[NABS-L] getting hard copy braille chapter books and other accessible information

[John Miller]

Hello,
If you are a blind braille reader and enjoy reading a chapter book in hard copy braille, please remember to reach out to your regional library of the National Library Service NLS to request a braille book. If you know someone who is blind and in middle school, high school, community college, or college they very likely are enrolled in an English course or will be taking an English course soon.
I have had the opportunity to be the mentor of a blind tenth grader who lives near me.  I am tracking his course materials and if they are presented to him in a timely fashion.  One of the chapter books in his English course is Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. Incidentally, the author was born in 1797 and wrote the book in 1818 when she was 19 years old.  It being October Frankenstein is a great book to read in honor of Halloween.  There were very few female writers in England and northern Europe in 1818.  As a blind person living in a sighted world I find reading Mary Shelley so inspiring as I think about the courage it took for her to claim her place as an female author in a male dominated world. Anyway in English class my blind mentee was assigned to read Frankenstein.  The hard copy braille version of the book was not provided by the school.  The story had a happy ending.  After a couple of weeks the hard copy braille for the book was provided to my mentee.  He read the entire book in braille, and he tells me he enjoyed it so much.  Hard copy braille or paper-based braille as the Educational Testing Service (ETS) is now calling it is a very efficient way for blind people to read.  When I was in middle school and high school, I always checked at my regional library of NLS if they had a braille copy of the assigned text and often they did.  Last Friday I called my regional library of NLS which is Braille Institute in California and asked if they had Frankenstein in braille.  They said yes but then almost sent me the audio version by mistake.  They then commented that they had one copy of the book in braille in stock and they would send it out on Monday.  The book arrived at my home yesterday less than one week after I ordered it.
When I first heard my blind mentee was having difficulty getting a braille text I wish I had remembered the simple and effective method of checking at NLS.
I could have got the book for him within one week of him reporting the problem.
On the other hand, I now have the single copy that is in stock at the Los Angeles NLS regional library.
I have to read it quickly and return it and then it can go to someone else.
The first page of the book Frankenstein reports that it was brailled by Braille International, Inc. in 1999. Thank you to the braille transcribers at Braille international Inc. and to those at NLS who helped keep this book in circulation. AT NLS the book has the identification number br12173 so you can request it by its title or by that number.

In middle school and high school I read many chapter books in hard copy braille.  A number of books in middle school and high school I read in audio format.  I found that if I read the book in hard copy braille I would likely get a 100 percent on the in-class reading comprehension test but often only scored a 70 percent on the books I read in audio.  Based on my test results I formed a strong preference for reading assigned material in hard copy braille.  I worked hard in AP English and received a score of 5 in the AP English exam.  Having the college credits from the AP English exam was quite helpful in completing my college studies.
I just wanted to take a moment and thank the volunteers who work with NLS in selecting which books are made available in braille through NLS.  I recall reading in braille several books by Mark Twain, Great Expectations, a Tale of Two Cities, Hamlet and many other Shakespeare plays, and who could forget Wuthering Heights.  The character Heathcliff is such a sad and brooding fellow.

There is a viewpoint that electronic braille or refreshable braille is superior to hard copy braille.  I personally believe that hard copy braille is better and that I also wish for an electronic copy in braille for reference and that I can store in the cloud for the rest of my life. Braille is braille.  I would ask for both electronic braille and hard copy braille for any material that you are considering to request in braille in support of K-12 classes or college courses.
Without advocating for hard copy braille an educational institution is going to provide electronic braille not hard copy braille.  After hours and hours of reading and skimming through electronic braille, the constant pushing of buttons on a refreshable braille display can cause soreness in the fingers, hands, wrists, or arms.  Because the refreshable braille display is expensive, hard to replace, and weighs more than a volume of hard copy braille, blind people do not position the refreshable braille display in the same way that they do a hard copy braille volume.  Multiple hours of reading the refreshable braille can cause discomfort whereas reading the hard copy braille which is positioned comfortably does not. You can fall asleep reading a hard copy braille volume and no harm will come to it.  If you fall asleep while reading refreshable braille you could potentially permanently harm the refreshable braille display and need to find a second unit to continue reading.

No blind student should be left waiting for weeks on end without their preferred reading format while their sighted peers work with the  assigned printed material.
Next time this happens to someone you know, perhaps they could order the book from NLS and ask the course instructor to shift the reading order of the course.
After all, the braille copy will arrive to the blind student in one or possibly two weeks.
As a blind community could we survey high school English teachers and college English course instructors?
Perhaps this survey could provide a list of commonly assigned K-12 or college English materials.
Acting on such a list perhaps the blind community could work to make sure that it is a rare occurrence for a book to be assigned in a K-12 or college English course that is not readily available in a preferred alternate format for the blind.
I am an optimist though and likely working to solve this problem is what we have been doing all along and still we have these gaps in accessible reading for the blind.

A number of years ago I took a college course that assigned seven print books on the reading list.  I used a flatbed scanner, optical character recognition (OCR) software, and a screen reader to read the books.  It was the most efficient way to get through the material and to have a copy on hand for future reference.  It was an amazing feeling to have a print book in my hand and several hours later to have the entire book available in ASCII text because of OCR.  I knew going forward I could read any print book with just a few hours of effort.  There are two blindness OCR pieces of software to which I have the license but somehow I have installed neither one on my current Windows 11 PC.  So at the moment I m not the best person to ask to take a print book and turn it into ASCII text with a quick turn-around time.
I remember fondly having the working access technology for OCR all ready to go.
I encourage each blind K-12 student to personally scan a print book with OCR technology at least once to have the confidence and experience that print can be converted to something accessible in a small amount of time and without depending on others.
In the Access On Podcast it is reported that you can scan a document or book, save it as PDF, open Copilot in Office 365, and just ask Copilot to do the OCR and save the output in MSWord or ASCII text.  I have not tried such a thing yet but it sounds cool.

At any rate, please continue advocating for yourself and other members of the blind community in gaining access to screen reader friendly information, and accessible audio and braille materials.
very best,
John Miller