight rather than touch and most people don’t know this. We read by sight because sighted people have not developed the nice sense of touch needed to read by touch. For those of us who are sighted it’s much more efficient to read by sight.
Share information with the audience on how you got into the field. How did you learn braille? Share your joys and frustrations that you experienced learning braille whether by sight or by touch. And if you read braille by touch, demonstrate how one reads by touch. Audiences really like to see a braille demonstration when one reads by touch. Take into consideration the age of your audience. Are they younger? Are they older? If your audience consists mostly of younger children consider just talking about uncontracted braille and making the talk as hands on as possible.
Find out if your audience is sighted or blind or a combination. Are there any people in the audience with hearing loss who may need to sit closer to you, the presenter? Again, what is the goal of the talk? What was the talk advertised as? If possible, it’s very helpful to contact the person who asked you to give the talk and find out what are the goals, what was the talk advertised as. How much time do you have for your presentation? Approximately how many will be in the audience and what is their background on the topic? How large is the room? Is there a microphone? Are you going to be on a pedestal? Getting the layout of the room can be very helpful.
Is your talk supposed to be formal or informal? Will the audience be encouraged and allow to ask questions during the talk or will there be a question and answer period at the end of the talk? Having this information prior to the talk can help you prepare accordingly. So once you know the goals of your talk to you can decide what items will be most appropriate to bring with you and it’s fun to bring items as kind of a show and tell. They spark interest and excitement about braille.
We’re going to talk about a lot of items here and they are just suggestions. If you can prepare in advance it’s fun to obtain as many of these as possible. And if you can’t obtain the actual items you can describe or show pictures of them. Again, it’s helpful to keep your talk as hands on as possible. We have Hadley bookmarks here that we can give you, if you request them. They have the raised alphabet on them. As an alternative there’s a picture of the brailler alphabet on our resource list that shows the dots in simulated braille. That is black dots on white rather than raised dots. So you can print out a copy for each participant. In fact, it might be helpful to give each participant both a braille bookmark and the simulated sheet.
Now I mentioned a resource list and that resource list will be included in the archived version of this seminar which should be available in about two days. There’s a book on our resource list called So What About Drawing? It’s important to show that braille can be fun. The resource gives direction for making actual pictures in braille. If possible, if you can braille one or two beforehand to show your audience or you can listen to the Hadley archived seminar on braille drawings. That information, again, is on our resource list. There you’ll find directions for making a heart, a snowman, a flag and many other pictures. So if you can, bring pictures to your talk, especially ones that are appropriate for the upcoming holidays.
If you can, bring braille books to your talk. Those spark a lot of interest. If you don’t have any braille books see if you can borrow some or contact your local library. It’s interesting to show both one sided braille books as well as interpoint braille books and explain that interpoint is two-sided braille. Bring with you a braille calendar and a braille ruler. These items get people thinking about how common items can be easily adapted with braille and there’s a listing of a place where you can receive free braille calendars on our resource list.
It’s always interesting to learn how one writes braille. If you have access to a braille writer and a slate and stylus you can bring those with. If you do not have access to those, there’s pictures that you can print out on our resource list. We’re going to talk a little bit later about some activities to do with the braille writer. One of my favorite things to bring is a braille eraser. Erasing braille is something that many have not thought about. So what I like to do is show a braille eraser and ask the audience participants if they have a guess as to what it could be. I’ve heard a lot of interesting things.
Bringing braille paper lends to a brief explanation that the thicker paper allows dots to be read easily but any type of paper can work. If you have access to Twin Vision books, those are the books that have visual pictures and wording in both braille and in print. A braille labeler can lend to a nice discussion of independence and how one can label cans and spices. There’s a source on our resource list of how you can obtain free braille clothing tags. Those are nice to show too. I’m sure you’ve seen braille on pillboxes at your local pharmacy. We also have a source on our list of braille playing cards to show that braille can be fun. If you have access to a braille and speak or refreshable braille, those always spark a lot of interest and excitement.
Now that you have some ideas of what to bring, let’s talk about some activities to promote braille. The riddle game is a fun activity to do with a group. On our resource list you’ll find a sheet with six riddles. The question is written in print and the answer in braille. Using the Hadley braille alphabet bookmark or the stimulated braille alphabet sheet, participants can decode the riddles. They can do this independently or they can work in groups. There’s a sheet on our resource list called “Brailler Alphabet” and this is to be used with the braille writer. This sheet shows which keys you need to depress to write each letter of the alphabet. You can use masking tape to number the keys on the brailler with the number of the dot the represent. If you like, and if you have time, you can have the participants write their own name or another word with your instruction as to which dots to depress.
The name game sparks immediate interest and it’s especially good if you have only a short amount of time. If you’re able to obtain a list of those who will be in your audience, if you can get their first names, on a small index card in advance braille each person’s name in uncontracted braille with no capital sign. Everybody loves to see their names in braille. If the audience does not contain young children you can write their names in contracted braille a few lines under the uncontracted braille name and then give an explanation of uncontracted braille versus contracted to braille.
Those new to braille may not be able to tell which side of the card is the top and which is the bottom. So try placing a paper punch at the top of the card that will show that this is the top and there won’t be any confusion with putting the card upside down. Donna is now going to offer some more activities.
Donna Hernandez
Thanks, Susan. I want to start out by saying that I taught in a high school vision resource program for over 33 years. During that time when the local elementary schools would get to a story about Helen Keller, usually in the second or third grade, I would get a call asking if I could come and give a presentation on braille to the class. So for many years my audience was almost always younger children. Most of the children had never had any experience with braille. So I wanted to show them not only how important braille was to someone who had no sight but also that it could be fun. So I’d always include different braille games to play.
When I first would tell them that they were going to play a game in braille they would say “But I don’t know braille.” And I would tell them that by the time they were done with me they would at least be able to read their name in braille. That got them really excited. I also have to say that when I started giving presentations to adults in a group, if they didn’t have experience with braille and I would say that, they also would get excited.
I would use a variation of the name game Susan talked about. I would braille the name of each child or adult in uncontracted braille on a strip of braille paper the size of a bookmarker. I would get their names ahead of time so I could do that. I would have bookmarks with the braille alphabet handy and give one to each person. I would then explain that there is a symbol in braille that stands for the capital sign and that is dot six. I would show them where the dot six was in a braille cell. If it was a group of children we would talk about how each of their names begin with a capital letter and this is how a braille reader would know that first letter was capitalized.
We would mix up the strips of paper with the names on them and have each person try and locate their own name, reminding them at the dot before the first letter stood for the capital sign. Another variation is to hand out the strips so that everyone has the name of someone else, depending on if the group knows each other. If I did it this way they would then have to find the person who belongs to the name on the card they were holding and give it to that person. At the end of the game they could each keep the card to use as a bookmark as well as the alphabet bookmark each would still have from what I handed out. They enjoyed that. They would go home and tell their parents they knew how to read braille because they now could read their name.
Another variation of this type of activity is to write the name of different objects in the room in braille, hand those out and have the person find the object that matches their card and then tape the card to the object in the room. This got the audience up and moving around and they would help each other. It got a lot of discussion going on on braille. Here’s some other activities I’ve used to get the participants involved in using braille. The American Foundation for the Blind has a website and you can get many activities in addition to the ones I’m going to talk about, on their site and that site will be listed on our resource list as well.
I would play braille Bingo with the audience. This was an activity I would usually do with groups of adults. I would prepare cards ahead of time that were Bingo cards and print number 1 through 15 in random order under the B, 16 through 30 under the letter I, 31 through 45 under the letter N, 46 through 60 under the letter G and numbers 61 through 75 under the letter O and again, they would be in print. I would then explain to the group that in literary braille each of the first nine numbers correspond with the letters A through I but they would have what is called a number sign in front of them so that they would know they were reading numbers instead of letters if they were non-sighted.
I would have a caller or I would be the caller who would write braille numbers on a blackboard or some other large board everyone could see. Players would then look at their card and have to locate the corresponding print number on their card and the game would continue until someone has Bingo. We would use food items usually, such as oyster crackers or M&M’s as their markers and they could eat them when the game was over. While the children didn’t seem to care what kind of food they ate, the adults really seemed to prefer those nice delicious M&M’s.
Another activity that was fun is to write a simple message in uncontracted braille and then cut that message up between the words. Give the participants, and you could do it either individually or in groups, the message in random order and the first person or group who figures out the message would win. Another simple activity was to give each participant a six-hole muffin tin or an egg carton cut in half. The caller would call out a letter and using their braille alphabet bookmarks as a key, the players would put objects such as the oyster crackers or M&M’s or nonfood items such as poker chips in the correct location in the tin carton to represent the letter in braille. The first one who raises their hand wins and gets to call out the next letter.
I have to tell you that one time I was doing this with a young group of children and we decided to use ping pong balls and after one time I realized why you don’t use something like ping pong balls with young children. They were all over that classroom.
Whenever possible I would invite braille readers and they were usually my high school students, to help with presentations. They were able to show others how they actually played games in braille, read books, used some of the items Susan suggested you bring to a presentation, use technology et cetera. This was something my students personally loved to do with me but it also left quite an impression on the audience to actually see those items put to use by someone who really needed them. So if you ever have the opportunity to bring someone who is blind and uses those different things, it’s a wonderful thing to do.
There are other activities that AFB suggests, that I’ve used, to help a teacher promote braille awareness in the classroom. Some of these include using braille on bulletin boards. As Susan mentioned you can draw in braille. So why not have a braille drawing on a bulletin board in addition to the construction paper ones and others that you see in print. Have a birthday celebration on Louie Braille’s birthday which is January 4th and in my high school resource program our classroom was pretty much surrounded by windows so people could see in. When we would have these birthday parties a lot of the kids and teachers would stop by to see whose birthday it was and my students had fun telling them all about Louie Braille and his birthday and that’s what we were celebrating.
You can fill a display case or have a place in the classroom to show braille related items such as, again, some of the items we suggested you bring to a presentation. In the high school I would actually use a display case in the hallway. So just about everyone in the school could see those items and be exposed to them. It did promote interest in braille. I had a pen pal exchange between my resource students and some of the students in their mainstream classes and they would exchange print and braille notes. I would have my students do their notes in uncontracted braille and we would give the students the braille alphabet cards. It was fun to see how quickly they wanted to learn it so they could read whatever my student had written to them.