I'm just your average (well, maybe better then average :-) man, who happens to be blind.  Although there have been amazing advances in accommodations for the disabled over the past couple decades, there are still some things that drive me crazy!  Public restrooms are at the top of the list.  The men's room to be more specific.

The designers use no logic when building a restroom.  First, as a blind man you must be very careful when finding your way around in a public restroom.  I can tell you from personal experience that when other men are using a standing facility, they do not like when you accidentally bump their back with your hand.......no no, not at all!

I've had many experiences where I thought I was going to be knocked out by someone who I bumped on accident.  Not that I blame them; men are very sensitive to their "personal space" while in a public facility........we all know that.

Now, after I'm successful with the first order of "business" now comes the washing of hands.  It isn't too bad finding the sink and washing my hands.  But then I obviously need to dry my hands and wouldn't you know it, I can't find the towels!  So, let's see......how far they can put the towel machine from the sink.  Could it be at either end of the sinks?  No.  Now I have to start feeling around the walls which makes my clean hands dirty again.  Oh, I found it.....it's over here in Hawaii!  Just kidding =)  Now that I've actually found the towel machine, now I'm going to have to rinse my hands all over again.

Here's a hint that didn't take me long to figure out.  Always find the towels first before you try washing your hands.  LOL!!

Ok, I'm now about ready to leave now the restroom.  Do you think they always put the trash bin in the same place?  Nah, that would be too easy.  Let's see, maybe it's under the towel machine, or near the end of the sink counter, or maybe it's near the door.  Sometimes all the restroom has is a small hole on the counter top to drop your used towels in and every once in a while there may not even be a trash bin in the restroom at all, which is a problem for all men, not only men who are blind.

I can't help but wonder if designers get a kick out of all this.  I'm sure they are not intentionally designing restrooms to make it hard on people who are blind, but I can just picture them sitting around with their buddies laughing about this stuff.

Next time I'll talk about those loud hand-dryers.

Please feel free to add to this if you would like.  I welcome any comments you may have.

This is an amazing story!!  Here's something that people who are legally blind or have low vision will be excited about: three patients had their sight restored in less than a month by contact lenses cultured with stem cells. 

All three patients were blind in one eye.  The researchers extracted stem cells  (non embryonic) from their working eyes, cultured them in contact lenses for 10 days, and gave them to the patients.  Within 10 to 14 days of use, the stem cells began recolonizing and repairing the cornea.

Of the three patients, two were legally blind but can now read the big letters on an eye chart, while the third, who could previously read the top few rows of the chart, is now able to pass the vision test for a driver's license.  The research team isn't getting over excited, still remaining unsure as to whether the correction will remain stable, but the fact that the three test patients have been enjoying restored sight for the last 18 months is definitely encouraging.  The simplicity and low cost of the technique also means that it could be carried out in poorer countries.

It's hard to not get excited about this.  Just think of thousands and thousands of poeple this could help!  Wow, I get goose bumps just thinking about the possibilities.

Check out the original post here written by Adam Frucci with Gizmodo.com

I am circulating a lengthy post regarding efforts to limit an international treaty that would allow for rules that parallel existing domestic exceptions to the copyright law for blind people to govern in an international context.  Please help bring pressure on authorities by letting President Obama know that these provisions would be useful, and ask him to direct his representatives to abandon their hostile posture toward aspects of the treaty that would be helpful.

You may E-mail your concerns to President Obama by following the link here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Post:

Right now, in Geneva, at the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization, history is being made.  For the first time in WIPO history, the body that creates the world's copyright treaties is attempting to write a copyright treaty dedicated to protecting the interests of copyright users, not just copyright owners.

At issue is a treaty to protect the rights of blind people and people with other disabilities that affect reading (people with dyslexia, people who are paralyzed or lack arms or hands for turning pages).

This should be a slam dunk!  Who wouldn't want a harmonized system of copyright exceptions that ensure that it's possible for disabled people to get access to the written word?  The USA, that's who.  The Obama administration.

U.S. negotiators have joined with a rogue's gallery of rich country trade representatives to oppose protection for blind people.  Other nations and regions opposing the rights of blind people include Canada and the EU.

Update:  Also opposing rights for disabled people: Australia, New Zealand, the Vatican and Norway.

Activists at WIPO are desperate to get the word out.  They're tweeting madly from the negotiation (technically called the 18th session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights) publishing editorials on the Huffington Post, etc.

Here's where you come in:  This has to get wide exposure, to get cast as broadly as possible, so that it will find its way into the ears of the obscure power-brokers who control national trade-negotiators.  I don't often ask readers to do things like this, but please, forward this post to people you know in the US, Canada and the EU, and ask them to reblog, tweet, and spread the word, especially to government officials and activists who work on disabled rights.  We know that WIPO negotiations can be overwhelmed by citizen activists -- that's how we killed the Broadcast Treaty negotiation a few years back -- and with your help, we can make history, and create a world where copyright law protects the public interest.

The United States government, in combination with other high income countries in "Group B" are seeking to block an agreement to discuss a treaty for persons who are blind or have other reading disabilities.

The proposal for a treaty is supported by a large number of civil society NGO's, the World Blind Union, the National Federation of the Blind in the US, the International DAISY Consortium, Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D), Bookshare.org, and other groups representing persons with reading disabilities all around the world.

The main aim of the treaty is to allow the cross-border import and export of digital copies of books and other copyrighted works in formats that are accessible to persons who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic or have other reading disabilities, using special devices that present text as refreshable Braille, computer generated text to speech, or large type.  These works, which are expensive to make, are typically created under national exceptions to copyright law that are specifically written to benefit persons with disabilities.

The opposition from the United States and other high income countries is due to intense lobbying from a large group of publishers that oppose a "paradigm shift," where treaties would protect consumer interests, rather than expand rights for copyright owners.

The Obama Administration was lobbied heavily on this issue, including meetings with high level White House officials.  Assurances coming into the negotiations this week that things were going in the right direction have turned out to be false, as the United States delegation has basically read from a script written by lobbyists for publishers, extolling the virtues of market based solutions, ignoring mountains of evidence of a "book famine" and the insane legal barriers to share works.

There are two methods to mass-produce Braille documents; one is embossed Braille and the other is pressed or plated Braille.

Both methods can produce two sided Braille called "inter-point" Braille.  This is made possible by offsetting the lines of Braille from the front to the back of the page so they do not overlap each other and can be read for both sides.

Embossed Braille is generated from Braille printers called "embossers" which receive their files from computer software Braille translation programs.  The documents are transmitted to embossers that can produce small and large quantities of pages.  Although some-what slower than pressed Braille, this method allows more flexibility and can be produced on a variety of paper weights.

These documents are run on continuous paper that is burst apart into single sheets and bound with a multi ringed binding comb.  The book can then be opened flat or folded back on it-self for easy use by the reader.  Various cover materials can be used to give the document stability, a better presentation and keep them clean and dry in all environments.  This type of binding is very practical for restaurant menus or for storage in brief cases and on shelving.

Embossed Braille can also be bound in a folded magazine "saddle stitched" method.  Usually this method is reserved for smaller documents for ease of reading.  Braille embossers can be small table top units or large industrial size high-speed units that are floor standing models.

The savings is significant on the set-up and production labor because all the preparation for embossed Braille is done on a computer and translates directly to the embosser as opposed to pressed Braille where the translating is done on a computer and then a plate for each side of each page must be created and every page pressed individually.

Pressed Braille may be faster in some cases although the cost for preparation is significantly more.  Pressed Braille is first produced through a Braille translation program, but then a costly plate must be made for each side of each page.  The plates are placed in large presses and require personnel to operate them through-out the entire process.

The paper is limited to a lighter stock and can only be folded "saddle stitched" with out protective covers.  Since these documents are folded it is more difficult for the reader to use.  The paper cannot be folded flat until you get toward the center of the document. 

Pressed Braille is not a flexible system and cannot be changed on the fly. If the customer has a change in a document after the plates are produced, new plates need to be made at the expense of the customer. If they want to make a change after the pages have been collated and stapled it would be almost impossible. 

Storage and portability is more difficult with pressed Braille documents and the life of the product is shortened because of the lack of protective covers and the lighter paper that is used.

It's a common misconception that pressed Braille is the only method for large volume Braille runs; the emergence of high-speed embossers has put an end to depending on pressed Braille. A high speed embosser can produce a thousand pages in an hour.  Can you imagine a person pressing that many pages in that amount of time?  It can't be done.

Braille is a system of reading and writing in your language without the use of sight.  Braille can be produced in many languages, English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and many more.

Transcribing is the process of converting a printed text to Braille.  Transcribing is sometimes called translating but this term may have the misleading connotation that Braille is a different language rather than merely a different system of reading and writing.

Braille is a technique for enabling blind and visually-impaired people to read and write.  Refined in the late 1800's by Louis Braille for blind people, it was originally developed by a French army captain to enable officers to read battle commands without the aid of candle light hence revealing your position.

Each Braille character or "cell" is made up of 6 dot positions, arranged in a rectangle comprising 2 columns of 3 dots each.  A dot may be raised at any of the 6 positions, or any combination.  Counting the space, in which no dots are raised, there are 64 such combinations.  For reference purposes, a particular combination may be described by naming the positions where dots are raised; the positions being universally numbered 1 through 3 from top to bottom on the left and 4 through 6 from top to bottom on the right.

For example, dots 1-3-4 would describe a cell with three dots raised, at the top and bottom in the left column and on top of the right column.  Because the 64 distinct characters are never enough to cover all possible print signs and their variations, it is necessary to use multi-character sequences for some purposes.  Often this is accomplished by using certain characters as "prefixes" or "indicators" that affect the meaning of subsequent cells.  For example, a dot 6 before a letter indicates that the letter is a capital, whereas otherwise it is understood to be lower case.  For another example, dots 3-4-5-6, called the "numeric indicator", causes certain following letters ("a" through "j") to be reinterpreted as digits.

For visual examples, visit our Braille Alphabet page here.

Dot height, cell size and cell spacing are always uniform, and so many significant characteristics of the text, such as italics used for emphasis, must be handled by such indicators in Braille.  An exception to that formatting, such as the centering of main headings, is commonly used in Braille in much the same way and for most of the same purposes as in print.

Separate Braille codes may be used for notation systems other than natural languages such as music, mathematics and computer programming.

Partly because of the size that Braille pages occupy, and partly to improve the speed of writing and reading, the literary Braille codes for English and many other languages employ "contractions" that substitute shorter sequences for the full spelling of commonly-occurring letter groups.  For example, "the" is usually just one character in Braille.  When contractions are used, the Braille is usually called "grade 2" in contrast to "grade 1" transcriptions where all words are spelled out letter-for-letter.

I am writing this from personal experience and I am a Braille reader.  I was fortunate enough to be taught Braille as a child.  This was before the belief became popular that other means of reading were just as good.  All of these methods require hearing words read either by others reading to you, or through some kind of technology that speaks the written words.

All the methods above are valid and I use all of them.  I am more than thankful for the ability to use a screen-reader for pleasure and work purposes; however nothing can replace the ability to read materials for yourself.  When others read to you, they tend to put emphasis on the sections of text they feel are important and down-play parts they are not as passionate about.  When reading for yourself, you can use your own thoughts and feelings to give weight to a subject matter.

When I read the Bible, I can ponder a section of verses as long as needed to gather the meaning of them.  When listening to text, the tendency is to stop listening while pondering, but usually the audio continues forward.  When you tune back in you realize you missed a portion of the text and then you must either back-up, or you usually just pickup where you tuned back in.  The same applies to restaurant menus, or manuals.

The truth is, if you can't read, spell and write for yourself, I believe the term for sighted people is illiterate.

Studies have been done showing that only ten percent of blind children are taught Braille.  I can tell you this that when my children who are sighted went to school if they were not taught how to read and write, I would have been in the school office demanding that the practice of not teaching reading and writing be changed.

I also know that many people lose their sight later in life and may feel that it would be to hard to learn Braille.  I can tell you that I have met men who were steel workers that had huge hands with calloused fingers who lost their sight in their forties and fifties and they learned Braille.

Please understand I am not saying that Braille is the only method for us who are blind to read and learn, but it is the only method that allows us to see words and the spelling of them.

I am sure that every state has centers where Braille is taught. Check out this state by state resource list from the National Federation of the Blind for more information.