A year of work in progress – day 61 (Braille)

Day 61 – 2 April 2014 and day 2 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge.

Today I want to talk about braille burgers but before I do I must mention Benny the Irish Polyglot only because he is such an inspiration. He has a simple mantra for learning a language and that is to leave your mother tongue behind and live the new language of choice. It is the same with anything you want to learn. Stop playing about and immerse yourself in it. There is no substitute for experience and for just doing it.

Back to the burgers. Have you ever seen the video about Wimpy Braille Burgers? You should watch it and you can find it here. Wimpy are a burger chain. I remember them from my youth and have a feeling that they were once more popular in the UK than they are now. I always associate them with Wimpy in Popeye who used to eat burgers but this may be just a coincidence. They still operate and the nearest one to me is in Edinburgh, 78.4 miles away.

They are big in South Africa though and wanted to let visually impaired people know that they offered their menus in braille, a writing system which enables blind and partially sighted people to read and write through touch. Invented by Louis Braille (1809-1852), who was blind, it consists of patterns of raised dots, usually on embossed paper, arranged in cells of up to six dots in a 3 x 2 pattern. I’m sure you’ve come across it.

To get their message across, the chefs at Wimpy created special burger buns with the sesame seeds arranged as braille letters on the top allowing the people not only to taste the food but to read it as well.

What a simple yet brilliant way to get their story across. Like all genius it is obvious in hindsight. By making 15 braille burgers the message was spread to over 800,000 blind and partially sighted people. The look on the faces of the people in the video said it all and the YouTube video has had over 600,000 hits.

Remember this is a blog about work.

This morning we had our monthly project leads meeting. I have said it so many times that it is important that we get together regularly to build relationships and share experiences yet it is always a struggle to put together an agenda. We often focus on the big things but this morning I talked about us addressing those little things that we all know about but stop us doing our jobs. I called them rocks in the stream and proposed a way forward to dredge them out of our way. I can feel another blog coming on. It was a good meeting.

In the afternoon I went up to the Stadium of Light, the home of some football club or other for the Go On UK ‘North East I Made A Difference Awards’ ceremony. I wore a black and white tie. We didn’t win the prize we were in for but our Digital Durham programme is supporting many who did win prizes. It’s great to see so many people involved in getting the good folk of the region online.

Learning points for today: It’s too easy to get into the detail and too easy to get hung up on the wrong end of the stick; everyone has a responsibility even if it just to ask the stupid questions; if the cable’s not long enough to reach the desk, move the desk and; my blog can be more exciting than a premier league football match.

Today’s enjoyment rating 8/10 – would have been higher if we’d won but then everyone is a winner.