Re: When I thought the blind community can't surprise me anymore
Nyce to see so many people sharing there braille stories.
Here's mine:
I began my academics with a bit of confusion about whether to go with braille or go with large font. I could read and right with sketch pens, those with a thicker tip. However, the reading speed wasn't satisfactory and lots of dependencies such as lighting, positioning of paper, the thickness of lines being drawn, the whiteness of paper affected my ability to read large print. And then after 2nd standard, i switched to a blind-school and they completely shifted my focus from large-print to braille. I still ponder whether it was a good move. Switching to braille has enabled me to read much more then what was I reading in large-print, but i was reading large-print in 2nd standard, so. Now i see people with a bit of sight blazing through digital interfaces with magnifiers and even reading with digital magnifiers, which makes me a bit jealous as now using my eyes to read has gone completely out of habit and have to depend on this chatty screen-reader to read and right.
Coming back to my Braille story, I raced through my academics with braille, even math was way simpler in braille. But, when college began, i realized that Braille is not a portable solution and traveling with braille notes through the crowded trains and rainy season was out of the question. And thus began my story about doing academics with technology. It was cool, being the only 1 with fancy gadgets in a class full of hundreds of sighted students, it definitely got me some attention from peers. But math was another story. I found it way tougher, numbers on a notepad application or microsoft word wasn't easy to make sence of. And i struggled with brackets and various math symbols which weren't on the keyboard. On that note, anyone knows how to type symbol "delta" without going through some list of symbols or typing some long string of codes to get to? Braille display would have solved this issue i guess. But it simply wasn't available to me at that time due to some reasons.
I also realized that text in these digital systems was more like audio than the text itself, since most of time, we are listening to it rather than reading the words. And no, I am too lazy to make NVDA or talkback to read passages character by character. Now, i simply ask Google assistant to spell any word that i come across and don't know the spelling or meaning.
Braille is amazing in the sense that it gives us the pleasure of reading even if we can't see. It's way easier to solve maths with braille than it is to go through numbers on notepad or MS word. Also, reading that gigantic novel on my study table just by the window gives me a very nostalgic feeling. So yeah, long live braille
Thanks,
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