“To Comfort a King” will be available in a Braille edition, thanks to the efforts of Joan Boggess from Villisca, Iowa. Joan has been translating printed books into Braille for over 40 years. Her interest in Braille began at the age of 14 when she accompanied her grandmother on a visit to her blind chiropractor. He had a Braille machine at his office, and he allowed Joan to play with it while he treated her grandmother. Joan remembered that occasion often, and eventually it lead to her learning Braille.
Joan and her husband raised a family of six children. When only the last child was still at home, Joan contacted the Iowa Department for the Blind and asked how a person could go about learning Braille. They sent her a Perkins Brailler, paper, and a lesson book for her to use to complete each lesson and return in the mail. After she completed the 19 lessons, she prepared a 35-page manuscript in Braille and sent it to the Library of Congress as a requirement to become certified as a Braillist.
Once she was certified, the Iowa Department for the Blind sent her assignments for school projects, work-related information, and books to be translated. When she first started, she printed out her translations using the Perkins Brailler that had been sent to her to learn Braille. The Brailler was a machine with six keys that could be pressed in many combinations, from a single key at a time to all six keys at the same time. Paper was rolled into the machine, with each page limited to 25 lines of Braille. If she made a mistake that she could not fix by pressing out a “dot” with a wooden tool, or if she was not able to add a “dot,” she would have to roll that paper out and start all over.
Now, she has a computer program and a special keyboard that allows the six Braille keys to be pressed all at the same time, or in 61 different combinations like the old Perkins Brailler. Spell Check is a nice feature that prevents having to “start over,” as she would have had to do many years ago. Much like traditional “short hand,” the Braille system includes phrases and words written in an abbreviated form. Children as young as Kindergarteners and First Graders will have learned enough Braille to understand those Braille “contractions.”
Braille books are separated into volumes of no more than 150 pages. Once the book is completed, Joan transfers the material onto a flash drive and mails it to the Iowa Department for the Blind. The printing is now done by them onto paper that can be “punched” on both sides! The books are spiral bound. The Department issues lists of books that are available in Braille to facilities that serve the blind or to any individual who has a vision impairment.
At age 87, Joan works as a volunteer many hours each day “Brailling” for the Department. She is sent assignments to complete, often for schools. Those assignments have “due dates,” and she is very careful to get her work returned on time! Between assignments, she works on “fillers,” which are miscellaneous books she translates to Braille at the request of the Department.
“To Comfort a King” was the first book Joann personally requested to translate. The book has also been accepted for an audio recording, so it will be available in that format as well. Eventually it will be on the list of books sent out by the Iowa Department for the Blind. To learn more about the services of that department, click on this link: http://www.blind.state.ia.us/
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