Comment by Judith on January 10, 2013 at 9:35pm

Thanks, Jen!!! One of my good D friends here in Portland is our Blind Chef, Ricky Joe. This a great, educational and fun post!!!

Comment by Jen on January 10, 2013 at 9:42pm

I don't watch it, but this past year apparently the winner of MasterChef was blind. I thought that was totally awesome. With people who are blind and with Type 1 diabetes winning these reality shows, it goes such a long way to showing that the only limits are attitudes!

Comment by Pastelpainter on January 10, 2013 at 10:42pm

Jen, are braille forms available in banks, etc. for withdrawal slips, various forms we all have to fill in at times.

Comment by Jen on January 10, 2013 at 11:00pm

Many banks do offer things like braille bank statements, if they are requested (not all do). It's hard to fill out actual braille forms, because it's hard to get the braille lined up properly, plus most people can't read it. :) Most actual forms can be filled out online these days, on webpages and PDFs, as long as they are designed to be accessible.

Comment by nel on January 11, 2013 at 9:31am

Your blog brought back memories , Jen . One of my first jobs in Canada , 1963 , I worked at the CNIB in Toronto , Bayview Ave. ...in the Food Service , cafeteria and service to residents for 2 1/2 years .Then moved on to Saskatoon , Sask .and still friends with the daughter of the then Manager.

Comment by Jim on January 12, 2013 at 8:10am

is there a special braille keyboard that helps reading web pages or do you use something like dragon reader?

Comment by Jen on January 13, 2013 at 10:06am

I did a whole post on using computers. :)

I use a regular computer keyboard (I can touch type at over 100 WPM) and use software that enlarged what's on the screen as well as software the provides speech output of all the text, (labelled) graphics, and other screen elements such as menus and dialog boxes. I do have Dragon as well, but that's more of a personal preference because I like to wander around my apartment and talk out my thoughts sometimes. There are braille displays which will display the text of the computer screen in braille, but they are prohibitively expensive which limits their use (think the price of an insulin pump, except that no insurance companies or health plans anywhere cover blindness-related equipment because it's not "medical" equipment).

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