Ask someone who works at a library for the blind anything.

>>7668245

Are you blind?

>>7668248
Nope.

Do you ever mock or ogle the patrons knowing that they can't see you

Do the girls fart a lot because they can't hear it?

Do you have a copy of Finnegans Wake in Braille?

>>7668245
Do you ever make rude gestures at the people who come in, fully aware that you're going to hell, but revelling in the moment?

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>>7668278

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>>7668278

>>7668274
>>7668283

No, I'm not a dick.

But I've acquired the bad habit of rolling my eyes whenever I feel like it and paying attention to something else while they talk to me about something boring. So much so that I have to police myself when I'm with people who see.

>>7668278
I...

>>7668279
I don't think we do, I don't remember having it. But I'm not sure, I'd have to check.

>>7668296
Are you an actual librarian or do you just work there in some other capacity?

>>7668392
I'm not a librarian, I did not study it before working there or anything. I do a bunch of different stuff though, I lend books and put them back on the shelves, help people use the internet, catalogue stuff, aid my blind coworkers, send emails, package and send books by mail, make reports and computer stuff.

>>7668416
In other words, I am a librarian, but I'm not comforable just saying that because I have coworkers who went to college for it and know more about the book world. I got the job because I worked in museums before and I'm there to receive people and aid them.

>>7668245
I would like the blind trust, please

>>7668245
Who's you're favourite chess player?

>>7668447
Kasparov. I like his personality.

>>7668464
>I like his personality.
Huh. We're probably quite different then. Mine's Morozevich btw.

Any blind qts?

Are the blind more or less patrician than your typical /lit/ user?

>>7668435
That's interesting that you mention that, I'm set on going to library school/becoming a librarian but am minoring in museum studies because I thought it would give me an edge in the field instead of just taking extra English/philosophy classes. Glad to see a real world example.

>>7668245
How would you translate something like Finnegans Wake or The Tunnel to brail.

>>7668520


...using the alphabet you fucking moron

>>7668477
>qts
One or two, yes.

The blind do not have access to as many books as people who see, they really don't and they'll be limited by that forever. What you have is some blind people who read book after book after book, because they don't have any other better entertainment, they are distracted by a lot of things that take our time like games and movies (though they "watch" movies too by listening to them, they can follow dialogue based movies to a certain extent, they also listen to a lot of radio). We even have blind AND deaf users who basicly just read their way throughout their entire lives. Some users have scanned through most of the library and they go from classics to Twilight just because they've read most else. Audiobooks have been a blessing for them in the sense that they are reaching much more content, but still, it is only a fraction of what we have. They also read in a slower pace than we do. On top of that, it's very hard to precise how they take the information of these books given that they don't have the references we have because we are looking at the world. 99% of our users don't like poetry and we really have very little poetry books, because they think it's hard, too abstract and with a lot of metaphors they don't get. I feel most of them like to read for the plot, they like straight narratives. That being said, there are exceptions and all kinds of blind readers.

>>7668484
I think it's a wonderful area altogether. I graduated in arts. A lot of people frown to the job prospects of the whole thing (arts, history, librarian studies,etc), but I believe we are also more versatile people who are apt to move from place to place. I did not imagined or planned to work there, I sent my curriculum to the art restoration department of this place. They rejected me the spot I was looking for, but liked me overall and sent my curriculum to the library section. I was interviewed to work at the kid's section because I've worked with kids before and I was rejected there too, then they sent me to an interview at the braille library and they accepted me and I love my work there. I think the more you open up to these possibilities the better. I do not intend to stay at this library forever, because I want to work with my paintings and so on, but while I'm working I'm also learning a lot of things that are truly unique to this job and that make me rethink my work on other levels. Nothing is useless.

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>>7668520
We don't say "translate", we say "transcribe". Because Braille is not a language, it is a language system.

You can write anything down, complex or not. It uses 6 points and thus 63 combinations + empty space. It took me two months to learn and it's not hard at all, just difficult to get used to it a bit. There are more complicated rules to mathematic notation and things like that. The differences between the languages are minimal (ponctuation and stuff like that). However, English braille in specific have this characteristic of abreviating almost everything. There is a sign for "ation", a sign for "and", a sign for "ing", etc. Every word that have them is shortened to save space (Braille takes a LOT of space). Other than that, you can perfectly just spell any word.

Also, for us who see it is almost impossible to learn to feel the letters with our fingers because we can't help but cheating with our eyes, but you can perfectly read a braille text by looking at the points. Most of our books are written front and back of the paper just like in the OP's pic. Those books I can't read because it's very confuse to see, but to the blind they are normal, they just feel the bumps and not the holes.

Do blind people ever have relationships or is it mostly >no gf

What is the most popular book in the library?

Do people ever volunteer to read to them?

Great thread OP

>>7668617
I agree.

>>7668604
>Do blind people ever have relationships or is it mostly >no gf
I can't speak for all of them. There are a lot of neets and people who live with their parents, or work in very small jobs and they don't look like they go out too much. It's a harsh world for them. But other than that, I've seen bfs and gfs who are blind and blind people coming with a husband or wife who see, even some blind perverts who keep hitting the girl employees. Just like everyone.

>What is the most popular book in the library?
I'm not sure. But I know the most popular author is John Grisham, there are a lot of his books and they are taken quite often. Yeah, that's the kind of stuff they read the most.

>Do people ever volunteer to read to them?
We work with a team of volunteers, but they don't work directly with the users, but on the making of new braille books and audiobooks. To make a braille book, an ordinary book is scanned and made into Braille, but the scanner and the software is very flawed, so the books is revised three times. The volunteer seats with one of my blind coworkers and they read the book together (in ink and braille) to see if they match perfectly. Other volunteers read books in the studio and record them as audiobook.

>>7668656
>We work with a team of volunteers, but they don't work directly with...
Sounds like a fun job desu
How do braille "printers" work?

>>7668245
Can you upload Alexander Scourby's Ulysses?

>>7668541
Sorry for the late reply, but thanks a ton - super comforting to hear.

>>7668739
I don't know about specifics. The computer has the whole thing in braille already and the printers just work like regular ones, but without any ink. They use paper that is a bit thicker, like 120g/m2, and the thing just "punches" the dots into the paper. Some work just one way, others work both sides of the paper.

With time and if it is not stored correctly, the dots become more and more hard to read as they are pressed back into the page, it's not forever. My coworkers said the library was much bigger before I got in, but they threw out a lot of stuff simply because no one could read them anymore. It wears out.

A braille book is much much bigger than the ordinary book. It takes a lot of space, there is only one size of "font", because the cell of the characters is the size of a finger tip. Because of that, the books are made into several volumes, like very thick magazines. Just to give you an idea, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is divided into 14 volumes and takes a whole shelf. The users usually pick them in parts, like 3 by 3 or sometimes they come with big bags and just take the whole book. More examples: we have a dictionary in 22 thick volumes, Camus' The Stranger is quite thin and takes only 3 volumes, usually most 300 page books are made into around 5-10 volumes.

Other than the printers, there are also braille typewriters, which I've learned to use and it's great fun. One of the most handy things for a blind people to have. There are only 6 keys and a spacebar. You press the keys together in each cell, so for example, keys 1 and 2 makes "b", 1 and 4 makes "c", 1 and 4 and 5 makes "d", etc.

>>7668979
I'm glad :)

>>7668245
Ever scored blind pussy

>>7668245
How do blind people find the toilets, and once they do, how do they know when to stop wiping

>>7669425
No, they hit on me sometimes though. There is an user that I helped a couple of times without much to say about it and then some other time she started hitting on me saying she "heard I was pretty" from someone who sees.

I'm married though and even if it wasn't for that, I quite honestly was never really into any user we ever had, even if there are some cuties every now and then.

>>7669452
>How do blind people find the toilets
You'd be surprised how independent they are, they cook and take buses, it's incredible. I believe men sit down on the toilet, but I never asked.

>how do they know when to stop wiping
But this is the million dollar thousand year old question that I never had the balls to ask anyone.

>>7669452
fold the paper over and feel the consistency of the shit through it. feels slippery and shitty, wipe more.

>>7668245
Any blind qts ? I've had a thing for blind girls sence that episode of Arthur with that qt blind girl, Marina.

>>7668245
That's funny, OP. I work in a library for the blind as well.

>>7669757
Already aswered it. Read the thread.

>>7669892
What a coincidence, what is it like? Anything to add about what I've said?

>>7668245

When blind people masturbate, particularly those who've been blind since birth, what do they imagine? Do they fantasize about the touch? The emotional connection to their desire? The sound of the voice?

Do the blind masturbate with a deeper understanding of the fantasy?

Pls respond.

>>7669452

After wiping, press the used toilet paper against the wall. If it sticks, keep wiping.

Is your life a cross between the Saramago books Blindness and All the Names?

>>7669418
>More examples: we have a dictionary in 22 thick volumes, Camus' The Stranger is quite thin and takes only 3 volumes, usually most 300 page books are made into around 5-10 volumes.
Fuck.
But how much time it takes to read them for the average user? How fast people can read through those pages?

>>7670735
Yeah, because I've talked about that extensively with them. First thing I ask them, really.

On the matter of those who are blind from birth, it's worth saying it makes a lot of difference to their lives. Those who are blind from birth have a huge gap of knowledge, they have no visual reference at all. On the other hand, those who turn blind as adults seem to suffer more. Their whole life change all of the sudden, they can't do the things they used to do, they know what they are missing. A lot of them have a hard time learning braille and they quite often get depressed, without jobs, without being able to cook, watch movies, handle money and walk around the city normally and do other ordinary things they used to do. They often become afraid of leaving their houses or being left alone. They need to learn braille as soon as they can, talk to other blind people and adapt their lifestyle, re-learn how to walk around and cook and so on, learn to ask for help without shame, etc. People who turn blind as kids seem to adapt the better, because they had access to a visual world, they know what you mean when you speak of something visual and yet they have been blind for a long time, that is, if they have proper help from parents and teachers.

This is just me saying though, my perception of those I've met.

>>7670766
hahaha maybe. I haven't read All the Names to know.

We have both books in braille and in audio though :)

>>7670787
They are slower than us, there is no doubt about that, but it's not too slow. I also think it helps them that they are not as distracted as we do.

The major difference is that our reading of a text begins as we glance over it and we can immediately tell how long a paragraph is and where are the most important pieces of text if you are looking at a graphically designed magazine or website. We can find stuff on a page and so on. Blind people read in a most straightforward linear fashion. They read word by word, letter by letter at each time. You know that thing that you can mess around letters inside a word and still read it normally without noticing it? They don't fall for that like us and are great proof readers because of it.

I'd say their reading speed is that of a person telling a story to a kid patiently. Skilled ones can go a bit faster than that, but not much more. They can't skip words or speed read through a text. To find something on a page they run their fingers through the first word of each line.

They have great memory as well (they rely on it a lot) and remember things from books I've read that I completely forgot.

>>7668245
How do they find it

>>7670888
They help each other a lot. Blind people seem to know about every other blind person in town. Our library is old and there is only a handful of other institutes for the blind, so we are always referenced. Our library is inside a bigger library (with regular books). There is a special guard that picks blind users at the entrance of the building and guide them to our counter and then back again to the entrance when they are leaving. Most of our users are regulars and old friends with my coworkers (who are also blind and have been working there for decades)

>>7670996
What country are you from?

I was blind to the joke that just went over my head

>>7668245
Are there non-blind people who come into the library? Who?

>>7668245
Do you like to cum into your panties?

>>7671023
A foreign one.

>>7671059
The library is of strict use to blind people or people with visual disabilities. Some people have really poor vision and we have magnifying computers that make things really huge (like imagine the word "bob" to fill your entire monitor) for them. Non-blind people can use the library as long as they are either helping some blind person (relatives and teachers) or if they are doing some research in the area provided they have communicated the library in before hand with specifics of their work.

There are also legal reasons involved to this. By law we can turn any book into braille or audiobook without even notifying the author, as long as the books are to be used by the blind alone. We cannot lend anything to non-blind people, but we even make copies of our audiobooks to donate to other libraries for the blind.

We also send a lot of books via mail to users from outside town and they send us back once they are done with it. The distribution of material for the blind through mail is without any charge and this is a worldwide thing.

>>7671063
yes

Thanks a lot for making this thread OP.

Are there any ebook readers for blind people? I know there are braille displays and screen readers and a braille ebook reader seems like a natural extension of that. It wouldnt have the drawbacks of physical braille books either (e.g. dots getting pushed back into the page, huge books, multiple volumes etc.).

Also you said that the blind dont have have access to as many books as we, but arent most books available as ebooks by now? Should be pretty easy to print them with your braille printer, right?

Also, do you have a copy of house of leaves in braille?

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>>7668278

Do you ever swap the braille keycaps around just to watch them fumble around touching each key for ages?

This thread makes me want a blind friend. Where do you go to find a wide variety of blind people?

>>7668245
Okay, enough about books - got any blind memes?

Why dont they just get Audible. It's got like 180k books. There is no way they're ever going to read it all. Also I swear I'm not shilling for Audible. I just use it as well and it's really convenient

>>7671329
I really don't get "listening" to books that were written with the intention to be read. I mean I'm sure there are books that were meant to be read aloud so just listen to those, I don't know

I want nothing more than a blind gf who's smile I will protect.

>>7668245
How many users are there? How many regular ones?

>>7671398
I can only imagine how blind girls must have to deal with guys hitting on them every day because they think the girl won't notice that he is a beta ugly cunt.

>>7671169
>Are there any ebook readers for blind people?
Technology has helped the blind people more because of audio features than anything else. They use the internet and smartphones by just listening to what's going on. There is the braille line, a device that is connected to the computer and transforms line by line into braille. But only now that some tablet devices are emerging, stuff like this: http://blitab.com/

We don't have any, but we are looking forward to buying something of that kind. There is this new technology coming up that creates bubbles onto the surface of screens for buttons and whatnot and that would certainly be of great help.

>but arent most books available as ebooks by now? Should be pretty easy to print them with your braille printer, right?
Not really easy. The printers are big and rare and expensive and it's not worth to any personal user to buy it. They are also noisy as fuck. Also, you cannot make a good book by just sending it to printing without making adaptations.

There might be easier solutions that I'm unaware of. I say this because I suspect that they make things a little harder here so that the blind people and the volunteers involved in the revision of books don't lose their jobs.

>do you have a copy of house of leaves in braille?
I think we do, almost certainly, though I don't know. Remember that in the shelves there are only these big ass "magazines" with braille notation and small letters with the book title on the cover, so it's not like I wander around a regular shelf and remember books by their cover. The things I remember we have is because people took it before or because I looked up in the computer.

>>7671277
Every tuesday.

>>7671296
A library for the blind. I really don't know much else.

>>7671311
More on their part. My coworkers are all trolls, one of them always say I have a butt ugly shirt and tell me to comb my hair down when I come in to work. When I come near them they say "anon, were you here when we were talking shit of you a moment ago?". They also use the verb to see in

>>7671329
Some of them might, I don't know. The thing is, our library is not in English and it's very rare to find English speaking blind people, so 180k books in English are nothing to them.

>>7671446
We are a "big" library for the blind, the biggest one in town and one of the biggest in the country, and still, it has a very slow movement. There are like 2000 users in the register, (most I've never seen) and only 15-20 people come there each day. It's hard to count who is a regular, some people come every week like it's religion, others come from 20 to 20 days.

>>7671556
(I stopped that sentence in the middle)
>They also use the verb to see in
I was going to say they use "to see" normally for "I'm familiar with it", "I've encountered it", etc. And sometimes jokes come from it.

Something I heard the other day between two blind guys
>Hey, how is your family, I haven't seen your daughter in a while
>Yeah, me neither haha

>>7671567
kek

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>>7671567
>>Hey, how is your family, I haven't seen your daughter in a while
>>Yeah, me neither haha

ya'll just check out this channel ok
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCld5SlwHrXgAYRE83WJOPCw

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Do you have any graphic novels there?

>>7672980
>https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCld5SlwHrXgAYRE83WJOPCw
Nice reference. I've seen a video of him long ago, will check the others.

>>7673043
Trollface and such a cheap joke on spoiler tags? What year is this again?

We don't have graphic novels, but we do have some books with graphics now that you've mentioned it. Some illustrated children books in which the lines are dotted like braille and make the outlines of simple drawings. Blind people hate them though and usually do not understand them. There are better ones that work with texture and different materials, hand made stuff, with different types of rubber, fabric, fur, buttons, creative use of holes in the pages, etc.

We had a design student coming to work in making one of those there and he did a great job.

There is a World War II book with a huge map of Europe with some lines of movement that happened during the war, I have no idea if blind people understand that mess.

Some time ago an artist also gave a drawing workshop for the blind there and she made them go against the wall while others drew their figures by using tape on the wall around their bodies, amongst other exercises. In the end they produced a book by carving pictures in linoleum and printing it without any ink, with only the shape sticking out.

Where are you from opie? Don't be a fag and at least tell us what is your country's language

>>7668245
do you draw dicks on random pages and watch blind people feel those dicks and laugh at them

Can you read braille?

>>7673235
nop
>>7673321
nop
>>7675271
yup

Slower than blind people, and as said before, I can't read if the back of the paper is printed as well. It's easy, just not that of much use to us.

Do you have an MLIS?

>>7675302
No, I've talked about it before, read thread.

>>7668484
>>7675361
Well, I have an MLIS (American) so if anyone wants to know more...

I didn't read the thread thoroughly at first, whoops.

I will say that seeing a braille atlas for the first time was one of my more interesting book encounters.