Contribute an article
If you are a young person who is blind or visually impaired and uses braille as your main way to read and write you are welcome to contribute an article, joke or puzzle to the Tactile Times.
The recommended length is 100-300 words.
You can contribute anything that you think is suitable for the Tactile Times based on past issues. If you think your article is not ready to go in the newspaper yet, edit it.
Copy deadlines and publishing dates are published in the useful information part of the website and on our blog and social media accounts.
Once you have written your article Contact us and attach your article to the email you send us in an accessible format.
VIP = Visually impaired or blind person (aka young braillist)
Sections of this page
Tips and ideas for what to contribute
Tips for making your contribution accessible
Tips and ideas
Below we have listed all the main sections of the newspaper, along with ideas on what would fit well in them. Feel free to contribute something which isn't in this list, and do contact us if you think something should be added to the list.
Events section
- Do send in any events you have found out about. Anyone can do this, whether you are a VIP or not.
- Write up how your experience of an event was (good things, things that could be improved, how it worked). You have to be a VIP to do this.
News
- Send in anything interesting that you have found out which is relevant to blind people. Anyone can send a news article from a website for inclusion.
- Write about something really interesting you have found out about. You have to be a VIP to submit this sort of contribution.
Technology
- An app review (rating, features). You have to be a VIP to submit this type of contribution.
- Tech guide (guide to a particular piece of technology) You have to be a VIP to submit this type of contribution.
Fun things to do
- Write about a place you really enjoyed visiting, or an experience you really enjoyed. Only VIP's can write this type of contribution.
Jokes
- Anyone can send in a good joke to us and it will have a chance of being included! Even if you only send us one joke, it will still count. The better the joke, the graiter the chance it will be included.
Sport
- Any VIP can send in an article about an accessible sport they enjoy.
- Anyone is welcome to join our Fantasy football league and/or Strava club. Thank you to those of you who have already joined, as it helps to grow our community
Games
- You are welcome to send us any ideas for games that would fit well in the Tactile Times. Anyone is welcome to submit an idea.
- If you are interested in helping us make quizzes, contact us and we may be able to add you as an editor to the Google quiz or Kahoot! so you can help us make it. Only VIP's can helpu us make quizes.
- If you have developed an online accessible game, do let us know.
Music
- Recordings of you performing music (don't forget to introduce yourself name, age, instrument, etc...). Only VIP's can submit this type of contribution.
As this section is still a work in progress, do send us any other articles you think would be appropriate (if you are a VIP/young braillist)
Languages
- Your experience of learning a language. Only VIP's can submit this type of contribution.
As this section is still a work in progress, do send us any other articles you think would be appropriate (if you are VIP/young braillist)
You can contribute things that are not listed above as well!
VIP = Visually impaired or blind person who has some experience with braille (aka young braillist)
What formats and styles are accessible?
Have a look at our tips below and see what you can do.
- PDF's are unreadable to us
- Please do not send us braille files (*.brf, *.brl, *.dxb, etc) as we will put the articles into Word format first before translating the entire newspaper to braille. Do let us know if you would like specific braille formatting/braille graphics in your article and we will try our best to include them.
- Images/scanns (*.jpg, *.jpeg, *.png, *.heic, *.svg and a lot more) are useless as well as they are photos of print, which we can't read.
- Word files (*.doc or *.docx are accessible to us. Please do not send a file like *.gdoc, *.pages, etc... You can normally find an export option in your document editor (in Apple Pages, remember to klick export not share)
- Open text files (*.txt) will also work if you need to send us one.
- You can always just put the article in the email message body but remember to save draft as you go so you can keep your contribution safe!
- We can also handle contributions sent to us through other platforms (e.g. WhatsApp) but we prefer email
- Try to avoid tables where possible as they are difficult to translate into a braille publication.
- If your document editor has the option to add headings, put the title of your article as Heading 3 and the different sections (if any) as Heading 4's
- If you would like to write your article in Google Docs, please export the file into Word format before sending it to us (This article might help you). Please do not add our Google account as a viewer to the document as we cannot copy out the article into the Tactile Times.