2019-03-30 23:32:12

Working with a TTS is not fruitful, but practical. Working with Braille, however, is a different story since you feel the written character just as a sighted person would see the print.
I have learnt the basics of English using Braille; however, most of my knowledge in English has come while working with a screen reader. This was because I didn't have Braille books in high school, so I had to find another strategy that would help me build a well-written English. What I usually did to improve my English was to check every new word, and sometimes every new phoneme that would come up in my reading. This became a habit and I would instictively check the word I would run into. I learnt a lot this way; and although it was a really tiresome process as I had to basically work one or two hours more than my friends, It really helped me since now I have a really good command of written English.
Lack of Braille, in my opinion, is one of the primary reasons for bad spelling and bad literacy among the blind community. A good spelling is not simply improved by reading books, but also from reading a short piece of text, even that text which we read from a game that we play. Spelling is also improved by reading a short article or tutorial on the internet. These tasks are very habitual and practical. When reading them with a TTS, we cannot gain anything from them in terms of spelling but sighte people can. This is what makes the difference, I think.

2019-03-31 00:02:50 (edited by Ethin 2019-03-31 00:08:15)

I always message people in complete sentences too; I never will use text speak -- I find it highly annoying and (if I may be so blunt) retarded. I see someone using it and I think to myself, "OK, you have a full 12 years of education under your belt, and you write like that? Seriously?" I mean, OK, phone screens are small. OK. I get that. But come on, you can scroll on them, and read long messages that way -- you do it all the damn time when your reading web pages and articles on the internet, what is so different in texting?
As for children on iPads, I do agree that that is a very, very bad idea. Your pretty much letting kids do whatever you please -- kids have this nasty habit of figuring out interesting ways around things like parental controls... ahem.
@24, *takes offense at your posts sounding 'Ethonic'. Guess I'll have to make my posts more 'ironic'... rofl! After all, if Ironcross is going to write like me...

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-03-31 00:39:59

I'm not a native English speaker as such, but I remember having to read English Braille in high school and my spelling being terrible at the time, but ironically after high school and my university classes being in English I forced myself to learn the correct spelling to difficult words, as I'm always making a point of taking notes in classes and getting tired of that noise you'd get from NVDA in a word document after miss-spelling a word, I would then always look up the word in question and try and spell it as best as I can, as not to repeat the same mistake. The weird thing is that I was able to obtain near-perfect spelling in my home language (Afrikaans) at the time when I interacted with more Braille in that language, but my point is that it's not necessarily Braille as such that makes you aware of spelling but how you perceive to get your message across.
Lastly, due to the numerous different languages spoken in my country it's hard to only point at blind people when it comes to spelling mistakes; sighted people make enough mistakes all by themselves, either because English isn't their home language or because they have a kind of contempt for the language because of its (colonial) origins and bad spelling and grammar give them some kind of power over it, as it were.

Brendan
-----
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2019-03-31 01:23:51

Wow, linguistic content here for the first time!
I know I'm kind of scary to spell in both languages (english and spanish) cause for getting bad scores in school and university, but I can ashure (don't tell me that's a typographical error that I just…) you that I've seen many people use what I call (phonetic spelling) or (made up latin alphabets for english or what ever language). I mean, just that I write more perfectly than I speak is kinda… umm, not… at... my...

73 Wj3u

2019-03-31 01:51:59

Agreed with Jade completely on this one, and politely disagreeing with people who say that this problem isn't more significant in the blind community. Yes, there are horrible spellers everywhere, but there is a much, much higher percentage among blind people. On a facebook broup, 4 out of 10 posts in a sighted group might have the same horrible spelling that would be noticed in about 70% of posts in a group exclusively full of blind and visually impaired people. As for text speak, well, I don't feel one way or another about it. But most people I know who text that way know to do that when they're texting, and not wring for the graduate thesis. And I am very much a fanatical supporter of braille as well.

Discord: clemchowder633

2019-03-31 01:56:27

I will text in full sentences if I can, if I'm in a rush though, I'll use text speak. Also, if I dictate, I will dictate in the punctuation and check the message.

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2019-03-31 02:38:55 (edited by turtlepower17 2019-03-31 02:42:22)

I feel that people who say that bad spelling is more prevalent in the blind community are missing the forest for the trees, though. Is it *really* that much worse, or is it because there's a smaller population of us? I'm reminded of how many folks say that drama is more prevalent among blind people, for example. And if you use anecdotal evidence, it would sure seem to be the case. But what about subreddits which are specifically designed to incite drama? What about 4Chan? What about the dark web? Note I said the dark web, not the deep web, there's a difference, so let's not turn that into a bigger thing than it needs to be. When you think about it that way, while such drama seems more diluted because there are so many fish swimming in a giant ocean, the fact of the matter is that, at the end of the day, there are more sighted people than blind people, so any ill you might ascribe as being a blindness-specific issue is probably going to exist on a technically larger scale. I feel that people lose sight of this at times.

Yes, as I said, I wish that Braille was more widely propagated. I believe that there are things that you can't learn through auditory means, just as sighted people couldn't function quite the same if they never read print and were never taught handwriting. But what can we DO about it? Every time this topic comes up, everyone, myself included on most occasions, just complains about the declining state of literacy. What does all this rehashing accomplish? Change has to start on a global level, essentially, and I simply don't see that happening anytime soon.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2019-03-31 02:51:21

Turtlepower, I've thought of that point, that a problem appears more prevalent because the community is smaller.
The issue is that some of the spelling mistakes I notice in the blind community simply don't exist, or exist very rarely, in the sighted community. It is rare that I see a sighted person write things like the following:
"That doesn't make sinse."
"Set down and shut up."
"If you use rockets, you'll get even ferver in the game."
"All rate then, thanks."
"I have this really super soft whool sweater."
And so on, and so on. Sighted people sometimes mangle sentences in really epic ways, the same way the blind do (texting helps this, as does just plain hurrying, or fumbling fingers), but there are certain pronunciation-based spelling mistakes which, in my opinion at least, seem to be the primary purview of the blind community. That's just me though.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2019-03-31 03:57:45

Jade, I take your point, and I've noticed some of the same things. What I want to know, though, is why these fumbles are seen as worse than the types of mistakes sighted folks tend to make? Why is it OK to ignore the bigger picture? The fact of the matter is, some of the things I mentioned, increasing dependence on technology to solve all our problems from younger and younger ages, blatant disrespect for language that is seen as professional, and so on, are the way bigger issues that we should be worrying about. Is it just easier to tackle a niche facet of this problem, because it feels like we're doing something productive?

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2019-03-31 04:14:30

No no, absolutely not. The thing is, I didn't set out in order to solve the literacy problem when I began this thread. I just wanted to speculate on one facet of the issue. The same way, for instance, that I don't have to talk about all foods if I want to criticize the meat industry. Stuff like that.

I absolutely agree that overall literacy seems to be going down, and that technology, among other things, is contributing to it. I'm also not saying that these types of spelling mistakes I outlined above are better or worse than those made by people in general. They're just different, and their difference is precisely why I brought them up in the first place.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2019-03-31 07:38:02

I think it's easier to talk about the spelling errors seen in this community, because they're just so unlike what you typically see in other forums, even from people for whom English is not the primary language. I can't really give examples here without essentially calling someone out even if I don't mention any names. Some of the stuff I've seen in the long bk2 thread for example was that unique. I was always taught that if you don't write well, and you have spelling errors and silly mistakes in what you write, people will think less of you than they otherwise would. So if I'm at all unsure of how to spell a particular word, I look it up. I really think education is just not as much of a priority as it once was. That's how you end up with words like "carnt," and "vister." It sounds right, therefore it must be. Those are just some general examples that I've only seen in the blind community. For me, when I see posts with a bunch of spelling errors, I simply skip over them. They're just disturbing to see. Especially the really outrageous ones. That probably makes me sound like a self-righteous ninny but man, it almost makes me shudder.

2019-03-31 08:28:35 (edited by musicalman 2019-03-31 08:30:21)

Interesting topic! I can't really add to what's been said, other than to add my own personal experiences.

I've always been picky about my spelling to a point, but I've never been pedantic about it. I used braille heavily from Kindergarten through 12th grade, but after that, I don't use it as much. I found that the words I read frequently during those 12 years of school are words which I can spell much more confidently. Any words I haven't read as much are harder for me to spell. Like perseverance. I have to look that up almost every time. But I know that if I had seen this word in braille enough, I would know how to spell it. It's really easy for me to create mental pictures of what a braille word or acronym looks like, so I will sometimes try to imagine a word in braille, once I know how to spell it. Trying to create such pictures is not at all the same as reading the braille written out, though. So I am in general agreement with everyone here who says that braille literacy tends to improve spelling if you're blind.

I am about as far from text speak as you can get, and this is something I've been meaning to post about at some point, so I might as well talk about it here. I never got into writing sentence fragments in messages. I use a few abreviations like lol, but I don't know many, and I also will sometimes omit words, like instead of saying "Do you know her?" I'll just say "You know her?" I don't know why I allow myself to do that, but I do. While I do understand why people go much further with text speak, I never found myself wanting to. I am so bad at relaxing my formality that I capitalize the first letters of sentences, and put periods at the end of things, as though I'm attempting to look professional. Even if it's just to say something like "Hold on." I'll literally write hold with a capital h, and put a period after on. Whether I'm typing on a computer, or on my phone. It makes no difference. It's just a habit I have; If I don't do it that way, I literally feel uncomfortable writing messages.

This makes me feel a bit awkward when talking to people because I do check their punctuation and spelling and other things, just out of curiosity. I notice that the majority of people do not at all write like me when messaging. I wonder if they notice my formal message-writing style. With blind people it's not as big a deal for me, because unless you use a braille display you'll likely miss that. But with sighted people, they're constantly reading the text, so they'll see it right away. Despite the dozens of sighted people I talk to, nobody ever mentions it. I often wonder if they notice it, but I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out how they wouldn't. I only know two other people who I would even remotely suspect to share this formal messaging disposition with me, and I don't know how consistent they are.

And while I'm on the topic of writing. I have decent spelling, and can make decent sentences I think, but I am not really writing in a polished way I don't think. I'm just writing what I hear in my head, and putting commas and periods where I hear pauses. I've only started using semicolon, and I still second guess every time I want to use it. I never really latched onto the rules of grammar and sometimes it's really hard for me to decide where to put paragraph breaks. If I were a writer, I'd be freeking out probably, and I still kinda freek out a bit since I've always felt a little nervous when writing papers and essays and the like, but I got through them okay. But in college, in one of my music classes, I did write what was ultimately called a good paper, but it was criticized for its mechanics or something. I think the wording was that it could be mechanically improved. I got a decent grade on it but ever since then, my bad confidence in my writing ability has gone up a notch or so since I don't know what was meant by a need of mechanical improvement, but I know it has something to do with how I phrase and punctuate, which have been things I have been conscious about to a point. I try not to let that bother me, since my writing isn't horrible. It just may not be technically polished from an academic standpoint.

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2019-03-31 08:31:27

helo fvients me ar creting geim caled a worled kiler best geim ewer wehry wehry best geim it is creating caled bgl productions weary weary goot geim download it then okey? my fvients bleez okey? tenx fvients!

Yours kindly

2019-03-31 09:44:12

OH no, all of this brings me back to the dark days of 2010-2012. What I think happened to me then was this: I was learning to read german braille, but when I first found out how to access the internet and by extension this forum, it was one of the first occasions of encountering written english. At the time I flattly refused to read braille for everyday work and would only use it in school or while doing homework. So what I would do when writing posts is write the english with german phonemes and consunants. This turned "very" into "wery", "will" into "wul", "delete" into "dilit", and so on. It was so bad most of the time that looking back some of the posts are almost completely undecipherable and at one point I remember my user score being at over -100 (you could thumb down posts in those days). Fortunately when I got into middle school was the time when I started reading english braille, so this problem gradually fixed itself. Now as regards sighted people one thing I've noticed on forums or while chatting is that they often like to abandon any attempts of punctuation so any attempt to read with a screen reader often results in the reader in question choking on the line of text and I don't know why but something like that gets on my nerves and it's very easily noticeable even if you're not using braille to read.

I used to be a knee like you, then I took an adventurer in the arrow.

2019-03-31 13:09:14

For me it is a language thing. I learned English when i was 9 and didn't really start real school until i came to da United States.  I can spell, but i speak english better than i write.  As you have seen my other posts, it is atrocious writing.

Their is no such thing as a master.  One is never done learning, and those who claim to be a master at something are far from becoming one!!

2019-03-31 18:57:09 (edited by turtlepower17 2019-03-31 19:06:06)

Oh, I hate that lack of punctuation too, especially when using a screen reader. I can't seem to process what the person is saying as well, and often find that I need to either slow down my speech, scroll through the mess of a sentence/post/what have you word by word, or both. I've always associated lack of punctuation with laziness to a point, and it sucks that I have to work twice as hard to make the effort to understand what the person is saying as they put into trying to get their point across.

As for writing in complete sentences, I do the same thing, and I hate it if I forget to capitalize something. The only time I get sloppy with this is in fast-paced games. I admit that I often don't put punctuation at the end of my messages then, and it does bother me. I also find myself making more spelling mistakes, simply because I'm typing fast so as not to hold up the game, or if I'm in the middle of a game and need to be quick with whatever message I'm sending. What usually happens is that two letters get swapped around or something, and I'll correct it as soon as I can in a separate message. I've often wondered if people notice that as well, but I try to console myself with the fact that we're all playing and presumably having fun, so I hope no one is actually paying that much attention. But, on Skype, or any other text-based medium where I'm talking to someone, I'm very conscious of how I present myself, and I've always had this weird idea that writing in complete sentences, and using proper punctuation to the best of my ability, shows that I'm invested in the conversation, and that I care about the person I'm speaking to. To me, it's akin to eye contact, which of course is the bane of every blind person's existance, or active listening, where you show that you're engaged in the conversation and that the other person has your full attention. I feel that if I'm making a bunch of careless mistakes, I come off as distracted, or worse, that I don't want to hear what you're saying. I get that I'm definitely in the minority with those views, but it's how I've done things for a very long time. When I was a teenager, I went through a phase where I thought it was cool to not use punctuation, particularly on AIM back when it was the king of instant messaging systems. I would deliberately not use any capital letters, and would strategically sneak in a spelling mistake or two, I couldn't quite bring myself to stoop to the level of spelling tons of things wrong. I thought everyone else was doing it because it was the in thing to do or something, but, in reality, I think most people just weren't that great of spellers anyway. Luckily, I quickly grew out of that. It was quite a stupid thing to do, looking back on it.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2019-03-31 19:03:32

I think it’s worth noting that a lot of the judging here is going on based on what people write on a forum about gaming/how people write in chat rooms. I, for example, am a lot more willing to comb through my writing if it’s being judged academically or professionally than if it’s just something I’m writing to a friend. Sure, I might write engin vs engine in a chat room, but I’d never make that same mistake in a context where that mattered. The real problem is when you honestly can’t tell that you’re spelling something wrong, like writing baddle vs battle and not realizing that the first of those is absolutely wrong and no sighted person would ever know what you were talking about. As long as you’re aware when you misspell a word, you’re probably fine.

2019-03-31 20:27:06 (edited by Mitch 2019-03-31 21:33:18)

One of the things that I, as a person, need to work on is to not cringe whenever I read something. It sometimes really irks me when sentences aren't capitalized, and the people are native English ⠎⠏⠂⠅⠻⠎⠲ I know that it doesn't affect people who just use TTS, but for me, and I wish it didn't hit me this way, it makes me preemptively judge people, and not take them as seriously as others. This is definitely not just a blind trope either: I know a lot of sighted people who don't capitalize certain things.

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—Urban Champion

2019-03-31 20:59:10 (edited by Ethin 2019-03-31 20:59:28)

I know many who do that too, 43. They'll either capitalize the first letter of a sentence, but not capitalize 'i' as in ("Yeah, I like that") and instead will send it as Yeah, i like that". Or they'll put punctuation in the wrong place, or not put any in at all. It really urks me, especially when I'm talking to people who are my friends in college, or who I've known in high school, and who seemed very well academically, from what I could tell during those days. Just saddens me how people are quite happy (or unhappy) to go through school (english class, math class, ...) and then throw all of that away -- or try to -- and write like uneducated people instead. sad
What's even worse is that the lowercase 'i' is not a spelling error in Brave at least. It might be in other browsers, but its not in Brave, so you don't know if you've fucked up even if your one of the best spellers in the world (since we all make little typos like that).

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
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2019-03-31 20:59:27

Ah, but Mitch I've had machines that have a weird keyboard layout, such as a caps lock key assigned to a modifier key (laptop layout) or shift keys not working. Like on my laptop, not every key works.

So it'd read like tis beause he keys don' work hal the time. That's a hardware issue. I just need to grab s plugin keyboard and that'll sort itself out, but if keys physically do not work...there's not much I can do is there?

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2019-03-31 21:01:21

@Ethin: Firefox too. Chromium too IIRC. hilariously it flagged IIRC up as a misspelled word. then suggested for correcting it, to do Iirc, first I capital, rest....not. Thanks, Chromium.

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2019-03-31 22:28:44

Well, the thing with missing punctuation is also really bugging me, not that it is hard to read with a screen reader, with long blocks of text you are wondering halfway through, what was this about again?
I mostly see blind people doing that because, at leased it seams like that, they never learned how to properly dictate punctuation and or correction after the dictation is over and they find any errors, if they even care to look.

Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2019-03-31 22:47:25

There used to be a website called Damn You, autocorrect, which showcased the many, many failures of this technology. And yes, dictation annoys me too, thus why I don't use it. To do it right, you have to speak in a way that feels extremely unnatural. When you're speaking normally, you don't have to insert punctuation, so having to plan ahead of that interrupts the flow of my thoughts. the few times I bothered with dictation, I felt like I had to shout comma or exclamation point or whatever at my phone so that it would take the hint and actually add them. I also felt like I had to exaggerate things a lot more. So if I was asking a question, not only would I yell question mark when I was finished, I also felt as though I had to increase the pitch of my voice much more than I normally would so that it would get it right. I can, and do, proofread before sending messages or forum posts. I'm very anal about it, in fact. The issue for me is that it's a lot more trouble than it's worth to proofread on a phone than it is on a computer. I always get confused as to where the cursor is, for some reason, and always end up deleting characters which are not in the position I thought my cursor was at. So I gave up on dictation pretty damn quickly.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2019-03-31 23:14:03

I wish Damn you, autocorrect, was still around. (Funnily, autocorrect is a spelling error... ironic isn't it?) smile

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-04-01 01:04:34

I don't like dictation either, not only because it feels unnatural, but it's also a weird privacy thing with me. I can get dictation to work pretty well on my IPhone when I do use it, but I just don't like the idea of speaking my messages when everyone else often types them, or at least they don't tell me they use dictation so I assume they type.

Also am not a big fan of autocorrect. I'd like to get into some of the predictive stuff that gives you suggestions but doesn't forcibly overwrite your words. That sounds cool in a way but it's still distracting and I would have to break my current habits to take advantage of it. What I really don't understand are the people who use the autocorrect that attempts to complete your message, and then complain when it gives them wrong words, but they continue to use it anyway. My mom was doing that for a while. Almost once a week it seemed, she'd have to explain what she meant because autocorrect messed it up. I've never used it so I don't know how easy it is to let those errors slip through, but I, like a few others, always check before I send so the idea of autocorrect is very foreign to me. I don't go so far as to say it's useless, but I swear people depend on it and that is why they put up with it when it's being temperamental.

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