If you have callouses on your fingers, that definitely makes it harder to read. And learning Braille can be quite difficult, very few adults fully learn it.

Rather than thinking "I need to learn Braille", it may be better to ask yourself "What is the most efficient use of my time?". Is it worth spending hours and hours to learn a new form of reading, rather than using audio systems? For some people, that is important enough. There are also other methods of reading Braille, although it gets significantly more difficult (very few places on the human body are designed for discerning such small details). I believe one person learned to read Braille with their lips (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2366660/Blind-student-learns-read-Braille-LIPS-fingertips-sensitive-feel-bumps.html), but one again, you have to consider whether taking that much time to learn that skill is worthwhile.

Speaking as someone who adores braille for giving me back my ability to read...yes this does make sense! Learning to read sucks. It sucks when you learn to read print and it sucks learning to read anything else. People tend to forget that.

I would encourage you to keep trying if you can, though. See if you can get a refreshable braille display; they're more portable and easier to read and most have some speech options so you can navigate the menus well enough while you're getting the hang of reading again. The big thing about reading braille, just like reading print, is developing the muscle memory for it. Sighted people have to learn how to hold their heads, move their eyes, focus their eyes, and operate a book, all of which cause strain. The same is true for braille, it's just that now you're learning how to focus your fingers instead of your eyes and you need a bit of time to grow some small reading callouses on your fingers; before those set in, it is much more uncomfortable to read and I, at least, had problems with physically sticking to book pages.

The stuff about braille being hard to learn isn't true. It can be personally difficult but it's no more difficult than learning to read print, and if you know how to read print, you already know how to read braille, you're just reading with your hands now and the letters look different. Some folks might roast me for this, but as a former print reader, I found the newest version of braille, Unified English Braille, is much easier to figure out and it matches up with print better than the older English Braille American Edition did.

It's frustrating at first, absolutely, and perhaps the people you've met who read braille are a bit strange, but you don't have to be them and consider what you gain by learning it. If you can get yourself to read for fifteen minutes a day, you'll make progress faster than you might think. I recommend getting a copy of your absolute favorite book or something you've always wanted to read and just go for it. You're more likely to read something you like (I started with kids books I didn't want to read and just said "screw it" and picked up a copy of William Gibson's Neuromancer; took me about a month to read the whole thing but it was nice to read something for myself again). If you need some help with learning, I think Hadley still does mail courses for free so you don't even have to work with anyone else and can work on your reading at home.

If you do decide you just don't want to do it, that's understandable. I'd say text to speech is the next best option. Not even close to as good as reading it for yourself, but it's better than having someone read it to you like an audiobook and you can get epubs of way more things. Best of luck!

This could be written by me. I hated learning braille because I have a lot of fantom tingles and my sense of where my limbs are in space are fucky, so soft paper braille is a huge pain for me to read. A paper menu to me is just stress, rather than an aid.

On a display, or on a plastic braille label where there's no chance of me reading the next line? That's absolutely perfect and I love it, plus it's crisp enough I can actually get something out of it.

I have to agree with another poster. Braille isn't too hard! Now, with less sensitivity in your fingers it will probably be harder, but if you can manage to make out the differences between each letters over time the rest is quite easy.

Some people might think, "How can it be easy when there's so many rules?" And yes, it is hard to learn in one way but easy in another. If all you want to do is read then it's not that bad. It's more if you want to become a transcriber that it's hard, because then you have to memorize things like when to put blank lines and how to format everything and how to make a title page etc etc.

You don't need to worry about that part if you're just reading. It does take more time than print. However, after doing this for a bit over a year now, I can read it pretty smoothly. I have tried with my fingers as well and can make things out successfully sometimes - to me that will be the hardest part. As soon as you can tell apart the letters, the rest is not that hard at all, it'll just take a little time to memorize. Grade 1 is an absolute cinch as far as memorizing it. Grade 2 is a good deal more - it has to cover everything that's possible in print, after all. But it's still not bad, and for unusual things there will be special symbols pages included that explain what unusual symbols you'll run into in that book.

I will say I learned it with sight. I don't know how long it would take to learn to decipher by hand. I can do it a little bit, but I really do think the deciphering part will be the hardest bit. When I successfully read anything by hand I always feel like it's a big accomplishment.

Honestly, if you love reading, I think you will fall in love with braille eventually. It sounds like it's not braille itself that is a problem for you, but it feels more like admitting defeat in your mind. I don't think anyone can blame you for how difficult it is mentally. I do think you'll have a lot of fun once you start picking it up, though, you're just in an understandably frustrating part of the experience. I really wish the best for you.

hey, I would love to offer any help and advice and Skype lessons on Braille. I have been blind since birth and recently the employment agency I was partnered with was like "You could do Braille transcription" and then I said back "O wait, I know Braille but I have no certification."

All that to say: I love Braille and I read in it fairly quickly, and I would be happy to help you some and deal with any complaints and challenges.

just want to say first, we hear you and it is hard. If you haven't already, you may want to check out screenreaders or audio that can speed up, I've heard that this is part of some people get frustated by audio books since they are often much slower than reading.

That being said, huge misconception (VERY common assumption by sighted people especially) that braille is always slower. Someone who has been reading braille their whole life is often equally fast to a sighted reader. What happens is that when you're young the SAME part of your brain, your visual cortex I believe, learns to recognize these shapes--visually or by touch--as words. When someone learns to read by sight and then goes blind, it takes more time and practice because that part of your brain has to kind of "unlearn" and then relearn. So it's completely understandable that you're struggling with it but just know it's not hopeless. And there's no shame, too, to using a different tool instead like a screenreader. All just different roads to the same goal, information.

Edit: i cleaned up some grammar

Makes sense to me. I didn't have trouble learning Braille from a logical point of view, but I too am afflicted by the lack of motivation to train it since currently I'm a very slow reader, and I don't have callouses to blame. I've considered getting a Braille display to use for programming since I have trouble understanding other people's code as conveyed through a speech synthesizer, but I'm afraid that I'll just spend the money and end up not adapting to it.