(NOT FICTION)

Did you know today, January 4th, is World Braille Day? My friend and one of our fellow bloggers, Kerry Kijewski of the blog, Her Headache, informed me of the event to raise awareness for Braille. That was last year when I was looking for prompts for Just Jot It January, but we missed the date by a day or two.

Not knowing much about Braille myself other than seeing it in elevators, I went looking for info. I found that World Braille Day is organized by the World Blind Union, an organization that advocates for the rights of the Blind.

As the mother of a Deaf child, I understand (to an extent) what it means to fight for the rights of someone who communicates differently than more than 90% of the population. In this world that we’ve come to inhabit where we rely so much on technology to keep in touch with one another, the obstacles abound.

But I don’t know much about Braille, so rather than tell you what I found online, do yourself a favor and check out Kerry’s blog and especially this amazing podcast I found that Kerry and her brother Brian host. It’s a weekly show where the focus is on educating  sighted people on the obstacles blind people face. Here’s a short 1-minute spot and article on CBC news that explains what their podcast does far better than I can. And you get to see Kerry and Brian in the studio!

Enjoy!

Photo: Badge depicts a stick-figure person sitting on a stick-figure chair in front of a stick-figure desk with a badly drawn keyboard and a monitor with stick-figure flames coming out of it. The badge reads “Just Jot It January 2021.”

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Here are the JusJoJan Rules:

1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list), counts as a “jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!

2. I’ll post prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5). The prompt will be the word in quotation marks in the title of my 2am post. You don’t have to follow the prompt every day, but that will be where you leave your link for others to see. You’ll get a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday and on Saturday, when your prompt will be the Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS, which will appear at about 9:30am Friday. Each prompt post will include the rules.

3. Please ping back or link to the daily prompt. To ping back, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: A) The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section. B) Ping backs only work if you’re blogging on WordPress. Everyone else must paste a link manually.

4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.

5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!

6. If your post is NSFW, do not ping back. Please leave your link in the comments with a warning.

7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge (above) so that others can find your post more easily.

8. Have fun!