By Laura Hipshire
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
“How many people do you know that spend almost two years learning something just to volunteer?” asks Ed Handley, referring to his wife, Shirley. Ed and Shirley moved to the Novi community of Fox Run from Overland Park, Kansas.
Shirley literally brings words to life for the visually impaired – she’s been a certified Braille transcriber since 1982. Shirley initially became involved with Braille when her youngest child left for college. “I was looking for something to do,”she says. Since Shirley began, she has transcribed over 15,500 pages of written words into Braille.
In order to become certified, Shirley had to complete a course which took almost two years. The final test comes in the form of completing a 35 page book manuscript; the manuscript is sent to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. for review. Shirley received her official certification as a Braille transcriber in 1983.
When Shirley first began transcribing, she used an oldfashioned cast-iron Perkins Braille Writer. Similar to a modified typewriter, a Brailler has a keyboard of six keys, each representing a dot within a Braille cell. By pushing various combinations of the keys, the Brailler produces different letters of the alphabet and other Braille symbols.
History of Braille
According to the American Council of the Blind, “A blind eleven-year-old boy took a secret code devised for the military and saw in it the basis for written communication for blind individuals. Louis Braille spent nine years developing and refining the system of raised dots that has come to be known by his name.
“The system of embossed writing invented by Louis Braille gradually came to be accepted throughout the world as the fundamental form of written communication for blind individuals, and it remains basically as he invented it.