Deborah Kendrick
For most of us, March 2020 will always evoke the memory of lockdown, quarantines, masks and all of the other traumatizing changes wrought by the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic. But there were positive events taking place in March 2020 as well, and the one that stamped its most indelible memory on a few of us doing work for the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled was the launch of the NLS Braille eReader Pilot.
A Little History
In the summer of 2013, a conference was held in Watertown, Mass. that would bring significant changes to the delivery of braille materials by the NLS. The Braille Summit was a think tank of sorts, bringing together braille teachers, braille readers, braille producers and other lovers of braille to dig in and brainstorm the future and promotion of braille. One significant idea that came from that intense conversation was that putting a refreshable braille device in the hands of all braille readers would encourage the reading of braille and provide braille material in a more equitable fashion to blind people. Rather than long waiting lists for a finite number of braille copies of a single book, an infinite number of [...]