A little while ago someone on here suggested tactile toys to help improve my sense of touch with a view to learning braille. And so I ended up with a tactile Rubik’s Cube. I never realised this was a thing but it’s actually pretty nice - each side has its own set of textures like squares, hearts, crosses and so on.
But the problem was - what on earth do I do with it? Sure I can scramble the sides easily enough. But suddenly I’m back in the 80s concluding that this is for people way smarter than me. Unlike the 80s, we have the internet now, but there seemed to be nothing there that I could make any sense of non-visually.
But with perfect timing, an ebook was released last month called “Solve It! The Only Speedsolving Guide for Blind Cubers” written by someone who is likely very familiar to regulars here on Applevis, a certain Paul Martz.
Anyone who has read his posts on here won’t be surprised to learn that it is very well written and easy to follow. Once I found a little time to devote to it, I went through the beginner’s section and to my surprise have now completed the cube twice. It seems a bit magic so far, but with a bit of practice I hope to be able to learn how to do it without the book.
It starts off introducing you to the cube, where to get a tactile cube from and then the beginner’s method for solving the cube - going from the bottom edges and corners, up through the middle then finally the top. I never thought I’d say this in 2025 but I did get a little buzz when I realised the last side had just fallen into place. Smug doesn’t really do it justice.
As the title suggests, it also goes deep on speed solving the cube, and finishes off with sections for having some more fun with it plus taking care and maintenance. I’ll be honest, I haven’t read past the beginner’s stage as I’m happy paddling about in the shallow end for now, but it’s nice to know I could get more advanced if I start feeling braver.
As you would expect, the book is really accessible as it has been written with screen readers and braille displays in mind. It helps to be comfortable reading line by line and sometimes letter by letter but as far as I know this is the only guide to using the cube that is accessible to the likes of us.
I bought it from Apple Books and I’m sure it is available wherever good ebooks can be found.
However, I’ve spoken to Paul about this and he is very keen to make the book available through services like Bard, RNIB, CNIB and other Government/charity libraries. I’ve put in a request to the RNIB but I am sure he would appreciate any help getting it onto any of these platforms. It seems that his focus is less about the sales and more about making it available to as many people as possible.
I hope it’s ok to post this here. Since going blind, it seems that I am constantly being bombarded by audio and I was surprised how much I enjoyed just playing about with the tactile cube. However, without Paul’s book it would just be gathering dust. I hope others on here will benefit from it too. It makes me really happy knowing that these things exist.
Comments
I will probably buy one…
I will probably buy one. Where did you get yours? And is there any difference between those cubes with just numbers written in braille and and an actual Rubik's cube?
And guys please, let's all…
And guys please, let's all celebrate the coming of a new assistive technology, the Rubik's cube! 😂
Bookshare please
As the subject says, I have access to Bookshare, would be great if it's made available there.
Cube
Mrs Grieves bought me the cube for my birthday. She tells me that it is colour coded like a normal cube, but each side has different shapes on it. On mine it has one side that's flat, then crosses, half spheres, squares, hearts and a funny notchy thing - it's like a ring with a nobbly bit in the middle. Stop me if I'm getting too technical. I suspect you could probably feel the textures a little more quickly than braille, but maybe that's just me.
The only problem I had was that they put the wrong texture on one of the sides - so I have 10 hearts and 8 squares, except one of the hearts if colour coded like the square. It's kind of important to know which is which. My sense of touch is so poor that I initially just presumed I was feeling the sides wrong so blamed myself. It was only later that I realised. If I'd known earlier I would have asked for a replacement, but instead I just used a lock dot.
Paul mentions in his book that an alternative is to 3D print the textures. It sounds like if you get serious about doing this thing quickly, then you can buy specific speed solving cubes and then print the best textures that suit you. For me I'm just happy messing about for now.
I'm not sure which one mrs grieves bought me but would guess she bought it from amazon as you can find them there. I will ask which one it is.
Adding to Bookshare
My goal is to have this book freely available to any blind person who wants it. But to make that happen, I need your help.
For Bookshare, please use their book request form.
Here's the information you'll need: Title: Solve It! Subtitle: The Only Speedsolving Guide for Blind Cubers Author: Martz, Paul ISBN: 979-8-9876693-2-7 Publisher: Paul Martz (https://TactileCuber.com) Year of publication: 2025 Format: ePub Length: 15,262 words
Thank you in advance for putting in this request with Bookshare.
Re: Book Share
Is this RNIB Book Share? I haven't signed up to that, but I did a quick google and you can request books here - https://www.bookshare.org/help-and-learning-articles/how-do-i-request-a-book
I think it needs an account to do this.
I know Paul would be really pleased to get it listed there. I believe it is self published and was only released last month.
Beat me to it
Oh, I was too slow! Paul beat me to it.
Thanks!
nice! Paul is great as a teacher in any topic; I gladly understood how to edit music with GarageBand with his guide, so I'm sure I will find my way on the Rubic Cube. I already have my Tactyle cube from Matel, but with the help of Chat GPT I could only reached like 70% of the faces, but I'm stucked.
kind regards.
Bookshare might not take it.
I think they have a policy that you can't submit books already available elsewhere as e-books. It can't hurt to try, naturally. I'm just offering a potential heads up.
I'll have to buy the book. I should see if my mom can find the cube my stepfather made for me. He used a soldering iron, or something like it, and burned the dot patterns of a six-sided die on to each face, so one face had a single dot, one face had two diagonal, and so on.
I don't even know why I had a cube, and I was like, too bad I can't use one of these. He said sure I could and made it. He did it in like five minutes. He was a pretty amazing guy.
Contacted Bookshare
I reached out to them via their general contact form. Maybe I'll know more this week. But pressure from Bookshare clients can't hurt. Please fill out that book request form. Thanks.
Kindle?
Any plans to bring this to Kindle by chance? I'm not referring to Kindle Unlimited, I am absolutely willing to pay for this book, I just want the option of being able to listen to it through my Alexa devices. 🥸
Kindle TTS
Hi Brian. Good question. My understanding is that TTS is enabled by default for all Kindle eBooks. I don't recall seeing an option, and if I did, I certainly wouldn't have disabled it. It should work.
But this book is not a work of fiction. It contains detailed, step-by-step instructions. Readers solving the cube will want to proceed a sentence at a time or even word by word. My bet is that most readers will have a better experience using VoiceOver and the Kindle app.
Let me know how it goes. And definitely let me know if TTS doesn't work for some reason.
apple books, but nowhere else
Hi, I bought it into apple books library.
but I have a windows pc, and this kind of books would be better read on a desktop, I think. With a Braille display.
I'd like to know if there's possibility to have it into an EPUB format or whatever.
I found it even into an Italian kobo-partnered book shop but they fooled me... I downloaded an epub which is not readable. They documented it as drm-free but it isn't.
UPDATE: DRM or not, I have got it!
Kobo has a web reader which is quite accessible. And I got it on track!
Good news about Kobo
I believe Smashwords also sells a DRM-free ePub. If that's true, you could use it with any reader, such as Voice Dream Reader for example.
Just purchased on Kindle
Happy to report it works very well, both with VoiceOver, and with the Alexa devices.
Thanks, Paul, for writing this book, and for making it easily and readily available to us bookworms. 🔖
Kindle success
Great! I take back everything bad I ever said about Amazon. Almost.
Bookshare and BARD for me
I remember when I was a child, my parents had one of these but I couldn't do much other than hold it in my hands. So I think I've just found something to put on my Christmas and/or birthday list. I use BookShare and BARD, and would greatly appreciate this being made available. Apple Books is definitely an option as well, but I haven't done much with it yet. This is so cool!
My Cube
Sorry almost forgot about this. This is the cube that I have: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DK5C8PXZ?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
I have absolutely no idea if this is a good one or not, but other than the erroneous square which hopefully was a one-off, it's working well enough for my needs.
Hard to tell
I wish I could see the image. But the textures you describe make it sound much like the cube I had. It's not a great cube for competition, but it's better than most. I used it in my first competition a year ago.
The thing that sets these cubes apart from others is that the tactile markings pop off with a jeweller's screwdriver, leaving concave indentations. The tactile marking snap easily back into place.
Also, all six center pieces can be adjusted for tension. To do this, pry off the cap on each of the six centers to reveal a tension screw. If your cube sticks a lot and won't turn, you might want to loosen each screw about a quarter turn. This type of adjustment is covered in Part Three of the guide.
Anyone old enough to remember?
In the 80s I had enough residual sight to use the non-accessible cube. However, I seem to recall that the RNIB version or at least the accessible one had Braille markings that were colours. So, G for Green and B for Blue etc. Am I inventing this or did they use braille letters?
Thank you for sharing about this.
I recently found a cube in my own search for a tactile fidget object, but being a bit of a perfectionist was getting frustrated. I happily just bought your book from Apple. Thanks! 🧩
Blind gaming forums?
Other than in this thread, my marketing and promotion efforts have gained the most traction in a blind gaming forum called AudioGames.net. Can anyone recommend similar discussion forums, YouTube Channels, or podcasts where blind gaming is discussed? I would appreciate it. Thanks.
YouTube, possibly Sam from "the blind life"
www.youtube.com/@theblindlife
He is a low vision person who does a lot of videos on accessible technology for the visually impaired, as well as gadgets etc. I think he may be interested in this as well, check out some of his videos and decide for yourself. :-)
Thanks for the lead
I reached out to Sam.
I also thought about Molly Burke, because I bet her audience is mostly young and more inclined toward gaming. But with nearly 2 million subscribers, that's a bit of a moon shot. Everybody wants to be her guest.
Bookshare update
Thank you to everyone who requested this book through Bookshare. The acquisition and cataloging process is underway. I'll post a link when it becomes available.