What is the fastest way to learn braille?

What would be the best way to learn braille by myself?

• I have always been interested in learning to read braille but I dont havve the money for a tutor or lessons. I have been researching online and it looks okay so I am wonder what would ...show more

• Answer:

  Learning the basics of Braille can be done fairly easily. There are countless resources on the web: just about every blindness organisation publishes a template somewhere with the 26 letters of the alphabet and some basic punctuation. You can learn to write that by sketching with a pencil as a previous respondent as said. Learning to read it, however, might take a little more creativity. Sites like Gutenburg project have downloadable Braille files, though most are in what they call "contracted" Braille, (a little more difficult than the basic letters.) The other possibility you have is to take a text which you know fairly well: the passage from a book, a web post..., copy it into a Word document, highlight the whole thing and set it to a Braille font, again, downloadable from the web. This way, you can read something you're familiar with and get to know the Braille letters at the same time. The only danger is that you might be picking up computer Braille punctuation rather than literary Braille punctuation. Another option would be to do what a friend of mine did: get hold of a book you know well, (in his case it was the Bible), start at a familiar passage, maybe the first chapter and look up every single symbol you encounter. That's not the smoothest way to learn, but if you're motivated, it might just work! This friend I'm referring to is quite fluent now; and reads Braille with his fingers as a person with full sight, so anything is possible. We will be featuring his story on our website in the not-too-distant future, as your question prompted me to ask him to write an article about it; I am not sure quite when, but I think his experience would be illuminating for others who are trying to learn Braille by themselves.