Speaker: Susan Potter

Read Aloud With Confidence (Extra 78)

Reading aloud is a skill that is both terrifying and liberating. Adding braille to the mix presents unique challenges that can often get in the way of recognising significant progress. Along with reading speed and fluency, the one question we hear most often is: “How can I improve my ability to read aloud?”

Building on the topics from her popular masterclass, Revitalise Your Braille Reading Technique, Chantelle Griffiths returns to uncover some of the mystery and magic of reading aloud and to share some tips and tricks to help.

In this masterclass we explored:

  • How a six-year-old Chantelle connected the dots between elephants, cats and reading aloud, and the one word she learned that can help you, too.
  • What reading aloud is not, and why “not” helps a lot!
  • The surprising visual analogy that can improve your reading exponentially, if you choose to see it.
  • The three infuriating words that everyone hates to hear but loves to experience.
  • How moving on is not giving up, but levelling up.
  • The capital B mindset that resets your brain and your reading practice every time.
  • And so much more.

Why not bring along some familiar reading material, electronic or hardcopy, and try some of what you learn with us in real time.

Whether you’re new to reading aloud or you just want a fresh perspective, there’s something here for everyone.

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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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Fully Automated Braille Translation with RoboBraille (Extra 72)

Sometimes, you just need a BRF file with no fuss, even though you know it might have the occasional error or won’t be formatted quite as you’d like.

RoboBraille is one solution to this problem. It works with a large variety of file formats including PDF, Microsoft Word and plain text, and converts them to braille within a matter of minutes. Best of all, it’s entirely online, so you don’t need to install anything. You can use it on computers even if you don’t have admin rights, smartphones, tablets and even braille notetakers.

Join us in this episode to find out:

  • When is fully automated translation appropriate (and when is it not)?
  • Translating files through the robobraille.org website
  • Translating files by emailing RoboBraille
  • How to evaluate the output
  • Where to find help
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Improving Reading Speed and Building Braille Mastery with Kit Aronoff (Episode 32)

It’s a question we get asked all the time – how can I read braille more quickly? To answer it, we were delighted to be joined on Tuesday 19 October by Kit Aronoff of Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and founder of Main Line Accessibility Consulting. Kit has a background in elementary education and, using principals of teaching literacy to emerging readers and articles from the National Federation of the Blind, she has developed a series of strategies which are sure to benefit even the most competent of braillists.

Our Chairman Dave Williams led the discussion, and he started by asking Kit to describe her braille learning journey.

Resources

  • Braille Together Mingle is organised by the American Council of the Blind. For more information, email [email protected]
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