Ozzie Dots: Teaching Contracted Braille to Beginning Braille Readers

Designed and produced by staff of the Statewide Vision Resource Centre in conjunction with education vision specialist, Dr Gillian Gale AM, Ozzie Dots:

  • is a self-contained resource that can be used by the braille teacher (vision educator, class teacher, teacher aide, parent/carer) to introduce contracted braille (UEB) to beginning braille readers

  • is a systematic approach with the flexibility to individualise books for each beginning braille reader, including the older student

  • features hundreds of fully illustrated stories that encourage the development of tactual graphicacy and concept development

  • is a fun and light-hearted resource that encourages children to develop a love of reading

  • includes a downloadable Teacher Resource that supports the teaching and learning of contracted braille (UEB)

Ozzie Dots aims to:

  1. support the teaching and learning of fully contracted braille

  2. support the teaching and learning of tactual graphicacy

  3. provide opportunities for concept development

  4. offer exposure to non-text sources of information

  5. encourage reading through the provision of engaging stories

  6. offer early success through predictability, repetition and simplicity

  7. provide an opportunity for students to build a personal library

  8. provide an electronic resource of complete, self-contained, editable print and braille files

Ozzie Dots includes:

  • fully illustrated and editable braille files

  • stories/poems/procedures/recipes/non-fiction etc to introduce over 50 contractions to the beginning braille reader

  • print files to support the braille teacher including the full text, contractions and punctuation included, introductory notes etc

  • 10 or more books per contraction offering choice and the ability to tailor the resources for the individual student – select 2-3 books per contraction

  • a searchable list of titles, topics and features of each story

Ozzie Dots introduces contractions sequentially as follows:

  • Set 1: like, can, it, the, go

  • Set 2: do, you, will, not, little

  • Set 3: very, good, have, but, for

  • Set 4: that, so, with, him, from

  • Set 5: and, more, every, people, said

  • Set 6: of, some, great, mother, father, us

  • Set 7: here, friend, day, in (standing alone), as

  • Set 8: could, would, time, work, one

  • Set 9: just, name, after, again, your

  • Set 10: about, always, quite, rather, knowledge

  • Sets 11-20: these resources are currently under review

Purchase Ozzie Dots

The cost to organisations and transcription agencies (Australian dollars) is as follows:

  • purchase for use within Australia – AU$792 (GST inclusive)

  • purchase for use outside Australia – AU$720 (GST inclusive)

Parents/carers may purchase Ozzie Dots – but please note, you will also require:

  • computer with Duxbury Braille Translation software and MS Word

  • a graphics-enabled braille embosser (e.g. Index Everest)

  • braille paper (11×11.5 inches)

  • a binder and binding combs

  • a printer

Trouble Shooting

Can your embosser produce graphics?
We produced the graphics using PictureBraille and once the pictures were added to the Duxbury file, we selected the picture and made them 2.0 mm dot resolution.

Have you edited the text at all?
If you have edited the text, which is something we encourage, you may have caused the braille lines to take up more than a page. We filled most of the pages with the pictures and the words, so any extra characters on the pages might cause the text go to the next page.

Have you checked your embosser setup? Your Global Embosser Setup needs to match the Document Embosser Setup. The books are configured for these document formatting settings:

  • Form: 11.5 by 11 inches

  • Characters per line: 40

  • Lines per page: 25

  • Top margin in lines: 1

  • Binding margin in characters: 4

  • Emboss in interpoint: NOT checked

  • Emboss a banner page: NOT checked

Note: Ozzie Dots cannot be embossed using ViewPlus embossers.

Feedback

We’d love you to stay in touch to provide ideas or feedback, and so we can let you know when further Ozzie Dots teaching and learning materials become available.

Please contact us for more information.