Visual Aid Volunteers of Florida, Inc.

You can sign up for Braille Refresher questions to give your braille knowledge new life!

Braille Refreshers is a program from APH (American Printing House for the Blind). It is intended to “give your braille knowledge new life” (or REFRESH it) by sharing a weekly piece of braille instruction in the form of a no-stakes question that gives immediate feedback. The questions are created and responded to in SurveyMonkey.

Once you sign up, a new Braille Refresher question arrives in your email inbox every week. It takes about ninety seconds to complete a question, and each one comes with a braille code book reference and/or an additional study resource.

Anyone can sign up to receive weekly Braille Refresher questions by emailing their name and braille-related title (e.g., teacher, transcriber, software developer, parent) to BrailleImprovement@aph.org.

Here are example questions for you to explore!

• Getting Hot in Here (March 20, 2024)
• What Is New? (February 7, 2024)
• Teachers = Terrific (May 10, 2023)
• Winning Combination! (March 16, 2022)
• Key Largo, Montego. Baby, why don't we go? (March 13, 2024)

Completing a weekly Braille Refresher question, individually or as a team, is a good way to inspire discussion and information sharing among any group that studies braille (students, teachers, transcribers, and more). We know of at least one prison group and one network of TVIs that start all their regular meetings with a Braille Refresher question.

Every six months, we send out a satisfaction/feedback survey. Below are some things people have said in those surveys:

• I have learned from the questions. I feel they are fun at any age.
• I like the one question refresher – I can take the time to check myself even with a busy schedule.
• Most of the time, I get the questions correct. It is when I get them wrong that I find them the most helpful. That is when I use the link to revisit the question.
• Keep the jokes coming! It's a perfect way to have fun whilst presenting a braille challenge to refresh our skills. I appreciate the reminder, too, that it is for fun only and not a test!
• I love the puns and the braille refreshers that teach something. … I love when I know the answer without having to look up a rule, but I also appreciate you providing references so that I can go back and read and learn or refresh my memory when I don't know the answer. I also appreciate the explanations of the incorrect responses as well as what made the right response the correct one. All good information. Keep them coming!

The current (3 years) “Braille Refreshers Reaction Survey” will be open from April 8 through May 3, 2024. Please share your current thoughts with us!

Braille Refresher questions will keep coming, and you can help make that happen! If you have an idea for a question, please email it to BrailleImprovement@aph.org. We particularly appreciate submissions that include the question and a collection of answer choices. But we are open to any kind of request or suggestion for question content!

Remember, you can sign up today to give your braille knowledge new life! Simply email your name and braille-related title to BrailleImprovement@aph.org. And … braille on!