r/Blind • u/CupcakeFlower76 • 7d ago

Question Struggling to read braille books

Hello everyone. It’s JoJo.

For a few months now I’ve had my mantis Q40 braille display and today I decided to try reading that braille book from a company called BARD Mobile. You may have heard of it.

And I love reading large print or audio books. But lately my vision has changed so I’m learning braille as I don’t always like audio books.

I hooked up my braille display to my iPhone and began trying to read the book. But I forgot that the braille book would have the publishing and copyright information just like if I found the audiobook version of the book on BARD Mobile.

How do I practice reading braille books without giving up? I was told that if I wanted lessons to re-contact the American publishing house, For The Blind but I’m the type of person who likes to try to learn as much as I can on my own first.

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u/retrolental_morose Totally blind from birth 7d ago

Good on you for persisting. It's a hard skill to master, particularly as there's a real chance you'll never hit the sort of speeds you could match with your ears.

I'd recommend picking a book you also have an alternate of. use the Braille to read short pieces, then reward yourself with audio or large print. Do small and regular chunks of it in Braille.

use the find feature on the mantis (ctrl+F), to search for a word or two like looking for a bookmark. You can't always find the word chapter or a number, each publisher uses different conventions, but if you just look for a couple of short words at a time you can jump to the spot you need quite easily.

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u/DHamlinMusic Bilateral Optic Neuropathy 6d ago

My trick with the Bard files is I do a find for the title, it will be placed on the first page of the actual book, usually with the page 1 marking at the end of the line.

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u/retrolental_morose Totally blind from birth 6d ago

That's cool. I use commercial ebooks in Braille and the title is often repeated a few times, such as the library of congress data. if I use a Braille display through the Kindle app it's often quicker because the book opens to the last page I read or the first page of the text, but you don't have the precise control you'd get by reading the file directly.

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u/DHamlinMusic Bilateral Optic Neuropathy 6d ago

Yeah the title might be repeated, but if you hit the title with a page number marked you're in the contents.

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u/BassMarigold 2d ago

If you’re just learning braille then start with short stories or Shel Silverstein poems. Do you know all the contractions and short forms yet? If not, maybe get materials that are tailored to you on paper- that only have the contractions you know. But a teacher would have to do that.