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Read All About It - New Braillers from Rehabmart!

  

Communicating in braille has come a long way since its invention in 1825 by a blind Frenchman with the same name, Louis Braille.  Originally based on a method of communication devised by Charles Barbier, Napoleon had commissioned Barbier to come up with a code that soldiers could use to communicate silently and without light at night.  Barbier's system proved to be too difficult for soldiers to perceive by touch and was rejected by the military.  He met Louis Braille when he visited the National Institute for the Blind in Paris in 1821, and Braille was able to identify the problems with Barbier's original code.  His modifications led to the creation of the Braille system, which was the first digital form of writing and is still used by people with blindness and low-vision today.

Each braille character, which is also know as a 'cell', is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each.  Raised dots in certain positions correspond to letters, numbers and punctuation.  Abbreviations and contractions also make braille a form of shorthand.  And while the Braille system has not changed very much since it was first invented, the products and ways to communicate in braille have shown great improvement and innovation through the years.

Writing braille can be an involved and lengthy process.  When it was first introduced and for many decades afterward, braille writers created braille characters with a stylus and slate, or by using one of the complex, extremely expensive and inordinately fragile braille writing machines developed at the time. David Abraham, a woodworking teacher at the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts (where Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan were educated), was asked by the director for the school, Gabriel Farrell, to create an inexpensive and reliable machine that would allow students to be able to write braille more easily. Including a fellow math teacher at Perkins named Edward Waterhouse, the three men created the design for the original Perkins Brailler in 1951.

This 'braille typewriter' greatly improved the efficiency and speed of communicating in braille for the visually impaired community.  Like a manual typewriter, it had two side knobs to advance paper through the machine and a carriage return lever above the keys, while each key corresponded to each of the six dots of the braille code. The rollers that held and advanced the paper had grooves designed to avoid crushing the raised dots the brailler created.

The newest model of the Perkins Brailler is the Next Generation Perkins Brailler offered by Rehabmart.  Perkins has taken braille technology and innovation to a whole new level with this award winning design. Durably constructed with the superior functionality and reliability you depend on and expect from Perkins Braillers, this new brailler is super light, weighing only 7 1/2 pounds!  Now you can take your brailler with you wherever you go, and in cool color choices of Midnight Blue or Raspberry Red, you'll be brailling in style, too!

 

Updated features include a quieter machine; the keystroke noise has been reduced and the end-of-line bell is still audible, but muted, so you can braille away in even the quietest of settings.  Less force is required for keystrokes, and they are lower and easier to reach, too.  This brailler includes 28 cells and an Easy-Erase button erases the entire Braille cell when mistakes are made.  Paper feed is super easy and achieved by rolling the paper onto an internal drum and it unrolls whenever the user presses a line-feed key.  The back panel of the brailler can be raised to provide a flat surface and reading rest for reading the page, while the front panel margin guides are easily accessible and no longer require reaching around the back.

The combination of the metal inner frame and parts along with the high-impact polycarbonate outer shell makes this brailler highly durable and able to stand up to the heaviest impact, wear and tear.  The Easy-Grip Handle and light weight of this new brailler now make it so easy and convenient for you to take your brailler everywhere you go so that you can continue to read and communicate in braille wherever and whenever you choose.

Carol Koenigsknecht, Medical Consumer Writer
and
Hulet Smith, OT
Rehabmart Team Leader & CEO