A Blantyre teen has explained how Braille, the system of raised dots that has enabled blind people to read and write, is as vital as ever.
Working with the country's leading sight loss charity, Royal National Institute of Blind People Scotland, Nicola McCrory helped mark the anniversary of the birth of its inventor Louis Braille (1809-52), the Frenchman who himself became blind at the age of four on Wednesday, January 4.
The braille system is based on six raised dots, arranged in two columns of three. Variations of the six dots represent the letters of the alphabet, punctuation and groups of letters.
For Nicola, a fifth year pupil at Uddingston Grammar, with the sight condition pineal blastoma, braille is part of her every day life.
She told Lanarkshire Live: "I can see nothing out my left eye and roughly about 10 per cent with my right eye.
"I use braille on a daily basis for class work and I can send and receive emails. Although I can also read 72 font-size text with my sight, I do like using braille because a lot of word and letter combinations are contracted so it is quicker to type.
"I enjoy books in both braille and audio. If I had to pick a favourite author I would probably pick David Walliams because his books are quite funny. But my favourite books are 'The Hunger Games', 'Twilight', 'Percy Jackson' and my very, very favourite, 'Harry Potter'."
James Adams, director of RNIB Scotland, said: “For thousands across the world, braille means independence, knowledge and freedom.
"Braille also lets you read out loud - a bedtime story to children, a presentation at work, sing in a choir from braille music sheets, or play games such as Monopoly, Scrabble and cards where there are braille versions available.
"And modern braille-writing equipment can connect seamlessly with personal computers and mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, while text-reading software can vocalise back to you what you've inputted. Dots, letters, numbers - it's all just input information to a computer."
RNIB, itself, has 10,900 braille library master-files it can produce a book from. Readers can request a printed-off braille copy, download a title from RNIB's reading services platform, or buy a SD card with thousands of braille files available on it. The most popular authors requested include J K Rowling, Anna Jacobs, Richard Osman, Lee Child, Elly Griffiths and Maeve Binchy.
The RNIB library also has over 2,451 electronic master-files for braille music scores and various maths and science books and codes, as well as maps.
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