How vision impaired people read and write

Goodness, I don’t half get a lot of questions relating to being vision impaired. Over the past few weeks I’ve recieved many from people who are curious about how I read and write blog posts. So naturally, I thought I’d give a little insight into how I do exactly that. 

I should point out that I’m not speaking on behalf of every vision impaired person by curaating this post; everyone will have different preferences and alternative ways of doing things that work best for them. But I hope this will satisfy some of your curiosities and help to clear up a little of the uncertainty that clouds the topic.

How vision impaired people read and write

TOUCH TYPING

When I was in primary school, I learned how to touch type. This essentially gave me the opportunity to navigate a keyboard without having to see it, affording me the opportunity to learn how to memorise the placement of each letter, number and symbol.

Learning how to touch type has proven invaluable for me – I’d highly recommend anyone to learn it, vision impaired or not, since it makes typing a whole lot easier. 

BRAILLE

Braille is essentially a code system; every letter in the alphabet is formed with six dots. It’s a system of raised dots that vision impaired people can read with their fingers. You can turn to Google for more of a comprehensive description!

There are many ways that you can write braille, the most popular way is with a traditional Perkins brailler which is almost akin to an old typewriter, if you can picture one of those.

With the rise of technology, blind/VI people are being introduced to new options which means that the hefty Perkins no longer needs to be lugged around. Devices such as braille displays are a modern take on writing braille. They often have the same layout as a traditional brailler but no paper is required, making it more like a laptop just without the screen!

It doesn’t stop there either. Braille displays are another option; You connect this to a computer/laptop and as you type on the traditional QWERTY keyboard, the writing comes up in braille on the reader. Clever, eh?

ACCESSABILITY ON APPLE DEVICES

Since we’re focusing on some of the ways in which I read and write in an accessible way for me, I thought I’d write a little ode to the accessibility features on Apple devices.

I think people either love or hate Apple, I fall into the former category. I am completely dedicated to their selection of products purely because their built-in accessibility features best suit my needs.

From the built-in magnification software that allows you to zoom in to better see the screen’s contents, to the integrated screen-reader, VoiceOver, that can read what’s shown on your device, plus so much more – the accessibility features allow for easy navigation of my phone and laptop.

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There are so many different ways in which vision impaired people can navigate this world in an accessible way, as long as the technologies are made available to us. If this has sparked any further questions then feel free to get in touch and we can chat some more.

Thank you for reading!