Where are the Latin Books?

I’ve been exploring learning Latin. It’s going to be something I learn as part of my degree, but I wanted to get a head start as I know already that I’m likely to face some accessibility challenges once I reach that module. It is also several years away, and I am eager to learn and I feel that as I’ve already done a languages degree, I know what it takes to learn another language. I have also failed at learning languages when I did not put in the effort, so I understand that if I’m going to do this, I’m going to be putting in no small amount of time.

There are lots and lots of articles online comparing the various Latin courses and what each of them offers. I will need a textbook that can guide me through, and if I was a sighted print reader there would be a fair number available to me. I am not. I read braille, and so my first task was looking at where I might buy one of the courses in braille. I’m not even that picky about which one, as long as I can read it.

So where are the braille books that I might learn from? The awful, devastating truth is that there aren’t any. The RNIB library used to have all kinds of weird and wonderful books which definitely included Latin courses. However in 2021 they made the decision to cull their catalogue. Many blind people including myself saved as many of the books as we could, but I have no idea how many were destroyed. I hope it wasn’t too many, but I suspect it was. All of these books, gone. All in the name of improvement and efficiency. But that isn’t what this post is about. The bottom line is that whether the books used to exist or not, they don’t now. And blind people are poorer for it. If you want to read popular fiction you’re in with a chance of getting it in braille. If your interests lean towards the weird and obscure, you have no chance.

I’m left with few options. I did find several Latin study books on Bookshare which is an accessible library service based in the US. The quality of titles that are available varies, but it’s a quick way of getting your hands on electronic braille or a Word version of a book. The issue with these books, despite some of the quality control problems, is that I can only read them one line at a time if I’m using a braille display. That is no issue when I’m reading for pleasure or reading a passage in an academic text, but it does present me with challenges when trying to study a language.

I need to explore grammar tables so that I can look at how verbs are conjugated. If I’m reading a hardcopy book I can have each of my hands in a different place on the page. I can see with my fingers how the columns and rows in the table relate to one another. This is not something I am able to do as I scroll line by line on a display. I lose the overall picture of the document, that visual layout which can tell me so much. Not to mention many of the tables don’t translate well when using automatic transcription software, rendering them almost unintelligible.

I was very kindly sent some Latin books in braille by the parent of blind teens who saved some when the RNIB library shut. I’m not at the point where I’ll easily be able to read these texts as they are too complex, but I am very grateful to have them and they are definitely motivation to learn more. If I am going to learn from a textbook, I suspect my only options are to produce my own copy in braille and emboss it, something which I quite frankly lack the transcription skills to do, or pay a professional transcription service to do this. This would probably cost hundreds of pounds, so it isn’t a decision I can make quickly. I did contact RNIB members transcription, which transcribes resources for free for blind people, however they told me they don’t have the capacity to transcribe books. So this is another closed door.

Of course some people will wonder how many blind people really want to learn Latin? Is it worth someone like the RNIB taking on that kind of transcription project? But swap Latin for any interest beyond the most popular, and you will find yourself in the same position. The point is that we still live in a state of information deprivation. Organisations like the RNIB can talk all they like about how their new library model allows for better efficiency and perhaps that is true. It is also true that a lot of knowledge was lost three years ago, and we still have not recovered. Even if they hadn’t culled their collection, it was still a limited range of titles. This is true for all braille libraries across the globe. I’m very grateful for resources like Bookshare that put electronic braille under our fingers, even if it’s not perfect. It certainly fills a gap when I’m looking for a novel to read, and I feel so fortunate to live at a time when this technology is available. But there is a real need for more books to be transcribed into hardcopy braille. This takes time and money and resources that most people don’t have. I urge the organisations that do to make it a priority.