Well it must be hard to remember (I suppose it's a bit like morse code), I don't really understand how people can read with their fingers either. Everything just feels like the same to me. My fingers aren't sensitive enough.
Well, I would say it's like you remembering all the 26 letters from the alphabet and numbers and punctuations and special characters, the grammar rules and so on. And aren't you fascinated by the fact that you can recognise a word that is made of several letters each next to te previous one? It's just a matter of training and necessity.
Braillewriters cost a lot more than slates and styluses. It's harder, I think, to Braille just one dot at a time with a stylus.. DeJMan does have a point.
well as a blind person you are used to taking in information through touch so it would be much easier. also when we learned writing as children we had to practise a lot and fr a long time until getting to a point where we would be able to write reasonably fast and legibly (is that a word idk) so for them it would be the same, just a different method of writing
I had to once make a little pamphlet in history with my blind friend for the development of the U.S. so, what we did was that we divided the work in half and we ended up just using his braille paper for it, so one side was written in braille and the other side was just in print. It looked a little messy, but it worked out.
Hi Tommy, thank you so much for this video. I'm in the starting levels of learning braille so this helped a lot :) I'm a visually impaired musician from Iceland - just recently got told im legally blind. Your channel is both helping me and making my days better :D Keep up the good work!
What about other symbols, such as mathematic or scientific symbols? For Braille in other languages, do they have additional rules for letters with accents or letters that don't fit into the standard English alphabet? Do languages that don't use the Latin alphabet have to use a romanised version of the language to work with Braille? And for exams... I'd assume you'd have a helper in a private exam room to read out the questions and write down your responses?
There is different kinds of Braille. There's Braille for regular reading and writing, there's Braille for math, there's Braille for music, like all the notes, and keys, there's even Braille for computer coding. And yes there's Braille in almost every language. And for tests and exams we get extra time because we have to read the entire exam in Braille. An exam that would take you 3 hours would take me probable six and a half.
Claudia Sketches At my school the teachers do tests orally for the visually impaired. There are conditions I can't remember, but it is a much simpler system.
I looked up the Braille for my language, Greek, and I found out some interesting things: I was surprised that there's an accent mark (΄) in Braille, as well. There are special characters for all the diphtongs. For example, αι isn't written as an α and an ι, but it's got its own "symbol." This actually helps spare another diacritic that is "normally" used, (¨). And the most interesting thing is that there are two Braille versions of the Greek alphabet. One used by Greeks and an international one. The international is used outside of Greece to write symbols in mathematics and physics. However if say a non-Greek blind person would like to read an ancient Greek text, I couldn't find which alphabet he'd use.
there was a blind kid in my class and i remember how loud that was haha. a goverment scheme got him a fancy electronic one that was more powerful then my teachers laptop though which was really sweet
Every time I watch this guy I just wanna give him a huge hug!!!😂🤗 you turn something that affects you in life and turn into a positive thing and even better entertainment I think that's just amazing your a really interesting guy I gotta tell ya I would do anything to meet you in person haha I wish everybody has the personality you have my friend😌 Awesome content keep up the outstanding work!!!!! Love from Tennessee
When I was in high school, I applied to take community college classes on weekends (in a special program) so I could get ahead as much as possible. The counselor that set me up for my CC classes was blind and she typed on one of these. It was pretty fascinating to see
I wish I had known about your channel sooner. I've never really given any thought to how blind people use calculators, or smart phones, or even how they feel about animals. It's fascinating to see things from another perspective.
+Narcisco Daniel I was going to say that's really cool, but since Braille would take about 2 hours to learn...why didn't they do that instead? It's not rocket science :p
+Ronja Meurer It may not be rocket science, but it took me a lot more than 2 hours to learn to type (which, in a way, is a language for your fingers similar to braille in that positioning is very important, and you don't look at the keys, your body just learns where to go... there are even some words I know how to type but would have to think about how to spell if I was writing them down), so I'm guessing the average person would need more than 2 hours to master braille to the point they would be able to interpret another person's work. Especially if that person is, say, a high school student who may or may not have the best handle on spelling/grammar and/or sentence structure.
Samantha Lee Yeah, I also realized that it's way more than just your standard alphabet/numeric system (which would make 36 signs in total). But it would freak me out NOT to know what he's writing - especially if it's for several years straight :P Cool move of you to learn Braille (AND the typing, too). Do you work with blind people or are you just interested? :)
+Ronja Meurer I haven't actually learned Braille myself. I have sight in my left eye (but none in my right), so the technology for fully sighted people usually does the job for me (I hate writing things out by hand though because it's really slow due to poor hand eye coordination, but I can type up to 50 words per minute). I have looked into the basics of Braille because, as a child, I was paranoid that I would lose sight in my other eye as well... but it looked too complex to learn if I didn't actually need it yet, and I figured if I did go fully blind I'd have to learn a whole bunch of new things (or old things in New ways), so I'd just add Braille to the list at that time. although with voice to text and screen reader programs, I'm not sure how much I'd need Braille at this point in my life.
Cool. Interesting to know! I wonder what uses capital letters could have in a braille script though? Isn't it normally used purely for visual aesthetics?
Hi Tommy, I'm just interested in what your views are regarding the future of braille. Also, do you use an electronic braille display or note taker? What are your views on braille technology?
There was a blind student in my math class who had a similar tool. A lot of students in my class didn't really care much for him and didn't bother to ask. Of course, I never asked either but I always wandered how it was used and how he knew what to type. Thanks for your videos, I love that you're opening our view on blind people!
he has never seen the beach or crowds. Since he has never seen anything in his entire life, his brain never knew what vision was so he can only get audio hallucinations because the vision part of his brain has never woken up.
Well maybe to some extent, but I don't think it would be like he was really there. Tommy would also use his other senses other than his hearing. Like if he was at the beach he would smell the ocean as well as hear the waves on the sand. He wouldn't get that if he was sitting in his couch with headphones on. That's a cool thought though.
The funny thing is that with 6 dots capital letters, small letters and numbers could all have their own codes, including blank as space bar. There'd even be 1 combo left over for a symbol (maybe a period?). Perhaps the simplicity of the current system makes it more efficient for human processing and memory.
Tommy, I just want to let you know that I am a huge fan. I have been watching you in fascination and you are a beautiful man. No one has made me laugh like you.
Hey Tommy, I have been watching a bunch of your videos and I just wanted to say I really enjoyed them. You are hilarious! So glad I randomly found these.
am used to a brailler. I have a friend who's blind, lovely girl she is. In my school, we have braille club c: Also, she tends to use a braille note which the school spent ages saving up for. I have been learning braille since November and now, I can remember the alphabet heart by heart Even though I'm still learning short versions of braille (For E.G 123 = L = Like) and when I grow up, I want to help the blind, like my aunt ^.^
That's awesome! I taught myself sign language in 1st grade and also continued to use it for certain things. I really like helping the disabled and when I'm older, in going to help out with special needs kids
I'm glad there are other people who are learning things like this by choice. I'm a fortunate person when it comes to senses. I don't have perfect eyesight, but I can still see. I can hear perfectly fine and I use that to my advantage with my music abilities. Music is one of my favorite things ever.
I never did understood on how Braille works untill how you explained it. Because when I am in hotels or in the hallways at school I would look at the braille and the letter and always wondered how this worked. But that is pretty cool how this system works. Thanks again for making this video.
I have a really fond memory with the braille writing machine. When I was 10 I was in an arts club held by my church, and a blind young man came in to teach us how to make heart and star shapes with braille. It was so much fun!
Wow, I always wondered about this. Thanks for the info. My mom, brother and I all have the same eye condition and we are all slowly going blind. Mine just started actually. My brother is technically legally blind in one eye and so is my mom but they are still able to see enough to drive. (I can't drive due to epilepsy so I'm a moot point. My vision is just blurry for now.) Maybe one day we will have to learn braille. Maybe we should all get a head start at this point.
That's so interesting I can't say I knew how braille actually worked before... but I've always wondered how come embossing the shapes of the letters doesn't/wouldn't work?
Awesome! So how often do you use braille, especially in modern adult life? Do you prefer audiobooks to braille books? How is computer assisted technology changing what it's like to be blind in the modern world?
there was a kid a couple of years behind me in school in the early/mid 2000's who was legally blind and he carried a slightly updated on of those around with him. how fast can you get with a machine like that? is there some kind of shorthand to make it a little less? i mean, typewriter typing was hard enough to not jam by going too quickly.
Yes there's shorthand. We have Braille contractions because it takes up so much space. One full page of paper for you would probably be 3 pages in Braille.
@@tracyli9463 I think he means the extra step of wasting an entire extra character space to indicate something that isn't really that important. Capital letters are really just a type of shorthand for sighted people to read. It draws our visual attention to something. It seems rather unnecessary in braille
Lol yeah and that made me think how it would be in German because we have that stupid rule that every noun has to be written with a capital letter. (For example "the house" would be "das Haus") And I wonder if they have to do it in braille too... would be annoying
@@trequor not in German sadly 🙄 I think it's the language that uses capital letters the most because of the fact that we write nouns with capital letters
Wow, that seems so much more difficult to me. But I that's not what I was taught my whole life. Did you have to learn "sited" people's alphabet to learn Braille or did you learn it at a later time in your life?
Think about it. How and why would he learn "Sighted" Alphabet. He would have no idea at all what a letter looks like. That made no sense. If blind people were able to learn "sighted" alphabet then there would be no use for braille.
Well, maybe he doesn't know what all the letters look like, (even though he called out that one braille pattern as being like a backwards "L") but I imagine he knows what they all are and how to use them.
I have been learning Braille since I was 2 years old and I have terrible sight. I could loose my sight at anytime. Your videos help me realize that If I go blind then everything will be fine. Thanks.
A period is dots 2, A period is dots 2, 5,6. A comma is dot 2. Quotation marks are dots 2, 3, 6 and dots 3, 5, 6. A comma is dot 2. An apostrophe is dot 3. And the capital sign for making capital letters (example: capital A, is dots 6 and 1)
As someone who knows Braille, it's a lot more complicated. A lot of the issue comes in something he didn't even talk about: Contractions. Certain letters actually mean several letters or even an entire word. For example, Dots 3,4, and 5 make the letters "ar"
It's not a 1-1 correlation like you'd expect. There are Braille symbols that correspond to each letter, but then you have some Contracted forms. For example, there's a special symbol for "en". Braille would be like if our alphabet had ~100 letters, plus some shortened forms of words that you can't really write in English.
knocknockify At first Braille can be challenging, But the key is to practice every day for an hour. The more you practice, Braille gets easier! I love Braille!
coooooooool I was exposed to a lot of Braille when I had a job sorting out Pharmaceuticals. It was really boring so I started memorizing the Braille letters. I didn't know that about indicating numbers and capital letters though. I see those characters at ATM machines a lot. I always wondered what those reverse L's were.
porteal I think everyone should learn brail and sign when they are children learning the regular alphabet.. I don't know either but it would have been awesome if they would have done that when I was young.
porteal Braille is almost entirely useless to a sighted person. There is almost actually zero reason to learn it, especially in the day and age of computing which can automatically translate what is being written in braille anyway.
Okay , Tommy has trouble understanding vision. I have trouble understanding this machine haha! But i believe i would get this ... in a couple years i guess?
Some years ago I was at a waterpark here in central USA. On one side of the facility was the staircase leading up to the water slides. There was a sign at the base of the steps saying this way to the slides. The sign was about four or five metres tall. I looked up and noticed something odd about the sign. Later, I mentioned it to the security guard on duty, and he went across to check it out. From the other side of the park I saw him look at the sign, then bend down with his hands on his knees, laughing his head off. On the bottom edge of this 4m-high sign was a line written in Braille.
I seriously don't get why blind people have to use a special keyboard. Why can't they have a regular keyboard, except the letters would actually pop out a little. All the letters look different, so I would think it would feel different. And you can memorize like you would normally. Especially since now the iPhone is granting the blind to "text," it can really be useful for them.
Feeling the difference in letter shape is very subtle, especially when they're as small as they are on a keypad. Braille is more efficient as it has much more pronounced differences, the pattern of the cell also helps.
Curmicaros Uercaitorix Yeah true. I actually found Braille at my high school and a guy told me it was for the blind. I was confused til now. Maybe they can improve on it as we get better with technology. It's cuz I think if they learned the keyboard, maybe they can actually write.
Well, they could probably learn to _type_ on a keyboard. But _feeling_ those letters is just hard, so it wouldn't solve anything. The difference between w and vv, or between a capital I (i) and a lowercase l (L) , would be impossible to tell. So, sure, they could _write_ on keyboard, but only for people who aren't blind. Braille is not necessarily so blind people can type, but so they can read.
It's not a problem. There are also braille key boards out there as well which would help with typing if they know braille. If your friend ever needs advice about dealing with blindness or what tools are out there, don't be afraid to ask. I had very little help when I lost most of my vision and know how hard it can be, if I can help make it a bit easier for someone else through information then I am more than willing to.
A visual indicator of? Is the thing that it is a visual indicator of, important? Is it maybe something that doesn't necessarily have to be visual? Tf sort of answer is "a visual indicator" when it's literary.
When you're keeping a word or abbreviation in all-caps, Tommy, do you use the bottom-right dot before every letter in the word or abbreviation, or do you have a way of switching from a capital letter to a lowercase one? And since you have a sign to indicate a number, does it apply before every digit, or is there a way to switch from numbers to letters?
I learned Braille 5 years ago and a friend of mine gave me a braille writer to practice my Braille on. I also have a slate and stylus which is another Braille writing device that is portable if you want to practice your Braille outside of your house.
I went to school with a blind girl who used a Brailler to take notes. She was in my English and Geometry classes. The Brailler was newer, so it was slightly quieter; about as loud as a typewriter. It was distracting at first because i was curious how it worked but easy to get used to the sound.
hey Tommy, your videos are awesome. I work with blind kids :) it's always nice to learn more and more and share with people like you. keep going. you're an inspiration
Wow its amazing to think of all the combinations you would have to memorize. Or how much space it would take to write something out. I always assumed the 6 dot cell represented a whole word. Not just one letter. Wow. Thanks for sharing!
I am looking into reading braille tomorrow. I had several retinal detatchments and holes in my right retina with no success of it staying attached yet. Today I found out I have holes in my left retina. This video was interesting. I hope I can learn to understand how braille works. I think it will take some studying. LOL
Tommy, what kind of electronic devices do you use everyday and how are they adapted for your situation? Your videos are very interesting and inspirational!
I died laughing when he said he used to swing it around and hit kids
Iyla Lacoste hey you hit me I can’t see oh ok
Lmao
same lol
His laugh is what got me.
😂
Fascinating how simple yet complex braile is
Joe Bloe from the looks of it I would say it's not complex at all.
carolyn mmitchell I was going to say the same. pretty damn simple. the hard part is just memorizing what each one means
Well it must be hard to remember (I suppose it's a bit like morse code), I don't really understand how people can read with their fingers either. Everything just feels like the same to me. My fingers aren't sensitive enough.
Well, I would say it's like you remembering all the 26 letters from the alphabet and numbers and punctuations and special characters, the grammar rules and so on. And aren't you fascinated by the fact that you can recognise a word that is made of several letters each next to te previous one? It's just a matter of training and necessity.
EJMasterpiece English characters are rather distinct.
i shouldn't take my sight for granted
I was always curious about this topic, but never found anybody entertaining enough to hold my attention. Thanks, Tommy and Team!
People who are blind AND poor have it the worst.
"Do your homework. Here's a toothpick"
+DeJMan's Gaming Seriously funny! I can't stop laughing. Is that bad? XD
+DeJMan's Gaming That is so mean but, I can't stop laughing! LOLOLOL
+DeJMan's Gaming That's not funny. That's just stupid.
Braillewriters cost a lot more than slates and styluses. It's harder, I think, to Braille just one dot at a time with a stylus.. DeJMan does have a point.
I wonder what Darwin would say about those people
Thank you for making this video. I was always curious how the Braille System works.
+Daniel Postan L
M
Daniel, couldn't you have looked it up?
Tommy, you have such a good attitude!
Yep!
Dude, it would take me 600 years to learn to be able to feel out and read the braille.
Nocturnal Toothbrush it's because kids learn faster than adults
well as a blind person you are used to taking in information through touch so it would be much easier. also when we learned writing as children we had to practise a lot and fr a long time until getting to a point where we would be able to write reasonably fast and legibly (is that a word idk) so for them it would be the same, just a different method of writing
Quike Lopez how do you see the video/comments being completely blind?
carolyn mmitchell watch Tommy’s video on how he uses his phone. Pretty cool.
Nocturnal Toothbrush That's what he would say seeing the alphabet and having to learn to write it. It's the same thing.
For some reason, I want him to make a story...
He should write a whole novel in Braille
and read it to us in braille? XD
Did anyone else think he was somehow playing piano with that thing at 1:20?
I would fail. I can't play piano.
haha yes
yeh
i thought it was an intentional joke
hahaha omg I didn't but now I do and it's hilarious
I had to once make a little pamphlet in history with my blind friend for the development of the U.S. so, what we did was that we divided the work in half and we ended up just using his braille paper for it, so one side was written in braille and the other side was just in print. It looked a little messy, but it worked out.
Hi Tommy, thank you so much for this video. I'm in the starting levels of learning braille so this helped a lot :) I'm a visually impaired musician from Iceland - just recently got told im legally blind. Your channel is both helping me and making my days better :D Keep up the good work!
im so in love with his humor!
What about other symbols, such as mathematic or scientific symbols? For Braille in other languages, do they have additional rules for letters with accents or letters that don't fit into the standard English alphabet? Do languages that don't use the Latin alphabet have to use a romanised version of the language to work with Braille?
And for exams... I'd assume you'd have a helper in a private exam room to read out the questions and write down your responses?
There is different kinds of Braille. There's Braille for regular reading and writing, there's Braille for math, there's Braille for music, like all the notes, and keys, there's even Braille for computer coding. And yes there's Braille in almost every language. And for tests and exams we get extra time because we have to read the entire exam in Braille. An exam that would take you 3 hours would take me probable six and a half.
Cece Price Thank you so much for responding with your knowledge and insight! It sounds incredible.
Claudia Sketches At my school the teachers do tests orally for the visually impaired. There are conditions I can't remember, but it is a much simpler system.
I looked up the Braille for my language, Greek, and I found out some interesting things:
I was surprised that there's an accent mark (΄) in Braille, as well.
There are special characters for all the diphtongs. For example, αι isn't written as an α and an ι, but it's got its own "symbol." This actually helps spare another diacritic that is "normally" used, (¨).
And the most interesting thing is that there are two Braille versions of the Greek alphabet. One used by Greeks and an international one. The international is used outside of Greece to write symbols in mathematics and physics. However if say a non-Greek blind person would like to read an ancient Greek text, I couldn't find which alphabet he'd use.
Tom Raptile That is so interesting! Thank you very much for spending the time to respond and share your research :)
there was a blind kid in my class and i remember how loud that was haha. a goverment scheme got him a fancy electronic one that was more powerful then my teachers laptop though which was really sweet
James Murray how the fuck is it a gov scheme
but could it run doom
I love how positive he always is and how he handles it so well! He is amazing!!!
Every time I watch this guy I just wanna give him a huge hug!!!😂🤗 you turn something that affects you in life and turn into a positive thing and even better entertainment I think that's just amazing your a really interesting guy I gotta tell ya I would do anything to meet you in person haha I wish everybody has the personality you have my friend😌 Awesome content keep up the outstanding work!!!!! Love from Tennessee
When I was in high school, I applied to take community college classes on weekends (in a special program) so I could get ahead as much as possible. The counselor that set me up for my CC classes was blind and she typed on one of these. It was pretty fascinating to see
This guy is so inspiring! Although he is blind he obviously has not let that get in his way. He has not given up on making life fun and a good time.
Tommy, you're always in such a good mood and you make people smile, keep up the good work.
The Perkins Brailler has the name stamped on the front in English... not in braille. Seriously?
So other people can buy it for them
I suppose, but it seems to me if anything in the world is going to have braille on it, it would be the machine that writes braille.
Scott J he can feel out print as well
Scott J I thought the same thing!
Every blind person who touches it knows what it is instantly.
It is impossible to not like all of your videos. Please never change. We need more souls like you in this world
ya know, it just kind of bothers me that the Perkins Braillers name is NOT in braille on the front lol
it doesn't need to be. Me being blind knows what it feels like.
You would think that it would have it in both Enlish and Braille. Then both sighted and blind could read the brand name.
The words 'Perkins Braillers' are in raised print. A blind person can read them just fine
@@jmheavymetal wait how are you in the comments section if you are blind? legitimate quaestion.
@@loic7867 you can use a program called a screen reader it will read to you what is on the screen and anything you type.
I wish I had known about your channel sooner. I've never really given any thought to how blind people use calculators, or smart phones, or even how they feel about animals. It's fascinating to see things from another perspective.
how would the teachers grade your papers? Could some of them read braille? I feel like it would be really easy to screw with them.
+Narcisco Daniel I was going to say that's really cool, but since Braille would take about 2 hours to learn...why didn't they do that instead? It's not rocket science :p
***** Aren't they always :D
+Ronja Meurer It may not be rocket science, but it took me a lot more than 2 hours to learn to type (which, in a way, is a language for your fingers similar to braille in that positioning is very important, and you don't look at the keys, your body just learns where to go... there are even some words I know how to type but would have to think about how to spell if I was writing them down), so I'm guessing the average person would need more than 2 hours to master braille to the point they would be able to interpret another person's work. Especially if that person is, say, a high school student who may or may not have the best handle on spelling/grammar and/or sentence structure.
Samantha Lee Yeah, I also realized that it's way more than just your standard alphabet/numeric system (which would make 36 signs in total). But it would freak me out NOT to know what he's writing - especially if it's for several years straight :P
Cool move of you to learn Braille (AND the typing, too). Do you work with blind people or are you just interested? :)
+Ronja Meurer I haven't actually learned Braille myself. I have sight in my left eye (but none in my right), so the technology for fully sighted people usually does the job for me (I hate writing things out by hand though because it's really slow due to poor hand eye coordination, but I can type up to 50 words per minute). I have looked into the basics of Braille because, as a child, I was paranoid that I would lose sight in my other eye as well... but it looked too complex to learn if I didn't actually need it yet, and I figured if I did go fully blind I'd have to learn a whole bunch of new things (or old things in New ways), so I'd just add Braille to the list at that time. although with voice to text and screen reader programs, I'm not sure how much I'd need Braille at this point in my life.
I just found Tommy like a week ago and he really makes me appreciate what I have and I can't stop watching his videos he's so amazing!
Cool. Interesting to know! I wonder what uses capital letters could have in a braille script though? Isn't it normally used purely for visual aesthetics?
You're so funny! I cracked up at the Braille name tags. Just found you thru twitter and Postsecret, but already I've watched a dozen of your viedoes.
Hi Tommy, I'm just interested in what your views are regarding the future of braille. Also, do you use an electronic braille display or note taker? What are your views on braille technology?
"What are your views?"
Sir, you are malevolouse x'D
There was a blind student in my math class who had a similar tool. A lot of students in my class didn't really care much for him and didn't bother to ask. Of course, I never asked either but I always wandered how it was used and how he knew what to type. Thanks for your videos, I love that you're opening our view on blind people!
If you have nice headphones and you play sounds from the beach, or sounds from a crowd, is it like virtual reality?
he has never seen the beach or crowds. Since he has never seen anything in his entire life, his brain never knew what vision was so he can only get audio hallucinations because the vision part of his brain has never woken up.
Well maybe to some extent, but I don't think it would be like he was really there. Tommy would also use his other senses other than his hearing. Like if he was at the beach he would smell the ocean as well as hear the waves on the sand. He wouldn't get that if he was sitting in his couch with headphones on. That's a cool thought though.
Thank you! You taught me a lot and your sense of humor is amazing!
The funny thing is that with 6 dots capital letters, small letters and numbers could all have their own codes, including blank as space bar. There'd even be 1 combo left over for a symbol (maybe a period?). Perhaps the simplicity of the current system makes it more efficient for human processing and memory.
Tommy, I just want to let you know that I am a huge fan. I have been watching you in fascination and you are a beautiful man. No one has made me laugh like you.
I learn so much from your channel!
Hey Tommy, I have been watching a bunch of your videos and I just wanted to say I really enjoyed them. You are hilarious! So glad I randomly found these.
For anyone wondering, “67 pound paper” is equivalent to 253 g/m^2. That’s quite thick, like photographic paper!
This is so awesome! I seriously want a braille typewriter and to learn how to write on it now
am used to a brailler.
I have a friend who's blind, lovely girl she is.
In my school, we have braille club c:
Also, she tends to use a braille note which the school spent ages saving up for.
I have been learning braille since November and now, I can remember the alphabet heart by heart
Even though I'm still learning short versions of braille (For E.G 123 = L = Like)
and when I grow up, I want to help the blind, like my aunt ^.^
That's awesome! I taught myself sign language in 1st grade and also continued to use it for certain things. I really like helping the disabled and when I'm older, in going to help out with special needs kids
Rachel Timler that's amazing! :D
well now I know how to use a brailler heart by heart now
I'm glad there are other people who are learning things like this by choice. I'm a fortunate person when it comes to senses. I don't have perfect eyesight, but I can still see. I can hear perfectly fine and I use that to my advantage with my music abilities. Music is one of my favorite things ever.
Okay omg at first I read "when i grow up, i want to be blind"
Rachel Timler It's better to have blurry vision insted of dark vision
I never did understood on how Braille works untill how you explained it. Because when I am in hotels or in the hallways at school I would look at the braille and the letter and always wondered how this worked. But that is pretty cool how this system works. Thanks again for making this video.
I guess like learning a language, it takes time to learn. Thanks for sharing
I have a really fond memory with the braille writing machine. When I was 10 I was in an arts club held by my church, and a blind young man came in to teach us how to make heart and star shapes with braille. It was so much fun!
How do you tell the difference between the left side and the right side if only one side is being used?
A lot of practice getting used to small differences in Braille. A lot of Braille is just learning how to understand little tactile information.
Thank you, Tommy for the awesome videos! I'm always looking into learning something new that can be useful down the road.
every video has made me smile
Wow, I always wondered about this. Thanks for the info. My mom, brother and I all have the same eye condition and we are all slowly going blind. Mine just started actually. My brother is technically legally blind in one eye and so is my mom but they are still able to see enough to drive. (I can't drive due to epilepsy so I'm a moot point. My vision is just blurry for now.) Maybe one day we will have to learn braille. Maybe we should all get a head start at this point.
That's so interesting I can't say I knew how braille actually worked before... but I've always wondered how come embossing the shapes of the letters doesn't/wouldn't work?
I think the simplified dots are faster I read than having to trace the whole letter with your finger.
The dot system id just easier to feel, it takes less long to read.
Awesome! So how often do you use braille, especially in modern adult life? Do you prefer audiobooks to braille books? How is computer assisted technology changing what it's like to be blind in the modern world?
I want the videos to be a little longer
toulouse y At least 5 min long.
Just click the next video on his channel. Plenty of minutes to watch ;-)
no one gives a fuck what u want bitch
just watch in .5 speed
I agree
@1:20 I feel like I'd always apply a bit of vertical movement when feeling the feed so I don't get a papercut.
there was a kid a couple of years behind me in school in the early/mid 2000's who was legally blind and he carried a slightly updated on of those around with him. how fast can you get with a machine like that? is there some kind of shorthand to make it a little less? i mean, typewriter typing was hard enough to not jam by going too quickly.
Yes there's shorthand. We have Braille contractions because it takes up so much space. One full page of paper for you would probably be 3 pages in Braille.
oh cool,thanks!
it's funny how he drops the typewriter thingy to let us hear how heavy it is.
love your channel!
wow! I had no idea. thanks for sharing.
I can just imagine two blind kids with this typewrite, passing notes back in forth in class.
When I was in school, there was a blind guy who had one of those. He was awesome :D
you have to actually make capitals? that's annoying lol
Ada Harrison I mean, you have to make them too, by pressing shift. It's the same thing.
Tracy Li
Not when you're reading it back though. Then you just have an extra character to read
@@tracyli9463 I think he means the extra step of wasting an entire extra character space to indicate something that isn't really that important. Capital letters are really just a type of shorthand for sighted people to read. It draws our visual attention to something. It seems rather unnecessary in braille
Lol yeah and that made me think how it would be in German because we have that stupid rule that every noun has to be written with a capital letter. (For example "the house" would be "das Haus") And I wonder if they have to do it in braille too... would be annoying
@@trequor not in German sadly 🙄 I think it's the language that uses capital letters the most because of the fact that we write nouns with capital letters
I'm just curious. Has it been easy for you to transition from Literary Braille to UEB or United English Braille code?
Wow, that seems so much more difficult to me. But I that's not what I was taught my whole life.
Did you have to learn "sited" people's alphabet to learn Braille or did you learn it at a later time in your life?
Yeah I see what you mean. It's a bit like learning to touch-type. Hey, why don't blind people touch-type?
Johnny Morrison-Howe
Well, I'm sure they do now. Since, if they'd ever want to use a computer they'd have to learn how to touch type.
Think about it. How and why would he learn "Sighted" Alphabet. He would have no idea at all what a letter looks like. That made no sense. If blind people were able to learn "sighted" alphabet then there would be no use for braille.
Some blind people know braille.
Well, maybe he doesn't know what all the letters look like, (even though he called out that one braille pattern as being like a backwards "L") but I imagine he knows what they all are and how to use them.
I have been learning Braille since I was 2 years old and I have terrible sight. I could loose my sight at anytime. Your videos help me realize that If I go blind then everything will be fine. Thanks.
What about periods to end a sentence or a comma, question mark etc
Alexus Johnson yeah you forgot a period haha.
A period is dots 2,
A period is dots 2, 5,6. A comma is dot 2. Quotation marks are dots 2, 3, 6 and dots 3, 5, 6. A comma is dot 2. An apostrophe is dot 3. And the capital sign for making capital letters (example: capital A, is dots 6 and 1)
oops. I made a mistake. A period is dots 2, 5, and 6.
That's really fascinating. Thank you for explaining braille to us!
Oh wow, that seems so complicated!
I'd say it's on par, difficulty-wise, with sighted people learning how to read and write. Braille is just a different reading/writing system.
As someone who knows Braille, it's a lot more complicated. A lot of the issue comes in something he didn't even talk about: Contractions. Certain letters actually mean several letters or even an entire word. For example, Dots 3,4, and 5 make the letters "ar"
It's not a 1-1 correlation like you'd expect. There are Braille symbols that correspond to each letter, but then you have some Contracted forms. For example, there's a special symbol for "en". Braille would be like if our alphabet had ~100 letters, plus some shortened forms of words that you can't really write in English.
knocknockify At first Braille can be challenging, But the key is to practice every day for an hour. The more you practice, Braille gets easier! I love Braille!
I have been learning braille; fascinating to learn about how it is typed!
I can read a bit of Braille because my uncle is blind and we had a braillewriter
coooooooool
I was exposed to a lot of Braille when I had a job sorting out Pharmaceuticals. It was really boring so I started memorizing the Braille letters. I didn't know that about indicating numbers and capital letters though. I see those characters at ATM machines a lot. I always wondered what those reverse L's were.
Tommy the funny thing is the blind girl I knew had that exact machine. Really hard to focus with ADHD 😂
i LOVE this guy he's hillarious. he's a blind film critic AND a blind comedian
am I the only person who thinks it might be worthwhile for sighted people to learn braille?
porteal I think everyone should learn brail and sign when they are children learning the regular alphabet.. I don't know either but it would have been awesome if they would have done that when I was young.
porteal Braille is almost entirely useless to a sighted person. There is almost actually zero reason to learn it, especially in the day and age of computing which can automatically translate what is being written in braille anyway.
My message was directed at Jon M
I love how it transitions with him writing in braille with a piano in the background as if he is playing the piano.
It's a brail typewriter basically!
Not "basically", exactly.
I like your video and your sense of humor! Great guy!
Okay , Tommy has trouble understanding vision.
I have trouble understanding this machine haha!
But i believe i would get this ... in a couple years i guess?
It actually looks simpler than usual typewriter.
Sort of reminds me a bit of binary, just using 6 bits instead of 8 :P
Some years ago I was at a waterpark here in central USA. On one side of the facility was the staircase leading up to the water slides. There was a sign at the base of the steps saying this way to the slides. The sign was about four or five metres tall. I looked up and noticed something odd about the sign. Later, I mentioned it to the security guard on duty, and he went across to check it out. From the other side of the park I saw him look at the sign, then bend down with his hands on his knees, laughing his head off. On the bottom edge of this 4m-high sign was a line written in Braille.
there wad a kid next to me that took notes with a fricking typewriter
Tommy is such a nice and funny person. He's disabled but he doesn't act like it. What an inspiration.
Jessica Nguyen he doesnt act like it? what does that mean? how do disabled people act if not like this?
Braille Skateboarding
Carlos Martinez yesss
Thanks. Very interesting. Never knew about the braille system prior to watching your clip. Cheers.
I seriously don't get why blind people have to use a special keyboard. Why can't they have a regular keyboard, except the letters would actually pop out a little. All the letters look different, so I would think it would feel different. And you can memorize like you would normally. Especially since now the iPhone is granting the blind to "text," it can really be useful for them.
They used to do it that way, but the books were really expensive and the print was very large. Braille was invented and it just worked better.
Feeling the difference in letter shape is very subtle, especially when they're as small as they are on a keypad. Braille is more efficient as it has much more pronounced differences, the pattern of the cell also helps.
Curmicaros Uercaitorix Yeah true. I actually found Braille at my high school and a guy told me it was for the blind. I was confused til now. Maybe they can improve on it as we get better with technology. It's cuz I think if they learned the keyboard, maybe they can actually write.
Well, they could probably learn to _type_ on a keyboard. But _feeling_ those letters is just hard, so it wouldn't solve anything. The difference between w and vv, or between a capital I (i) and a lowercase l (L) , would be impossible to tell. So, sure, they could _write_ on keyboard, but only for people who aren't blind. Braille is not necessarily so blind people can type, but so they can read.
It's not a problem. There are also braille key boards out there as well which would help with typing if they know braille. If your friend ever needs advice about dealing with blindness or what tools are out there, don't be afraid to ask. I had very little help when I lost most of my vision and know how hard it can be, if I can help make it a bit easier for someone else through information then I am more than willing to.
Why even keep the capital letters?
fedos Why does English have them in the first place?
They're visual indicators.
Depends, are we helping Uncle Jack off a horse or are we helping uncle jack off a horse?
A visual indicator of?
Is the thing that it is a visual indicator of, important?
Is it maybe something that doesn't necessarily have to be visual?
Tf sort of answer is "a visual indicator" when it's literary.
So you can type numbers in base 64. Obviously.
Tommy and the crew thanks for all that you are doing
Give a blind person a Lego
This was very informative. I always wondered how braille worked exactly.
Lol Braille nametag
When you're keeping a word or abbreviation in all-caps, Tommy, do you use the bottom-right dot before every letter in the word or abbreviation, or do you have a way of switching from a capital letter to a lowercase one?
And since you have a sign to indicate a number, does it apply before every digit, or is there a way to switch from numbers to letters?
So can you speak braille?
Yu cant speak Braille...
What
Very interesting would like to learn braile
We don't use braille to speak we use it for writing. :)
In limbo don't belong to the blind completely don't belong in the sighted world but entering a new world
I cant stop watching your videos. You are such an amazing and hilarious person. Brightens up my whole day
he was using hash tags before the where cool
I learned Braille 5 years ago and a friend of mine gave me a braille writer to practice my Braille on. I also have a slate and stylus which is another Braille writing device that is portable if you want to practice your Braille outside of your house.
Wow, this was really cool! I would've never known that's how you type out braille!
I went to school with a blind girl who used a Brailler to take notes. She was in my English and Geometry classes. The Brailler was newer, so it was slightly quieter; about as loud as a typewriter. It was distracting at first because i was curious how it worked but easy to get used to the sound.
Wow this seems pretty difficult! Watching your videos really makes me appreciate small things like writing things down.
hey Tommy, your videos are awesome. I work with blind kids :) it's always nice to learn more and more and share with people like you. keep going. you're an inspiration
This is so cool to learn. Ive never understood how braille works but this really helped
Wow, I can imagine the kids trying to do an exam with Tommy in the back: "clickety-clack!"
Wow its amazing to think of all the combinations you would have to memorize. Or how much space it would take to write something out. I always assumed the 6 dot cell represented a whole word. Not just one letter. Wow. Thanks for sharing!
It's interesting how touch activates his knowledge for language the same way sight does for us
I am looking into reading braille tomorrow. I had several retinal detatchments and holes in my right retina with no success of it staying attached yet. Today I found out I have holes in my left retina. This video was interesting. I hope I can learn to understand how braille works. I think it will take some studying. LOL
Tommy, what kind of electronic devices do you use everyday and how are they adapted for your situation? Your videos are very interesting and inspirational!