Hints and Tips
Page 14
Braille at home in freezer
This edition of Hints and Tips comes from research conducted by our very own braille literacy co-ordinator, Julie Woods-Dalloway.
Background
As a single parent I am always looking for ways to save some money. I wanted to find out how "readable" standard sticky labels were when brailled, in comparison to the more costly Braille-On labels.
Objectives
- To cut costs associated with creating braille labels.
- To compare the performance of Braille-On labels with standard paper labels.
- To find out if braille labels "stick" in different situations, namely when frozen.
- To prevent cooking faux pas from mistakenly adding wrong ingredients from unlabelled containers.
Method
The standard address labels I used came in a box, on a roll, which you pull off one at a time. They can be bought at supermarkets or stationery shops.
Implementation
Using my Perkins Brailler, I brailled two labels and stuck them onto different ice cream containers in the freezer. On the Braille-On label I brailled "ice cream". On the standard sticky label I brailled "French vanilla".
Results
My investigations revealed that the "ice cream" label easily withstood a month's stay in the freezer. It was very crisp and retained its sharpness in that time.
The "French vanilla" label also remained in pretty good condition but the dots were a bit softer than with the sturdier Braille-On.
Conclusion
In the freezer both labels worked well. I can justify throwing the standard sticky labels away but the Braille-On labels are great to label containers permanently kept in the freezer.
Using standard sticky labels in the Perkins worked really well and now I'm using them to label items in my pantry. When I come home from the supermarket, I take all the items that are hard to identify by touch and have a quick labelling session. It's really nice not to have to worry any more about tomato sauce instead of maple syrup on pancakes!
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