Opportunity…

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

• https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/02/wed-be-stuck-alarm-as-uks-last-braille-typewriter-repairer-ponders-retirement?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Amazing and also very sad. I am sighted and would not like to do his work.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Very sad, very worrying, and a salutary reminder that all of us, in many different ways, rely on so much that most people have no idea exists – or if they do, take for granted.

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Interesting, and sad that the only specialist is retiring, but more than little overdramatic.

The Perkins is a fundamentally simple machine and, frankly, most issues are fixable by anyone with a bit of technical nouse and the delicacy of touch to handle small parts. My brother spent his working life as piano tuner / repairer so I’m no stranger to the ability of blind folk to do fine, tricky work. That said I’m impressed that blind person can repair the Perkins due to the confined spaces and a certain need in some areas for things to go on and come off just so. Not to mention the ability of the pesky little springs to self launch into another dimension.  I’ve been inside my brothers a time or three to get it going properly again. The older, cruder, Stainsby Brailler is a lot easier to sort if it stops but, according to brother is irredeemably slow.

The Perkins is tough beast, built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Brother is machine gun fast on his and, ahem, less than gentle on the mechanism but it has stood up well for getting on for 60 years. Although its been mostly ued for private record keeping of a goodly number of years as braille has been in decline for many years as a blind person to blind person correspondence method.

The spring issue surprises me. I’d have thought that the RNIB would have taken steps to ensure that there was a suitable stock of such tings and other obvious, potentially breakable, components such as keys in the UK. Especially as the RNIB site says that the machine should be sent to a qualified person for service every 3 to 5 years. Which implies there are other folk in the UK able to do it. But, like most old established charities the RNIB don’t seem to be very good at the joined up thinking thing.

Maybe I’ll ask my brother if there are other service folk in the UK.

Interested to se that the latest version has a screen for live display of a text translation of the braille being produced when co-operating with a sighted person. I wonder if it handles the contractions used with braille properly.

Clive

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

I went to school down the road from a school for the blind. We had a number of pupils from the blind school who were in the same class as me after they moved from junior school. They had lots of stuff to carry round so we used to help carry their things. One of the things we frequently carried was the Braille typewriter. As an 11 year old you had to lean a bit to one side to cope with the weight and that meant it stuck out on the other side of your body. It was not unknown for people hurrying past to smack their knees or legs on them, yelp with pain and turn round as though they were going to complain or worse. Once they saw the Braille typewriter they assumed the person carrying it was blind so just went on their way. I suspect that there would have been trouble if it had been any other heavy lump being carried.

As I recall they had the Braille typewriters, small dicta-phone tape recorders, ordinary portable typewriters and some  school books that had been made into Braille books that were a lot larger than the simple print books. One of the blind pupils who was a few years older became the president of the Oxford Union. Instead of doing sports someone from the school for the blind spent the time teaching them to use a white stick in the roads around the school.

Martin C

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

How current are these machines?

There are Braille printers available.

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Martin

Still made and sold, about £800 a pop for the plain mechanical one and £2,500 for the fancy one with a screen showing normal text.

Braille printers have their place but it’s more gear to set up and they need power.

Clive

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Thanks for the reply Clive. There do seem to be a few all in one word processor type braille devices which look portable.

Martin

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Also now there are PU overlays for keyboards that superimpose the braille embossing for each character.  What we really need is the haptic touch “screen” for tablets and phones.

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

John

Blind folk generally do much better than we sighted folk might expect with plain touch screen phones. From the iPhone 5 onwards. Whatever your views on the “Apple Tax” they have always been well ahead in making a decent stab at building accessibility right into the operating system.

Brother has one from HumanWare using their “adapted for the poor blind” android skin and OS adaptations. Frankly I’m unconvinced. It works, up to a point, but its clunky and, like all their stuff you pay seriously for the adapted privilege.

Annoys me a bit because he could certainly handle an iPhone with the Apple accessibility stuff properly sorted and not have to live in a “poor blind” ghetto. And don’t get me started on the HumanWare E-mail. however switching is one thing that is way, way harder for blind person than a sighted person due to having to re-program muscle memory.

Overlays on a plain keyboard are no advantage to a blind person. Separate simple button set-up to do the job is more convenient.

Voice control and automatic transcription is making ,life much easier and converging the blind folk world much closer to the sighted world. Which is good thing because mainstream tech is invariable far cheaper and more polished than the special offerings.

Clive

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