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Tag Archives: braille

My First Brush with UEB

31 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by Sherry Gomes in Uncategorized

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Tags

accessibility, braille, UEB

My Brush with UEB

Well, if you follow this blog, and you read my most recent entry about seeing Beautiful, then here’s a little different thing that happened today.

I forgot to order a braille program, but the theater had one I could rent, by leaving my ID with them. I opened the program and started reading it aloud to Sandie. And suddenly I was baffled and confused. This was some funny looking braille, with a whole bunch of symbols I did not recognize, missing contractions I’d always known, making it actually hard to recognize some words. What the bloody hell? Oh, damn, it’s frigging UEB, the so-called unified English braille, that every braille reader in every English speaking country is now supposed to read and write. Okay, I already ranted about this some months ago, so if you look back, you’ll find my feelings laid out very clearly about what I call ugly English Braille.

But today, I got to read it for the first time. And yes, of course, I could still read. But I didn’t like it. My braille program was in seventy-three, yes, that 73, pages. For you sighted folks, how big is a print theater program? Braille has always taken more room than print, it has to be bigger so people can feel the dots, and it has to be embossed on heavy paper so it can hold up to being read. But in the past, it would have certainly been less pages. They’ve removed a number of contractions, and added symbols that are somehow supposed to be more equivalent to print. But wow, got a newsflash, braille is not print! Just like ASL is not English. So, there were new symbols around quotes, new parentheses and no ation, double D sign or various others. It wasn’t my program, so I had to give it back and didn’t get to read the whole thing.

So, my impressions, after my first brush with UEB, yeah, it’s ugly. I don’t like it. Can I read it, sure, but I don’t like it. And any braille books I buy in future will be even huger than they already were! Boo hoo. I want real braille back! Lol.

My Brush with UEB

Well, if you follow this blog, and you read my most recent entry about seeing Beautiful, then here’s a little different thing that happened today.

I forgot to order a braille program, but the theater had one I could rent, by leaving my ID with them. I opened the program and started reading it aloud to Sandie. And suddenly I was baffled and confused. This was some funny looking braille, with a whole bunch of symbols I did not recognize, missing contractions I’d always known, making it actually hard to recognize some words. What the bloody hell? Oh, damn, it’s frigging UEB, the so-called unified English braille, that every braille reader in every English speaking country is now supposed to read and write. Okay, I already ranted about this some months ago, so if you look back, you’ll find my feelings laid out very clearly about what I call ugly English Braille.

But today, I got to read it for the first time. And yes, of course, I could still read. But I didn’t like it. My braille program was in seventy-three, yes, that 73, pages. For you sighted folks, how big is a print theater program? Braille has always taken more room than print, it has to be bigger so people can feel the dots, and it has to be embossed on heavy paper so it can hold up to being read. But in the past, it would have certainly been less pages. They’ve removed a number of contractions, and added symbols that are somehow supposed to be more equivalent to print. But wow, got a newsflash, braille is not print! Just like ASL is not English. So, there were new symbols around quotes, new parentheses and no ation, double D sign or various others. It wasn’t my program, so I had to give it back and didn’t get to read the whole thing.

So, my impressions, after my first brush with UEB, yeah, it’s ugly. I don’t like it. Can I read it, sure, but I don’t like it. And any braille books I buy in future will be even huger than they already were! Boo hoo. I want real braille back! Lol.

A Visit Over the Rainbow to Oz

13 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by Sherry Gomes in Uncategorized

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Tags

accessible theater, braille, friendship, musical theater, Petunia, Wicked

OVER THE RAINBOW

I’ve loved musical theatre since before I can hardly remember. Starting with Disney movies, to live plays in the theatre, to performing in choirs and churches, musical theatre has been in my heart and soul. One of my dreams is to perform, just once, in a musical. Well, I’ve done fantastical holiday musicals, but I mean, something classic and powerful, someone I love to sing.

Well, for years now I’ve wanted to see Wicked. I’ve had the original cast album for a long time and been stirred and moved by the songs. Is there anything like Defying Gravity? Or For Good, an anthem of friendship? And then the crowd scenes with those cool, almost dissonant harmonies, reminiscent of Andrew Lloyd Weber crowd scenes in shows like Superstar or Evita. Yeah, I’ve loved the sound but never got to see the show.

Till today!

I discovered that my friend, Sandi, Petunia’s puppy raiser, loves musical theatre and live music of many varieties, as much as I. Well, this opened so many possibilities before my yearning soul. And then I happened to check the web site of the Denver center for the Performing arts, just checking the upcoming season. And what to my amazed eyes, um ears since I use a screen read, what to my wondering ears did appear, but Wicked, coming to Denver, June and July! Was I dreaming? Could it be true? I hit the email and invited, made the calls and got the tickets, and waited not so patiently for the day. And that day was today.

We planned to go to a matinee. It’s an hour drive down to Denver, so Sandi picked us up a couple hours in advance. We drove down, arriving before will-call opened and so we decided to grab a bit of lunch at the Limelight Supper Club. Ooooo. What a glorious name for a restaurant in a complex of theatres! We each had a mimosa. I had a hamburger, and Sandi had an omelet. I didn’t expect the burger to be great, and yet it was delicious. The meat had so much flavor. I could hardly stop eating. And the mimosa actually did have tastable champagne. Wow.
After lunch, we picked up the tickets and headed into the theatre itself. I’d arranged for disabled seating so there would be room for my leg and for Petunia. I’d also asked for a braille program, and we stopped at the coat check area to pick that up. The disabled seating isn’t in a row of seats exactly. We were at the back of the orchestra section of the seating, and there was plenty of room for Tuney to stretch out and be comfortable. As we waited for the show to begin I greedily read my program, devouring it like a hungry person, so gleeful was I to be able to read the same info the sighted audience could read.

Then, the show began.

Oh, what can I say? There are no words, truly. When the crowd starts off singing, “Good News. She’s dead.”, well, I began to cry. I’d waited so long, so very long, and at last, here I was, in a real theatre, with Wicked beginning, not a local music group but a profession touring cast. I was overwhelmed with emotion. After that, I was utterly and completely mesmerized, captivated by the show.
The singers were so good. Good isn’t a strong enough word, but incredible, fabulous, marvelous, fantastic, wonderful, they just don’t say enough. The girls, Glinda and Elphaba, well, they were just beyond description. I love Idina and Kristin, but these performers today are every bit as good. Elphaba blew me over the rainbow singing Defying Gravity, and Glinda made me cry with For Good. They carried the show. All the performers were excellent, but the show is about the two friends, and they made it their show in every way. I never wanted it to end.

Alas, it did have to end. We gathered us, the dog, the precious program, and we headed back to the car and on our way, away from Oz. Sigh.

On the way to dinner, we stopped at Sandi’s house to let Petunia get some water and relieve. Tuney was over the moon when she realized where she was! She grew there of course, and she was so happy to see it again. But when it was time to leave, she was ready to go with me and didn’t look back.

We stopped at Chili’s for dinner and then came home. It’s now 11:00 PM as I finish writing this, and I’m still unwinding. I’ve been home for nearly three hours, but the high has not faded. I’ve got the musicals play list going, and every time a song from Wicked comes around, I stop what I’m doing, and stand still, listening, remembering and yearning to be back there again.

I hate the UEB

29 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Sherry Gomes in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

blindness, braille, Deaf-Blind, reading, Seattle, UEB

so you may ask, what is the UEB. It is the unified braille code. For people who don’t know about braille, or much about it, braille is the way blind people read, with a series of raised dots. Each country has had its own style of writing braille. Braille takes a lot of room, so over the years, it has been modified to include a series of shortcuts, contractions to make braille a little smaller. Things like one symbol for words like the, and, with and on and on. One symbol for common letter combinations. in the word, “combinations” for instance, com is a contraction, as is the in and the ation. Even so, my braille bible is in 34 volumes and my full set of the Harry Potter books is in about fifty-five volumes. Braille is also quite expensive, because it uses so much paper!

so, some years ago, a group of people called the braille authority of north America, got together with similar bodies in the other English speaking countries and decided braille needs to be changed and updated to be more like print. And on top of that, all English braille should be the same. And because they think it needs to be more like print and that people don’t read hard copy paper braille, they think, but rather use electronic one line at a time braille displays instead of a whole page of beautiful delicious braille, they decided to do away with a number of the contractions and to change the punctuation we have used for decades.

now I ask all my sighted friends who read this, what would you think if someone came along and said they were going to change the way print looks and reads, if they decided the way you write it type it and read it had to change. if suddenly, that key below the L wasn’t a period anymore but was something else. Or if they were going to change mathematical symbols, things like that. Or if they told you real books are going away , and you can read on your kindle or iPhone anyway so you don’t need to worry that we’re going to mess up your print. How many times have sighted people talked about their love of holding a real book in their hands and reading. well, it’s the same for me. I can’t afford much braille due to its cost, but I love it. I love to put my fingers on a book and read!

anyway, the changes in braille will take place beginning in 2016, and some braille producers are already using the UEB. I’m angry and irritated. Now buying hard copy braille books will be even more costly because it will take much more room and more volumes. Maybe Harry will now be in seventy volumes instead of fifty-five!

well, I started this because I wanted to post the contents of an email I sent to some friends. but I got on a roll explaining braille and why I hate the UEB. But here’s another reason. Read on.

Here’s part of why I think I’m so angry about UEB.

I worked with a lot of deaf-blind people when I worked at the Lighthouse for the blind in Seattle. For those who don’t know, Seattle has a very large deaf and deaf-blind community and a lot of Deaf-Blind worked at the lighthouse. ASL is its own language as you probably know. People who are fluent in ASL don’t spell out every word, they use all kinds of shortcuts. And because it’s a language, it’s very common for them to write like ASL. Sure, many can write the way we write in perfect grammatical English, but it’s common for them to write in ASL so to speak. I spoke and emailed with several deaf-blind administrative assistants at the lighthouse and their emails had a sort of shortcut language most of the time. It was pretty cool. I tried to take a class in ASL at a local community college but the head of the ASL department told me they didn’t teach tactile ASL. Boo.

Anyway, if some well-meaning idiots came along and decided that people who are deaf need to change ASL to be more like regular spoken and written English, the you know what would hit the fan. There would be an uproar, an outcry of rage. The deaf community takes pride in who and what they are, in a big big way, and they’d never tolerate people coming along and deciding to change ASL to be more like print or spoken english.

Now of course, Braille isn’t technically a different language. But to my mind, a small group of idiots, made a decision quite a while ago that they were going to change braille. I know people protested. I certainly wrote a letter to BANA opposing it, but I don’t believe BANA ever meant to listen to our feelings and take them into account. Also, the blind community didn’t raise an uproar or outcry, not really, not boisterously, not so the whole wide world would hear. So, in some ways we let this travesty just happen. And it infuriates me that this small group of people decided braille has to be like print and therefore it has to be changed. After all, nobody bothers to read hard copy braille now that there are computers and braille displays. Never mind the expense and that fact that few blind people can buy those braille display in the first place. And these people decided for the whole English speaking world. talk about arrogance.

Anyway, that’s part of why I’m angry. It’s more than not wanting to have to learn braille all over again. It’s partly that BANA didn’t really have the right to do what they did, in my opinion, and we let it happen because we had so much warning, and we didn’t bother to come to the fight. I guess it doesn’t matter since such a small amount of blind people actually read braille. That last sentence was in mental quotes. So, because sometimes my idiotic sixties childhood comes back to haunt me, I boycott UEB. I refuse to learn it; I refuse to read it; I will not support it. I may cut off my nose to spite my face, but I’m okay with that. And my little protest won’t make a difference, except I’ll feel damn good about it. lol.

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