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06th May 2025

bbc.co.uk/accessall

The Documentary

Presented by Emma Tracey

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EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hello. Thank you for listening to access all. I'm Emma Tracy and this week, standby for an audio treat. It's a documentary that myself and producer Adele Armstrong made for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service. Now, if you're a regular here, you'll know that I'm blind and that I do sometimes talk about Braille. Braille is an unsung hero, in my opinion. It doesn't get nearly as much love as it should. So I went and made a documentary about it. Celebrating 200 years since its invention. In it I get to talk about the dots and how they feel under my index fingers. And as you'll here at the start, the board games that they allow me to play.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay, right then.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý We have played a lot of braille Scrabble over the years.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý One, two, three, four…

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Don’t look.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’m not looking!

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý All right. Sorry, I touched my letter before I took it out, which I realised then was cheating.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Uh-huh. Five, six, seven. Okay.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Beginning or the end of the alphabet goes first?

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Let’s do beginning.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Neither of us like to lose, do we?

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No, definitely not. Things can get heated, raucous [laughter].

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý What have you got?

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý What have I got?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I know, they’re funny ones, aren’t they, because they’ve got the raised edges.

MUSIC-

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I can’t imagine my life without braille. There’s nothing I like more than a spot of braille Scrabble with my friend Ellie, or reading braille books with my seven and ten year-old sons, or even on a good day hammering out scripts on my braille machine at work. A few weeks ago my braille typewriter, a big, clunky thing called a Perkins Brailler, started misbehaving. Some dots started coming out wrong, it stopped being able to get back to the beginning of a line; it was a nightmare. I present a weekly podcast and use the brailler to write out all of my questions for guests. I posted about it on Facebook that I needed to get it fixed or find a replacement. I included some of the things I love about my Perkins, and something special happened: in a time of fancy techy braille displays and ever more clever braille printers other blind people started sharing their love for this kind of old-fashioned typewriter and how important it was in their lives too. They told me about little details of stories written, accidentally walking into another blind person with the cumbersome contraption, their fascination with those patterns of six little dots. And reading these stories it struck me that braille for all of us who use it is a kind of extraordinary passport to other places and other experiences and even other lives, and how 200 years after it was invented braille continues to transform lives in ways that are often unexpected. Braille is our pencil and paper; those six little dots that we read with our index fingers, they’re our key to education, to privacy and to avoiding adding a tin of peaches instead of tomatoes to our pasta sauce.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Welcome to The Documentary from the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service. I’m Emma Tracey, and this is Braille and Me.

GEERAT-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It was this magical place where the ocean meets the land [ocean waves]. I tell you, the first time I was in Guam was my first time in the really deep tropics I would say. It was just overwhelming, the waves were crashing on this elbow ridge with all these deep channels with water rushing in and out, and cicadas overhead, spectacular molluscs everywhere, and the whole place with its wonderful tropical moist, forestry smell. It was just magical.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Geerat Vermeij is one of the world’s leading experts in molluscs. The Dutch palaeontologist has spent a lifetime travelling the world, studying shells and fossils and writing about them. He’s got a library full of scientific papers, books on evolutionary biology and thousands of scribbled notes on scrap paper, all in braille. Because Professor Vermeij has been blind since the age of three.

GEERAT-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý When I started working with shells I collected them because I thought they were beautiful. We lived in the Netherlands, I always loved shells on the beaches in Scheveningen and so on, but in the United States I learned all about tropical shells; I was just totally hooked.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Professor Vermeij, now at the University of California, Davis, runs his fingers across the shells he studies. One day it’ll be a 400 million year old fossil, the next a conche a mere few hundred years old. The crevices, the extent of damage to the shells and their thickness are all evidence of the power of the jaws and the claws that have attacked these creatures over centuries. Molluscs, he says, in order to protect their delicate flesh appear to have evolved ever more rugged armour in a kind of ancient arms race. Many of Professor Vermeij’s peers talk about his unrivalled insights in the field as he explores with his hands and his fingers, and even sometimes tiny pins. His teaching and published work attest to that, but he is characteristically self-deprecating.

GEERAT-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I am of course very attuned to differences in sculpture, differences in texture, and I have learned as a boy already to inspect these things very, very carefully, so I do notice little traits that sometimes actually are hard to see, at least that’s what people tell me. And so I’ve written lots of papers about odd structures that are perfectly obvious to me but had been overlooked in the scientific literature up to that time. So, in that sense I suppose I bring a careful inspection of texture and shape that perhaps other people might overlook.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý For Professor Vermeij the beauty of a tropical island is so much more than a turquoise sea or a stretch of white sand. For him it’s about using every sense, and I kind of get that. And the beauty is also, he believes, in the ideas that shells hold and the stories they tell about evolution, ecology, economics, humanity. But all of this is made possible, he says, thanks to braille.

GEERAT-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, I could not be doing what I do without having access to braille.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý How do you take notes when you’re in somewhere like Guam?

GEERAT-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý For field notes I almost always use slate and stylus.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, it’s just a little frame that you put the paper in and there’s little holes in it and you use a little sharp instrument to punch the holes?

GEERAT-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes, I use a stylus.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And you have to write backwards as well?

GEERAT-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes, indeed. Each letter is inverted and you write from right to left.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You’re in a different league to me, Geerat, you’re absolutely…

GEERAT-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs] I don’t think there are many people in this world who would use braille more than I do.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Music and horses trotting] This is where braille starts: Paris in the 1820s. A blind French teenager named Louis Braille wins a scholarship to attend the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, the first school for the blind in the world. The 200 year-old ex-prison building is filthy and damp, and the students exist mostly on porridge and doughy bread. He’s introduced to a man called Charles Barbier, who had devised a system of 12 raised dots representing different phonetics. But it was complicated, so Louis sets out to simplify it. He reduces the number of dots from 12 to six, and develops a system of two rows of three which fits perfectly under the pad of one finger. It would in time transform the lives of blind people throughout the world.

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’m Yetnebersh Nigussie Molla, which means where have you been.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Where have you been, what an interesting thing to call your child.

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs] yeah, it’s almost a question.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It’s lovely.

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And it’s an excuse to come late.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughter] Yeti is an Ethiopian lawyer and disability rights activist. Louis Braille’s little dots fill Yeti’s world just as they do mine.

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý We have our own Ethiopian letters, hard letters that you don’t get in other languages, and it’s transforming, it’s evolving all the time. But for example there is a letter [te] which is, I have to remember, one, two, three, four, five, six, plus dot two and dot six.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeti’s job, now working for UNICEF in Nairobi, Kenya, is a long way from how life looked for her in the early days. When she lost her sight due to a childhood illness there was no medical provision in her village, let alone braille.

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I was born in a very rural area of Ethiopia. I lost my eyesight between the age of five and six. It was a medical issue. But I think before the vision loss there were a lot of signs which were leading me towards non-survival. My parents and relatives relied totally on herbal medications, holy water treatments and so on and so forth because the area I was born in was not lucky enough to have a medical facility where I could go. Even some of the herbal medications that I used to go to took, like, two days of walk or two days animal transportation because of the lack of roads in the area. So, yeah, my family was targeting that I survive in life, so by the time that I lost my eyes it was not a big point because people were happy that I didn’t die.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That relief was short-lived though, Yeti told me. Her blindness was considered a curse. She was no longer a valid candidate for marriage, and more importantly a dowry. Her future prospects were grim.

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Gradually as my limitations start to appear and people were saying oh my god, maybe it was better that she did not survive.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Do you remember that, people saying that?

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I remember people coming and crying seeing me, yeah, I remember some of that. We are talking about a village that there is no talk about education. There was no school. Education and girls was never a topic. That’s why I say blindness is a lottery I won at the age of five because of my blindness I was able to leave that village.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And therefore have access to braille. Yeti was sent to stay with her grandmother who worked as a hospital cleaner in the capital and knew some doctors. But nothing could be done to restore her eyesight, so Yeti’s grandmother took the brave decision to send her to one of only six special schools for blind children, 250kms away from family.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And what was life like at school?

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It was so fun. In a special school everything’s special, until you realise that the world is not as special as that school is.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That was obviously the first interaction you had with braille. Do you remember the first time you felt braille?

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Absolutely. The first time I saw braille it was something like, you know, bumpy on your hand. It was always a challenge to determine what is b, where is c, because they’re both two dots away, it’s e, so it took me a while. But the good thing is since we were sleeping there we had the opportunity to sleep with books. We used to hug our books, it was everything, it was a big thing.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You hugged your books, they were your comfort?

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh my goodness, yes. We had a library but mostly we were not allowed to take them out. But I had the opportunity to sneak out because I had the key for the library [laughs].

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý How did you end up with the key for the library?

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs]

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý One of the nice things about braille is actually being able to read under the covers, isn’t it?

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Exactly. You don’t have to put on the light.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You don’t need the light.

YETI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Exactly. So, I was always reading why we were told to sleep.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I never did find out how Yeti got the key to the library. She went on to do a law degree, and throughout her five-year course would spend weeks transcribing audio recordings of her thick, legal textbooks into braille. Sometimes she says her fingers were swollen because she’d brailled 300 or 400 pages of a book. But braille had changed her life.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You’re listening to The Documentary from the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay, I am going with Guy. I’ve got two, three, four, five, six, seven, on a double word, that’s 14.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’m winning, is the answer. I’m still winning, just about.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Have you been practising?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, for this [laughter]. Ellie and I became pen pals when we were 14. We met in Wales on a holiday for blind teenagers and we clicked instantly. And braille was from the beginning what made our friendship work. This was the ‘90s, there were no accessible mobile phones and the internet was slow, and we lived hundreds of miles apart, me in Ireland and her in England, but we just simply had to stay in touch. Remember the brailler I mentioned at the beginning? This was its time to shine.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Ellie, do you remember those letters we used to send each other?

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Pages and pages of braille letters rolled up in those tubes, because obviously if you fold braille you get the creases and lines right across a line of braille, it’s awkward to read.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And the best bit could be in the crease and then you’re going to miss it [laughs], and you’re trying to flatten it out. So, we used to braille it out on our Perkins Braillers, bash, bash, bash, for me it would sometimes be an hour with Atlantic 252 on in the background.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And just write everything I could think of that had happened, including things that I don’t think I told anybody else. If it was a really good one you received two tubes.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý If it was a two- or three-tube letter you knew you were in for an absolute whale of a time reading that.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh goodness I had never received braille letters before this. I’d never received anything except for a braille library book in the post or something like that. I’d never had something with fun stuff from a friend in it.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And I used to reply straightaway.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh, me too.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Like, I used to get the letter and read it, and then stay up ludicrously late.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hammering out on this manual braille typewriter.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý How time’s change. Hi, Sheri, it’s Emma.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hi.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’m going to say something very geeky now, but is that voice Karen?

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs] yes.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Karen, by the way, is one of the many synthetic voices we can choose from to read aloud what’s on our phone screens.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I like Karen.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I have Karen as well.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Because the other ones are kind of mushy, their consonants are weird and I can’t get them as fast.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, they try to put feeling into what they’re saying.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. No, I don’t like that.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Which I don’t want, yuk, no.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No, I want it be fast. I don’t care what it’s feeling. It’s a machine, right?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes [laughs].

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I just want it to go.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Sheri Wells-Jensen is Professor of Linguistics at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She’s been a linguistic consultant on Star Trek, is an expert in alien languages, and is on the US advisory board of messaging extra-terrestrial intelligence. She’s fascinated by the message conveyed by language and codes of all sorts, and says there’s something about the tactile nature of braille that can conjure up extraordinarily rich associations in its users.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý When I read it’s this cascade of colour that goes through my head. I could see colour a little bit when I was a kid, so even though I don’t have names for all the colours anymore, I think I’ve sort of forgotten, but I still have the psychological sensation. So, q is this beautiful gorgeous pink; I think it’s pink. And some days I embark on this deep philosophical poetic sense of genuine awe that I get to touch letters that other people have touched, and it’s just incredibly intimate to touch someone’s name with your hand, right, and read it. And then sometimes I’m just like, oh don’t get all goofy and gooey on me, I’m just reading.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, yeah, when I do this I put little notes on little flashcards with my Perkins Brailler because I like to have a non-technology way of reading my questions, just in case everything falls apart.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes!

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’m sitting here reading the word tactile, and it’s actually quite a cool feeling word with the -ile. I know exactly what you mean. So, e is i backwards, or vice versa, so at the end of the word you’ve got the i, and then you’ve that the l, which is a straight row of three, and then you’ve got e, which is the two diagonal dots the other way round, and it’s kind of cute.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It’s pretty.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, it’s kind of pretty yeah, absolutely. Professor Wells-Jensen’s success today and her passion for braille belie the difficulties she and so many other blind people have to confront on a day-to-day basis with getting proper access to braille.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I grew up in rural Michigan at a time when I really didn’t know any adult blind people, and neither did anyone else as far as I could tell. And I’d always thought that I wanted to be a physicist or an astronomer, that was just sort of my path. And then it just sort of became clear to me as I went through high school that nobody really wanted to braille the calculus book. I mean, I think they might have if I’d thrown a fit and insisted. But what 14 year-old is going to throw a fit and insist in the face of all the adults going, you don’t have to do that, hon? And so I wasn’t forbidden to go into astronomy and physics, but I could read the room.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It’s a story all too common. Professor Wells-Jensen went into the peace corps, met some brilliant language teachers and decided she wanted to become a language teacher. After that she discovered linguistics; language meets science, she felt. Then with the study of alien languages found a place where language meets astronomy and finally ended up doing astrobiology. Got herself on a space flight too actually, asking questions she says like: if you’re reading braille in zero gravity will you have to move your hands around a lot? Is that going to knock you round the room when you’re trying to read? But Professor Wells-Jensen is deadly serious when it comes to fighting for braille rights.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Do you think there’s enough braille in the world now?

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No! [Laughs] no.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý What would you like to see different about where braille is and how we can get to it and how much of it we read?

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think that, being a geeky academic, I would like to take it a step backward and I would like people to understand that literacy is a human right, and so braille literacy is a human right, right? It’s something that they deserve, because we are a literate society and so whatever kind of literacy you have it belongs to you and it should be everywhere. Can’t I go into an academic building on my campus and have the braille numbers be there, and not up above the doorway the way they sometimes are?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That’s hilarious. You have to find the braille.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You do, you do.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý There could be braille on a lot more packaging maybe as well?

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You know, in particular I just got my braille display returned to me, it needed repair, and not only was my name not on the package in braille, so I had to use my phone to figure out what the package was, but the receipt wasn’t in braille. This is a freaking braille device. Hello!

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs]

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý But stuff like that, any doctor’s information, please can I just please quietly…? Or an important letter, you don’t want to share everything. And sometimes having the phone in your hand, although I’m happy to be able to do that, I am delighted by the advances in technology, it’s always an intermediary. There are things that you just want to read on your own.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý A sweet letter from a friend, anything from your doctor [laughs], your pregnancy test.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh yeah.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Wouldn’t that have been nice?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý But my biggest gripe of all is the thing with the shampoo and the conditioner and the shower gel all being in the exact same bottle with no braille on. What’s that about?

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Why do we do these things?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Put a bit of braille on. Gel, just put g-e-l, that’s all you have to do.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Just do it.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Easy.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I know some of the accommodations only we would use. The braille numbers on the door that’s only blind people, no one else is going to use that. But there are some of these things that it really is a question of universal design. Everybody wants to touch the g on the gel and the s on the shampoo or the sh, right? And they want to.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes.

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý They don’t know they want; they don’t know they could have it that nice.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah [laughs].

SHERI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý But they could.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Louis Braille didn’t only come up with the braille we use for reading books; what’s less well known is that he also invented a braille code for music notation. Louis played the piano and cello, and is reported to have played the organ in churches across Paris. By the time he was 19 he had adapted his six-dot system for music. [Piano music] the Japanese pianist,Ìý Nobuyuki Tsujii, has been blind since birth. He’s played at concert halls around the world, the Sydney Opera House, the Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Royal Albert Hall in London. But he says it’s thanks to Louis Braille’s music notation that he learned to play.

NOBU-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Speaking Japanese]

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Nobu told me how he started to play at the age of four. I wondered how you could read the right hand and the left hand of braille music, given you generally read braille with both index fingers at the same time. Nobu said that you need to read one hand at a time with braille music. You read the stave of the right hand using both hands, and then move to the other stave to read the left.

NOBU-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Speaking Japanese]

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý But what I found most extraordinary about what Nobu told me is that in order to follow the conductor he listens to him breathing and senses the movement around him. It’s impressive.

These days braille is being given a run for its money. The market is full of every imaginable talking app, reader and device. I was checking out some of these weird and whacky gadgets at an assistive technology show recently, and so was, just as it happened, the most famous braille user of them all, Stevie Wonder. Can I sneak in one little quick question?

STEVIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Go ahead.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý What are your first memories of braille, Stevie?

STEVIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý My first memories of learning braille actually was when I was very little using the board and nails, and then they had the slate and stylus, and then the braille writer. They were all amazing to me because, again, just the fact that this technology through the brains of Louis Braille made it possible for blind people to not only read but to discover the world.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Thank you.

STEVIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, what’s your favourite Stevie Wonder song?

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think Isn’t She Lovely is lovely.

STEVIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, it should be because you’re lovely.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh, thank you.

MALE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Take a picture with us.

MUSIC-

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I put Kin and I’ve got seven. Oh, it’s only a double letter, but it is on the five so ten, 11, 12.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I got 16. Yes!

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, there’s only one outcome then for the Scrabble: on this one occasion I’ll concede the win to you.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Whoop-whoop. I can’t believe you conceded. I’ve never seen you do that.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No matter how I get my braille, it is a joy and a privilege to have those dots underneath my two index fingers. 200 years after Louis Braille perfected the code that clever creative blind boy would, I reckon, be delighted with the Scrabble that takes his name and all those new innovations. But I imagine he might be frustrated with those who think that with the rise and rise of ways to listen to rather than look at or feel our information braille is no longer relevant. One thing is for certain, nothing can match it for keeping secrets.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I just love the idea that all my sort of secrets and all the things that I wouldn’t really tell anyone else were winging their way to you, and you’d open the letter there, and even if your mum had wanted a sneak peek, she wouldn’t have been able to read it. I just used to find that magical.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That was fantastic. But we can never fall out.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Because you know my secret and I know your secrets.

ELLIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And I know yours.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You’ve been listening to The Documentary from the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service. I’m Emma Tracey, and the producer is Adele Armstrong. Well, I really hope you enjoyed that. Something that didn't quite come across in the documentary was my quest to meet and speak to Stevie Wonder. I knew that he attended a disability technology exhibition every year in California, so I managed to get some work there. And then I spoke to lots of people who had even the most tenuous of connections. I have a friend of a friend who knows him a little bit, and I knew he was going to be at the conference, so I was calling a couple of times when he knew Stevie was coming, he texted me and said, Stevie Wonder is at stand F 23, and we ran and stood behind a massive entourage, which was with Stevie Wonder as he went around and looked at all this blindness technology. He's really into technology, so he was enjoying himself, but there were lots of people wanting to talk to him. So Mike managed to catch Stevie's attention. I stuck my little digital recorder where I figured his mouth might be, and asked him a couple of questions, which meant that he was in my documentary, and he was also in a World Service programme that I made called People Fixing the World. So that's my story about how I met Stevie Wonder. And if there is a disability related subject that you are super geeky about, like me, please jump on board. Tell us about it. Get in touch in all the usual ways you can email accessall@bbc.co.uk. You can find us on X and Instagram at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖAccessall. Or you can send us a message on WhatsApp we are 0330Ìý1239480. See you next time. Bye.

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