I would have contacted a lawyer about it. I wouldn't take that crap from anyone, no matter how old or young I was. The belief is that the more prohibitions are set, the more people are going to be daring in defying authority. Which is why people say that if there were fewer laws, there wouldn't be as much crime.

I agree with you, it is your stuff so you should always have the final word on who you'll allow to use it and who you don't want to touch it, and what you want should be respected and honored.

Ahh, here we go again with their overprotection. They've got it all wrong, your stuff is your own, and you have full control over it. Now if it was the school's own device, I could understand, that's a bit more reasonable. But it wasn't, it was your own damn device, so they have no right to control it.

first thing's first; I'd like to clarify that I'm not here to start a riot or even a dispute, that I do sympathise with everything that's been said on this topic, and that before I became a parent, I probably would have agreed with it entirely.  there are a few things here, however, that are being overlooked which need addressing:
1.  When you say something is yours, is it really?  Does it no longer belong to any other entity or organization, perhaps the school you're going to, or the company that helped pay for it?
2.  If the answer is that it does belong to someone else, does that someone else have to pay for repairs in the event such equipment does get broken?
3.  who is responsible for any damages?  Who has to answer for them?  And finally, the one you dread hearing,
4.  Are you of an age where you are considered a legal adult?  I know, I know you hate that question; so do I, and I'm an adult already... the problem is that, without this one being entirely true, there is little in the way of legal recourse for you in most every country for you to try and begin arbitrating what any other legal adult should or should not do.
I'm not opposed to you being king of everything you own, if you in fact own it.  Sadly, you have to read the fineprint in just about everything that is quote, "given to you."  These are things you're probably not aware of, such as rules regarding what can and cannot be done with equipment as long as you're still considered a child under the school's responsibility and you're not the one paying for it in the event that it's broken.  Even with adults there are rules of this nature; I didn't know that for some insane reason Apple still feels they own your iOS device even after you pay for it, but it becomes exceptionally clear once you jailbreak the stupid thing.
Getting back to the issue at hand, however, if you are a legal adult and the device is being handed to you by an organization such as division for blind services here in the  US, you are actually entirely responsible for the device and anything that happens to it, at which point the teacher really should have no say in it and you can tell them to seriously go mind their own business.  Admitedly, if something does happen to it, you'll more than likely have to answer to DBS in regards to what happened to it, assuming you still have some sort of case with them under which equipment is being purchased for you, because there isn't an endless supply of, well, lets call it, "free money."  Every piece of equipment you own costs something, usually paid for by costing someone tax dollars.  As long as you're on this hook, many people, teachers included, will feel the right and even obligation to tell you what you should and should not do with it, since they themselves are tax payers.  Once you're an adult, however, and you can prove you're not misusing the equipment by any stretch of the imagination, there really is no reason they should do so.
I hate to be the one to put such a damper on this party of sorts, but I'd hate to be the one who looked the other way and let someone get into further trouble by allowing them to say, "Yeah, this is mine!  I own it!  I should be responsible and you can't tell me what to do!"

most of what I'm going to say is just beating a dead horse from what others have said but I'm going to say it anyway.

1. it depends who bought your tech and how it is being paid for. I remember a person I heard of could not get her desktop computer replaced a few years ago because they checked her house and the equipment and the thing had failed because of roach crap and eggs in it. Though it was a full family affair as to why it was like that (she was a teen and the whole family were pigs.) I wouldn't want to pay 1500 more bucks to replace something when someone wouldn't take good care of it. Same thing with other stuff you are bought so it is reasonable for the disability or other folks to hold you to some accountability.
2. Schools are often held accountable for the behavior of students while they are there, camps as well, and that can also count even if you are a legal adult in some cases. Plus, though a lot of you guys obviously hate schools for the blind and from what I've heard you ought to,  and perhaps those of you who went to regular schools had tough times too, (mine in regular school were pretty good.) those institutions catch crap from people all the time. They often have little power over their charges, you can make more money than most school officials and teachers working at McDonalds, they work long hours, and there are lots of spurious and unreasonable demands made on them by groups of parents. My Sister works with Special Education in the city and she deals with tons of legitimate cases of disability and mistreatment, but she also tells me of both teachers and parents demanding the impossible, blaming teachers or staff for things they were not responsible for, or deflecting their own mistreatment of their own children on the staff.

This is not to say there isn't a lot of injustice done to the kids themselves by the system, which my sister also polices in her job and finds myriad instances of, but Schools as it stands are in a state of constant paranoia from the top down and need to protect themselves and also try to sort out everything. They might be held accountable for a student breaking another student's technology in a sort of "why didn't the teacher prevent this?" affair, which my sister has had to deal with.

Also, there are other concerns besides vision-related ones as well and accessibility and lawsuits. There are certain things that students are not legally allowed to view at school, regardless of where the thing comes from.

Suppose I'm a real sleezbag tween: I ask my buddy to look at his phone to "show him something," At which point I access youtube and turn on some dirty something or other. If I can only touch my own phone, and they find the phone showing dirty pictures, they can only blame me and it is easy to maintain discipline and order. It gets muggy if you don't know who was using what to do what, so they have that rule to narrow down their protocals and make sorting things out easier, as again, they are super-overworked and overtaxed at their jobs and they need these rules to smooth things out.

That said, these rules suck terribly and they aren't quite fair, but I see their utility and why they would be in place. You weren't allowed to use your friends' tech for the following reasons I see it.

1. the friend was accountable to some service for the object, allowing you to use it would put that object ot an unknown risk, and a smart Department for the blind would be risk-averse.
2. Allowing your friend to use your tech puts the school at risk for accountability due to blind-department-related risk.
3. allowing your friend to use your tech puts the school at risk for similar risks that it would happen for anyone else, (turning on dirty sites, hacking, god knows what else...) again, unlikely but avoiding risk is a smart thing for a school or government agency with little money to do.
4. in the event of a violation that exposes people to risks 1-3 saying formally that only the owner can use the object streamlines protocol and makes accountability easy to determine.

Again, not fair but that's why I see it happening and I see the logic behind it. Also, although it is a bit different, actually the moment you turn 18 in certain cases does not mean legal adulthood in all contexts. Yes, you are legal to vote at 18 even if you are in high school but while you are actually attending high school, in the context of many school-related rules you are not an adult until you drop out or graduate.

That's all I've got to say.

i do go to a boarding school for the blind myself, and they have a hole lot of rules i don't agree with. however, like a few people have said already, a lot of the rules are just in place so the school doesn't get into shit. they'll always have the problem of parents, and parents can be quite unreasonable some times, aspecialy when it comes to there children. i mean, if anything happened to there childs teck while they were at that school, they'll probably blame the school for letting someone else use the teck and damage it. i think this is also the reason for a lot of other rules with those kind of schools, cause if the parents get pissed off, they could get sooed or just have a lot of negative reviews, so for the most part it's better for the school to just have those rules to avoid getting on parents bad sides

But, couldn't you argue on the other side that some of these rules could impose problems, and you would have lawsuits on both sides? You say that schools have these rules because of fears of lawsuits, when something else comes up and the school gets sued for it anyway.
I'll give you a similar example. My school district did not allow my teacher of the visually-impaired to communicate to a deaf student in my school. They didn't allow that teacher to call an IEP meeting to request additional services. They were also reprimanded and threatened in writing to be fired if they continued to tell parents of students about additional services. I should mmention that this teacher had previously worked at a school for the blind before it closed, due to the legislation who believed that there were not enough students attending the school. When my teacher was fired, they called an attorney, and they determined that the school was in the wrong and a lawsuit was filed, to which I was a witness to. If I come across rules that are unreasonable, I'm not going to accept it without a fight. All rules have to be within reason. That's how you will have a functional society.

before writing this reply, I had a good think. here are my thoughts on the matter, from all 4 sides. first, my own side. if I allow you to touch my equipment, that means I trust you, and by all means, you're free to do so. but if I  haven't, and you still do, I would pretty much straight up, tell you to go to hell. I don't care if it's a county/district device, whether my own... I paid for it, I take care of it, I decide over it. if they don't like it, they shouldn't provide me with one. having said all that, if I'm not around, and the teacher isn't aware of our agreement, then I will not blame the teacher, since they only wanted to try and defend me. if it's a case of the teacher knowing our agreement, and they start nickpicking, the story changes. same goes for if I'm in the room with you, and I pass on my equipment. in other words, as long as there's an agreement between us, and the teacher is aware of, they should have no saying over it.

The school I went to for high school has been known for making up its own rules. During my last year or 2 of high school we got this nice new bathroom with automatic paper towel dispensers and so on. So someone goes in and breaks everything, now everyone in the whole school knows who did it and yet the teachers felt that they had to walk every male to the bathroom until said person confesses. I was like 17 or 18 at the time and I was having none of it. I don't think being 18 should have anything to do with it. As a human you have basic rights and if you go out and use your own money to buy something it’s yours to do with as you please. If a parent buys you something and gives it to you and you’re under 18 and you are willing to take the fall when someone breaks something of yours then why not? Either it was an accident or you learn not to trust that person. It be different if your parents told you not to let anyone else use said object and you were under 10 years old. At a certain age schools really need to stop babying you and holding your hand. If they don't however will you learn to do things for yourself and be independent? I can also see if you were disturbing class or something like that but otherwise if you own it you can let whoever you want use it.

I can agree  with Nocturnus points, especially having seen kids myself are a general risk to everything just by existing.
That being said, the problem with many braille jails (love that phrase btw), is that rules are imposed not because of any sort of underlying logic or even fear of reprisal, simply because they are rules and  having the clockwork blind people follow, well blindly is easier than trying to actually teach them to have any sort of initiative.

When I was eight in the early nineties the school i was at literally forbade you from touching  anything at all that was not directly presented to you by a teacher or house parent.
I don't just mean tech, I mean things like cups, tables, even your own sweets etc. If you had your own stuff it was basically  a game of hide it away since if it came under scrutiny it would be regulated. Seriously I remember one Christmas where some charity or other had given all the girls a barby doll and all the boys an action force figure (each (that is g i jo in the states). I was having a look at my friends while he examined mine, and we both got a right royal yelling at.

On another occasion one boy had some rubber monsters I was looking at, he proceeded to drop one, told the teacher and got me a severe yelling at.

We used to dare the authorities by having what we refered to as an mnf, or midnight feast where we'd sneak out of bed and get a chocolate bar we bought from home. Bare in mind this was our chocolate in the first place, and was composed of one bar, it wasn't like  were stealing someone else's or were eating six bars at a stretch that would make us sick, yet we regarded it as a great adventure and a breaking of the rules, since we knew had we been caught we'd have been in amazingly dire trouble, (we once got called out in front of the entire school in assembly for  talking early in the morning).

with tech the situation was the same. I remember one occasion where my brailler bust, printing the odd dot faintly. I was certain it was a fault on the brailler, as indeed anyone who has used one will know, however of course since I was regarded as the school's bad boy and was the staff's favourite person to blaim things on it was my! fault, and my teacher, who was a dead ringer for prof umbridge basically forced me to do braille copying every day for a straight week until "my braille  improved" I asked to try another brailler, but was told it was my fault.

Eventually I got heartily sick of  the hole  thing, snuck down after hours and switched my brailler with one of the spare ones (they didn't' have names on),  and then of course it was fine, but had I been found out I'd have been in seriously deep do do. 

Now, all that being said, I do see nocturnus point, however in my case when as a teenager at secondary school, and later at university  I was! given tech by a student  allowance or from the school's resource budgit it was made clear to me that tech was mine to take care of, and i knew for a fact that if it bust replacing it would not be an easy matter, either financially or in terms of logic.

Admittedly at that point in my shithole secondary school there was more chance of my tech being maliciously damaged than of me inviting a friend to use it, as in fact happened when someone emptied a bag of crisps over my head and my toshiba laptop, or on the other occasion  ran round the class room and renched my braille n speak cable out of the wall, resetting it and wiping the hard drive. Indeed in that place, damaging tech was a favourite method of getting at blind students generally and me in particular.

So I do see Nocturnus point here, though myself I'd say it'd be better to get the kids to learn responsibility, especially since I doubt malicios tech damage of the sort I experienced at secondary  is quite as likely (well I can hope I suppose).

Like I said in post 8, I sincerely hate it'; I had to live it at one point.  Even in the mainstream system it follows you around, particularly when you're younger, you have so-called VI teachers and O and M instructors, etc.  It's never fun to be told what you can and can't do with something you see as your own and which you see as your own for a reason, such as the fact that, well, uh, you're the one using it practically all of the time?
But then we get down to the whole common sense versus protection against trivialities aspect of things... See post 17.  There is never a general consensus all the way across the board as to when it is perfectly alright to asume that a person has acquired this supposed common sense.  France is different from the UK, the US is different from both, and those differences can varry in the case of the US from state to state!  Some states consider you legal at 17, some at 18!  Once upon a time it was legal for parents to hold you under their roof until you were 21!  As Dark has pointed out, there are perfectly mature teens who can handle everything from their looks and sexuality, to taking care of their elderly grandparents and making decisions for others quite effectively and responsibly.  then you have 40 and 50somethings who act like they are stereotypical teens.  In the case of blind and vision impaired individuals it gets even dicier because there are those among us who have more than just their malfunctioning or nonfunctioning eyeballs to deal with, mental, emotional and social or psychological and even neurological issues sometimed linked to their visuall impairment.  I'd love it if we could all be judged by our own merrit and on our own clean slate, but since when has society ever been collectively good at doing that!

@Nocturnus, yes, that is the general problem, society can only deal with people in categories, so forces people to behave in those categories and then complains when people don't fit.
Bottom line, society is an arse hole!

@Shotgun, you probably don't have experience of dealing with the sort of total environmental control that some braille jails use. We're talking emotional manipulation, out and out threats. If you read Umbridge in Harry potter and the order of the phenix you'll have a good idea at the type of thing. For example, the occasion my friend and I were caught talking, the headmaster gave an assembly before the entire school on "the virtue of forgiveness" which was planely directed at us.

Yeah, you could kick and scream and act like a little kid, but that would just result in you being treated like one, indeed there was one girl who had various learning disabilities and did! act like that and she was pretty much just locked in one special class room permanently.

As for telling your parents, that was again part of the emotional manipulation, you were always told "we'll tell your parents! what would your parents think if you behaved like that" etc etc.

The fact that I fully well knew why I was there, to learn braille didn't help either.

It's easy to say "I wouldn't put up with that!" when your sitting here reading on a forum, but in practice from the inside things look very different. It isn't really a wonder that the majority of people who finished up  school ended up with fairly severe emotional damage that has carried on into adult hood.