From JoseClaudio Suarez Santana, Tenerife, Canary Islands:

The braille system will never die unless it's replaced by some other allowing us to read and write without any help from devices or technical equipment. I'm no enemy of progress, but claim my right to travel by bus reading the Ziegler or some other magazine, just as sighted citizens can look at their papers. A great battle should still be fought so that braille can serve more people. In Spain, we have had some advancements in this regard, although too few and too slowly achieved. Some charitable soul has, for instance, gotten drug names inscribed on medicine supply items. Some restaurants show you the menu in braille. Sometimes you can request official documents in braille. We should not expect those things to fall out of a serene sky, but express our need so that more and more accommodations be legally and effectively given to braille users. Otherwise, we should not complain. When you refuse help from sighted people, please be sure to do so politely. It's difficult when people express aloud and in most inappropriate terms their pity for us as blind people. I don't know how to deal with some situations we confront as blind persons, but I try to ignore bitter comments that may cause confrontation. It would be an arduous job to convince the sighted how mistaken they are about what we can or cannot do. The short story about marriage and divorce in the May issue was very revealing. I think fiction is a kind of transcription of reality in a quite understandable, beautiful way. I found in some fiction tales pieces of my own life reflected in most accurate ways, rather than in articles stuffed with statistics and globally considered situations.