[nabs-l] Braille Highlighters?

Heather Field missheather at comcast.net
Mon Dec 10 00:46:22 UTC 2012


Hello Brandon,
There isn't any actual "tool", to my knowledge, that will do what you want. 
However, I can fully appreciate the need for what you've described. I have a 
couple of suggestions for you to try. Obviously, I make no claim to their 
success but I'm just trying to think of something that will be simple and 
fast for you to use on the fly.

My immediate first thought was Wikki sticks. You could get some from any 
local store with a craft or toy department. Then, you could experiment with 
cutting them into different lengths. You could buy, in the same craft 
department, a small, flat box that is divided into compartments of different 
sizes. Then, you could separate the different sized pieces of Wikki sticks 
into their sections. Perhaps, you could place a very small piece vertically 
in the space before the phrase that requires a reminded action. If there was 
a phrase that required an extra loud or soft tone, you could have a longer 
piece of Wikki stick that ran horizontally under the whole phrase; it could 
go below for softer and above for louder. You could work out other 
positions, sloping diagonally forward or back for example, for other 
reminders. This is the quickest, "on the fly" idea I had.

A slightly less elegant, slower, but possibly of equal flexibility idea, is 
to simply take a stylus with you and poke up dots or lines from under the 
paper. You could have a one line dymo tape slate which you positioned, holes 
down, roughly over the line under which you had positioned the stylus. Thus, 
when you poked the stylus up from under the paper to the spot where you had 
positioned the point to come through, you could stop it from making a hole 
by putting the slate over it. A small square of neoprene or rubber material 
would work just as well. You could also experiment with using a small 
tracing wheel, available from the American Printing house, and using it 
under the paper while you kept your fingers on the braille facing up and 
made a line under or over the braille you want to mark.

I believe that you could get more than competent with these techniques, it 
would only take a bit of experimenting and practise on your part. I agree 
with you that, at this level of performance, you really do need to 
streamline the process and get a set of tactile marking in place that does 
an equivalent job for a tactile reader that highlighters do for print 
readers.
I hope one of these ideas works for you. Who knows, you might find that a 
combination of both is your final answer.
Warmly,
Heather field

-----Original Message----- 
From: Brandon Keith Biggs
Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2012 11:32 AM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: [nabs-l] Braille Highlighters?

Hello,
I am wondering if any kind of Braille highlighter has been invented yet?
Something that could change the texture of the page while still keeping the
Braille readable?
This has been something that all my teachers have been telling me to do with
my Braille books and music, as of now it is either write notes in another
device that may crash, or put not really accurate dots that can fall off on
the spot I want to mark. (Not to menschen that becomes a lot of dots after a
while).
So if anyone has ever encountered a Braille highlighter please let me know!
Thank you,

Brandon Keith Biggs


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