Blind from birth, Graeme Innes can’t remember the last time he sat down to read a book in braille. Instead, he listens to audiobooks. Yet Innes, who is Australia’s former disability discrimination commissioner, and Vision Australia’s first chair, still uses braille every day.
To seeing eyes, braille reads like an indecipherable morse code. Invented by Louis Braille in 1824, the 64 character script, made up of a matrix of six dots, was developed as a means of efficient communication for blind people. By the 2000s, however, the advance of technology led many to believe that braille would become redundant; teaching braille declined and many vision-impaired young people did not learn it.
But braille has had a revival during the past decade. Technology such as refreshable braille displays has made the script more portable and adaptable, and increasingly braille is being integrated into the community beyond books. For braille advocates, there is no substitute for braille when it relates to the literacy and communication skills of the vision-impaired.
“Everything I do is based on braille,” Innes says. “I have an Apple Watch – now, that speaks to me. But I also always carry a braille watch because I don’t want the watch speaking to me, in certain circumstances, such as when I’m asleep.”
Displaying the script by raising round-tipped pins up and down on a flat surface, a braille display is about the size of an iPad mini but a bit thicker. Innes says the device has been “revolutionary” since becoming mainstream in the mid-2000s. While technology is an aid, he says, recognition of the importance of braille for literacy is taking hold.
“You get to a point in your career, and if you can’t write notes in braille, and interact with those notes while fully participating in meetings … you just can’t keep progressing,” Innes says.
Lacking braille skills is something he says is easily recognisable to those who are blind, with a noticeable difference in the literacy, spelling and punctuation skills of those who are braille readers.
‘Complementary, not competing’
In Australia, it is estimated that 453,000 people are blind or have low vision, but there are no solid statistics on braille literacy here. A study conducted by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in the UK in 2015 found that of the about 350,000 registered blind or vision impaired, 7% use braille. A report by the National Federation of the Blind in the US in 2009 found that only 10% of blind children learn to read braille. The report estimated that at the height of its usage after being introduced as a universal code in 1932, 50% of children learned to read and write in braille.
Alongside technology bringing braille into a new age and audience, advocacy groups have secured access to braille in an increasing range of places and products. Recent moves have been made to continue integrating braille from credit cards to braille lego. It is now found on many every day products, including medication packaging, signage, and there is braille software installed on Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon devices. In Hong Kong, ferry terminals are known for having tactile maps, and Japan’s tenji blocks – or tactile paving – are widespread on many roads and at train stations. In 2016, the city of Sydney installed braille on 2,100 street signs in the council area, something that Innes said would be a “wonderful” standard to see everywhere.
Vision Australia emphasises the importance of using braille, audio or other technology in tandem, as “complementary, not competing ways of accessing information”.
Recently, a UV printer has provided the charity with opportunities to work with the Art Gallery of NSW, reproducing work from the Archibald prize as tactile materials to make an environment that is typically guarded by “don’t touch” signs more engaging for blind people.
“It was the first time I went to an art gallery and I didn’t get bored halfway through because either things weren’t being described to me adequately or I couldn’t touch anything,” says Kirsten Busby, a blind proofreader at Vision Australia.
“I was able to touch the artwork and I was able to be engaged as a sighted person would be.”
Bringing people together through experiences is central to UK library Clear Vision’s mission. Since 1985, a small team has been taking conventional children’s picture books and adding braille on a clear plastic sheet, bound back into the original book. The result is a story that can be read concurrently by a blind and sighted person.
“There’s nothing that’s commercially produced that contains both print and braille together. And that’s a problem,” says Alex Britton, director at the Clear Vision Project.
“If you’re a braille-reading adult, who’s got sighted kids or grandchildren … you can read to them from a braille book, or from a refreshable braille display but that’s not exciting for a three or four-year-old who wants to watch, see the pictures and be snuggled up on your lap to turn the pages.”
Vision Australia is also trying to bridge this gap, this year publishing their own picture book series, Big Visions, about historical Australian figures, which is now a part of their library collection in Kooyong, Victoria. The library, which operates in person, online and by post, has a 45,000 title strong library of DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) or talking books, plus more than 8,000 braille titles, many of which can be downloaded in e-braille.
And it is not only books that are increasingly becoming accessible but the libraries they are held in. In 2020 the National Library of Australia in Canberra became BindiMapped in 2020, allowing those with vision impairment to easily navigate the building and resources via an audio guided app.
For braille-reader Dave Williams, it is those small things that make a big difference, particularly when integrating braille into the community.
“I went on a cruise with Royal Caribbean and they put braille on their handrails on the staircase, like underneath, so your fingers curled around the handrail, you discovered the braille.”
And in 2021, after crossing the finish line of London Marathon, Williams found braille on the medal hung around his neck for the first time.
“It said, ‘We run together’, and I could read it. It wasn’t somebody reading it to me,” he says. “Being able to do that yourself, I think, is quite powerful.”
