Page 248 - The Story of My Lif

Miss Keller reads by means of embossed print or the various kinds of braille.
The ordinary embossed book is made with roman letters, both small letters and
capitals. These letters are of simple, square, angular design. The small letters are
about three-sixteenths of an inch high, and are raised from the page the thickness

of the thumbnail. The books are large, about the size of a volume of an
encyclopedia. Green’s “Short History of the English People” is in six large
volumes. The books are not heavy, because the leaves with the raised type do not
lie close.

The time that one of Miss Keller’s friends realizes most strongly that she is blind
is when he comes on her suddenly in the dark and hears the rustle of her fingers
across the page.

The most convenient print for the blind is braille, which has several variations,

too many, indeed—English, American, New York Point. Miss Keller reads them
all. Most educated blind people know several, but it would save trouble if, as
Miss Keller suggests, English braille were universally adopted. The facsimile on
page xv [omitted from etext] gives an idea of how the raised dots look. Each
character (either a letter or a special braille contraction) is a combination made
by varying in place and number points in six possible positions. Miss Keller has
a braille writer on which she keeps notes and writes letters to her blind friends.
There are six keys, and by pressing different combinations at a stroke (as one
plays a chord on the piano) the operator makes a character at a time in a sheet of
thick paper, and can write about half as rapidly as on a typewriter. Braille is
especially useful in making single manuscript copies of books.

Books for the blind are very limited in number. They cost a great deal to publish
and they have not a large enough sale to make them profitable to the publisher;
but there are several institutions with special funds to pay for embossed books.
Miss Keller is more fortunate than most blind people in the kindness of her
friends who have books made especially for her, and in the willingness of
gentlemen, like Mr. E. E. Allen of the Pennsylvania Institute for the Instruction
of the Blind, to print, as he has on several occasions, editions of books that she
has needed.