2019-09-02 08:28:41

Let me start this off by saying I don't hate Braille at all. That's how I learned to read, and how I learned to love reading. What I hate is the attitudes of schools and others who work with the visually impaired toward Braille. They seem to think it's some magic method of getting everything done faster. In reality, it's a lot slower. It takes both hands to make one letter in most cases, and it can really slow you down. You also have to be really careful about mistakes. It's easy for a sighted person to use an eraser, or for anyone to hit a backspace key, but when typing on physical Braille paper, making a mistake means that part of the paper is harder to read, unless it's something fixable without trying to erase, like typing k instead of l. It also distracts other students in the classroom or coworkers in the office. It's more expensive to produce, and it puts up a lot of barriers at school and work.Let's not even start in on the books, which are ridiculously expensive, bulky, and not easy to get most of the time. Now, let's move onto notetakers. Most of them, with a couple of exceptions are ridiculously outdated. Some of them just feel poorly built, and tend to break or glitch easily. Stand-alone displays tend to have the same problems. They are also 6 times more expensive than a baseline computer, by today's costs. Sure, they can be helpful, but if you have to buy one out of your own pocket, it just isn't worth it. Now, for the good side. Braille does make a lot of things accessible. Things like elevators, some restaurant menus, newer voting machines, ATMs, and even finding the bathroom. It's ok for those who may not be comfortable with modern technology, or who can't afford it. It's good for labeling your stuff, and it can help you distinguish between a box of harmless candy and a box of really bad rat poison. There are plenty of uses. In closing, I feel that Braille, in general, is a mixed bag. Schools think it's some kind of cure-all, and it has its drawbacks. It's expensive, inconvenient, noisy, and it can just get in the way. However, it can help you be a lot more independent as a person through labels and things.

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2019-09-02 09:50:33

Hi.

I quite agree on the post, personally I was really happy when I finally switched from writing on braille paper with a hulk of a brailler to simple typing on a laptop and braille display. I haven't read braille on npaper since well over 5 years now, and written with a brailler about the same time. I sometimes still train writing braille on a braille display, but I surely notice that my writing skills are lacking a bit. But I didn't really need to write braille the last few years, allmost every type of modern day comunication is handeled via electronic methods, so there was no need for braille writing for me.

Greetings Moritz.

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2019-09-02 11:36:58

Another good thing about Braille is that it'll be there as a backup when technology breaks.

2019-09-02 13:13:20

thums up to post 1, and i agreed you are totally true 100%
You don't know in my school, most of times for example on maths, we are writting rules, sums, and they are so many. Our fingers are tireed, and hurts. Well i really love braille itself, i'm reading and typing with it but if they will replace typing with another thing that would be cool

Yours kindly

2019-09-02 13:37:36

The same thing used to happen with me when I used to use braille in school. There were so many things to write and sometime I couldn't keep up with the teacher who used to sometime dictate the answers. Brailler was a bit easier to use than braille, but then that noise problem came. I remember those days when my hands used to get tired big_smile. I totally agree with post one.
I don't know why, but after reading braille books for a while I just feel sleepy and a bit weird.

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2019-09-02 13:46:09

I began while using a standard manual Perkins brailler, and then around grade six or so, I mostly switched to a Braille & Speak. Let me tell you, I can fly on one of those, and a lot of the complaints about hard-copy braille are eliminated there. All the shorthand of writing braille, none of the mess and bulk, but you are relying on electronics, and you still had a cumbersome process to print or braille your documents into hard copy.

I think braille is extremely important, and I feel that before screwing around with electronics in a school environment (where possible, of course) every blind student should become proficient in braille. A lot of spelling mistakes would likely be neatly sidestepped this way, as if you're reading braille with your fingers instead of just listening to your synth, you're going to find out how words are spelled and thus catch your own mistakes more easily.
That said, braille books are heavy, bulky and expensive, albeit not as expensive as people would have you believe. They're only expensive, in essence, because people say they are. It brings me joy when a restaurant has a braille menu, even if I could just as easily pop online and check something online. The fact that elevators have to be labelled in braille is, in my opinion, a great thing.
Incidentally, I'd hope that you aren't storing your candy in the same drawer/cupboard/cabinet where you're storing your rat poison. Kind of a bad idea just on principles, don't ya know.

In any case...yes, mixed bag, though I am more in favour of braille than the original poster appears to be. I have little experience with a braille display, personally, and there is nothing quite like reading a braille book by hand vs. listening to an audiobook, no matter how good the narrator is. That said, it is not without its drawbacks. I do think we should be treating it as the first and arguably the largest stepping-stone toward communication, but it should not be used to the exclusion of other forms of communication if all other things are equal.

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2019-09-02 14:49:10 (edited by UltraLeetJ 2019-09-02 14:55:14)

here is a speech from a friend who is also an accomplished elementary school teacher on the use of braille, hope you enjoy. Since she had made it public and it was so good, I would think its really fitting to include it in here: P.d. I really enjoy reading braille books. Just as she says, the experience is almost personalized, unique, more intimate.

CTEBVI Speech
4-12-19
Caitlin Hernandez

The first sentence I ever read aloud in braille without help—from Patterns, of course—was "I can go." I remember the small, musty closet of a room where I received braille instruction, and I think I remember the cheers of my mom and teachers when I read that sentence. But aside from that, I don't really remember learning braille. I feel as though I was always reading, writing, thinking in, and loving braille. And I was fascinated by it, too—by its singularly complex simplicity. Because braille is simple, in a way. It's only six dots. And yet, it's amazingly intricate, multi-faceted, ingenious. To those of us who read it, use it, rely on it, it's everything.
In my elementary school library, amid the innumerable print books, there were two long shelves of braille books. It doesn't sound like a lot, and it wasn't. But in my day, before Kindle and BookShare and all the rest enabled blind people to have, literally, almost every book at our fingertips, book-hungry blind kids like me read anything and everything we could get our eager hands on.
One of the books—a skinnier one—was a biography of Louis Braille, written, for children, by Margaret Davidson. As a seven-year-old, I was astounded to learn that the inventor of braille had been a fifteen-year-old blind boy. Before braille, blind children, if they were literate at all, read raised print—a process which was cumbersome and tedious, if not impossible.
The book explained that, though Louis Braille's young, blind peers loved the code and mastered it immediately, the sighted adults in power resisted it ... loudly. They didn't want change, didn't want to be tasked with learning something new.
Louis and his friends continued using the new code in secret. The adults banned it, forbade it, confiscated the children's tools so they couldn't punch the dots. When none of that worked, the adults would strike the offending boys across the hands. This appalled me so much that I remember it years later. Even at seven, I was furious that these sighted teachers thought they knew better than blind people what was best for us. How in the world could they? I shuddered to think what my life—what all blind people's lives—would be like if Louis Braille and his friends had given up, had let those teachers tell them what was and wasn't best for them.
Reading and rereading that Louis Braille book, so many times that the braille dots changed from new and crisp to soft and well-worn, I remember being grateful, not just for the braille code, but for my own braille and mobility teachers. They listened to me, valued my autonomy and feelings, respected my opinions about tools and strategies which did and didn't benefit me. Many blind students, I knew, weren't half so lucky.
I think about this often, now, as I, a teacher who's been totally blind since birth, instruct sighted, elementary-aged, special-education students with various disabilities. It's easy to forget, until I know them well, that many of my students, particularly those who struggle with reading and auditory processing, require a high amount of visual input. While I build my life—my perceptions of the world—out of words, written and spoken, most of my kids need to see things. This is an example of what my especially savvy and woke disabled friends call "conflicting access needs."
My first year of teaching, students were forever asking, "Can you put this on the board, Miss H?" One fifth-grader once famously told me, "The more you try to explain math, the less I understand it."
These days, we meet in the middle. Unifix cubes are our best friends. The kids can see them, I can touch them, and we can all think with them. I even have a few students who like to close their eyes while they use the cubes; it helps them concentrate. Kids take turns being scribes, writing the group's shared findings on the whiteboard as we all contribute thoughts, questions, and ideas for next steps. I sit by, copying in braille—partly for my own records, partly to ensure I'm following them.
We can never know what does or doesn't work for another learner. And it's crucial that we take others' learning styles into consideration, that we don't dismiss their methods just because they require extra effort for us to master. In addition to braille itself—enough of a gift on its own—that's the lesson Louis Braille taught me.
There's a lot of talk, these days, about the intersection between technology and braille. Some people think that, with talking phones, screenreading and OCR software, accessible GPS, and all the rest, braille will become obsolete. I, of course, adamantly disagree. My most clear-cut argument is that, if they never read braille, blind and visually impaired people won't know how to spell or punctuate. But, more than that, it's often just a preference.
Emerging braille technology and I grew up alongside one another. Throughout my childhood, my parents, braille teachers, and braillists scrambled to find and create enough braille books to keep my fingers and mind engaged. I liked audiobooks, but I craved braille. I loved reading aloud, loved the freedom of creating characters' voices in my head as their words glided beneath my fingers. I loved cuddling up with a big braille book and turning the pages.
Whenever we went out anywhere as a family, I'd carry one volume of braille, and someone else would haul the next, ready for the moment when the first volume would end, inevitably on a cliffhanger, and I'd desperately need the next. I always liked to read braille cross-legged, bracing the sides of the big book against my knees, which I angled inward. My family would often find chairs in stores, so I could sit and read and not bother them about "When are we leaving?" and "What are you staring at now?" But my favorite reading spots were the open spaces beneath clothing racks. I'd snuggle cozily in among the jackets and shirts and jeans, reading to my heart's content until some unsuspecting shopper pulled back a swath of clothes, saw me, and gasped in surprise.
Often, I read books far above my grade level, simply because, back then, there weren't enough children's books to occupy me. If I'd had today's tech as a child, I could and would have read every single book my friends were reading. But those books were rarely available in braille. My sighted sister, friends, and cousin often read those to me, so I'd know what the cool kids were talking about at the water cooler.
When I received my first BrailleNote in sixth grade, 2001, I felt as though the entire world had opened. I had access to more books than I could ever possibly read. For the first time, I could write stories and keep a journal and do homework on the go. I no longer had to drag around a Perkins brailler, a laptop, or quite so many textbooks.
Most of us are aware that the vast majority of blind people who are employed use braille. Being employed, of course, isn't everyone's goal, nor is it the only indicator of success and happiness. But there's no question that many blind people default to braille for efficiency, for maximum productivity. I write my lesson plans, track students' levels and progress, keep records, and correspond with parents and colleagues in braille, on my BrailleNote. My calendar, phonebook, address book, passwords, endless to-do lists ... all in braille. People are constantly telling me there are apps for things, and I just scoff, "Whatever ... they're not in braille—I don't want them."
I draft and edit my novels entirely in braille, too. Though I began learning to type on the computer at age six, I always insisted on writing creatively in braille, much to the chagrin of my poor VI teachers who had to interline pages after pages of my melodramatic nonfiction and my Rugrats and Arthur fanfiction.
Once, in high school, when my BrailleNote was being repaired, I had to update my infamous LiveJournal blog on the computer instead of on the BrailleNote. My readership dropped astronomically.
"Your entries are so boring this week," I remember one commenter complaining. "When does your BrailleNote come back? You write better with that."
It goes without saying that I wrote this whole speech in braille.
Of course, blind people aren't a monolith ... and there are certainly many tasks which I, and others, complete with screenreaders, iDevices, audio, or a combination thereof. But the marriage of braille and technology is, for many blind folks, the miracle that enables us to keep pace in a sighted world, which always seems to be one step—one automatic iOS update, if you will—ahead of us.
People claim that braille fosters independence, enables "blind kind," as I call us, to compete with the sighted. On the surface, I agree with this. After all, I use braille just about every moment of my work day, and for most of the moments outside it. But I think many people underestimate the unique power braille has to unite us, to bring blind and sighted people together. Often, to me, it seems like the initial gateway between our worlds.
Teachers in Louis Braille's time may not have wanted to bother learning a code of tiny raised dots, but my sighted third and fourth graders certainly do. Not a day goes by when tiny fingers don't creep onto my braille display beside mine, or grab at the braille charm dangling from my cane.
Every once in a while, during free time, a kid will snag a braille volume of our district's math curriculum, flip to a page at random, plunk it in front of me, and demand that I read aloud. When I oblige, there's always some level of awe—not because I can read braille, or even because I read it quickly, but because, when you stop to think about it, braille itself is miraculous.
"It's just dots," students will gasp, running wondering fingers over the pages. "How do they make so many words?"
My kids often beg me to teach them braille. There aren't enough hours in the day, of course, especially for a skill that's not tied to either an IEP goal or the oh-so-delightful common core. But I try to find time to guide their fingers along a print/braille alphabet card, to explain how the pattern works, to braille their name.
Throughout my life, I've leaned into the magic of sharing braille with my sighted people. One of my sighted friends from elementary school is now a braille teacher in San Diego. A college friend mastered enough braille—and math braille, too—to make diagrams and tutor me in statistics. She used to scotch-tape brailled notes over the keyhole of my apartment door, and just last week, for my birthday, she wrote "happy birthday" on my Facebook timeline, not in English, but by typing, "1-2-3, 1, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-3-4-5-6; 1-2, 1-4-5, 1, 1-3-4-5-6."
I'm sure some of you are familiar with the admittedly limited, gendered, and heteronormative concept of "the five love languages." Despite its faults, I've always been enamored with it. The idea is that there are five primary ways in which people demonstrate love—spending quality time, giving gifts, sharing affirming words, performing acts of service, and physically touching. Most of us, on some level, appreciate and desire all these things. But each of us, if subconsciously, are said to respond to and crave one expression—one love language—above all the others.
According to the online quiz, I'm an almost perfect tie between "quality time" and "physical touch." But sometimes, when I talk to people about love languages, I say, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, that my true love language is braille.
Years later, I'll remember the card a sighted person brailled, laboriously, letter by letter, with a cheat-sheet. I'll keep and constantly wear the T-shirt someone puffy-painted in braille. I'll tell others about the online service someone used to have their greeting brailled and snail-mailed to me. I felt, more than knew, how much my braille teachers cared about my education when they hand-brailled worksheets last-minute, when they took my stories home to finish translating them into print, when they built braille-labeled tactile models for geometry with any materials that came to hand. In first grade, a sighted classmate thought to ask my classroom teacher, "How will Caitlin read her valentines? Shouldn't somebody braille them for her?" My braille teacher and one-to-one aide divided my cards between them, brailled them the night before, and, I hope, were rewarded by my incredulous delight. There's a giddy, thrilling little heart-leap you can only truly know if you've been handed something you expect not to be able to read, only to realize that someone thought to change that. Braille, if I dare to pun, adds that extra touch in a way nothing else can.
The tough thing about braille—the reason I think many people, of all ages and with varying levels of vision, struggle with it—is that, at first, it takes time. I'm lucky to have learned braille young, to have only the vaguest recollection of tired, achy fingers and the irritated impatience common among beginners. I loved books, and I wanted to read—that was enough incentive for me to persevere with braille.
On some level, I think many congenitally blind children intuitively understand that, for us, things almost always take longer. I tell my colleagues, when they comment on my unusually high level of patience, that blindness teaches us how to wait: for explanations and descriptions, for things to be made accessible. For me, waiting to be a fast reader—having to work at it—seemed natural. But for many people, particularly adults and older children, the trail to braille efficiency is slow and painful.
I have a writer friend, Leona Godin, who lives in Colorado. She was born visually impaired and is now totally blind. She's in her forties—"a real adult," as I affectionately call her. She, in turn, refers to me as "her pet millennial." Leona's writing a book about the history of blindness in literature, for which she recently landed a fancy book deal. In part because she wants to narrate her own audiobook, but also because she's a fierce lover of books who misses physically turning pages, she's making a concerted effort to become a strong braille reader.
I, like many people, always assumed braille was next to impossible for newly-blind adults to learn. We all hear so much about how children, with their still-spongy brains, soak up languages significantly better than adults. Leona, in researching her book, learned that, in actuality, the areas of the brain reserved for sight can easily be repurposed for touch ... and not just in young children.
Leona reads braille for an hour a day, hoping that, by the time her book comes out, her fluency will be greatly improved. I'm proud of and excited for her. As it happens, she and I will meet in person for the first time a week from tonight. I promised to braille her a nice, long letter to read on her flight home.
As with many things, braille benefits people most when they stick with it. I remember, in fifth grade, one of my sighted friends saying, "You read pretty well, but there's no way fingers can ever read as fast as eyes." I, of course, interpreted this as a challenge. Many blind people only become rapid braille readers with the introduction of braille displays and notetakers—yet more proof that the convergence of braille and technology is a win-win. But there is, I think, a special magic in turning braille pages, in holding an enormous braille volume and realizing, with pride, that your fingers read every word, touched every dot. As I often brag to sighted people, there's no skimming in braille. When I tell you I read something, I really read it, considered it. I constantly notice typos my sighted counterparts miss. Eyes auto-correct, see only the edges of words and fill in the blanks in a way discerning fingers simply refuse to do. My spelling, I know, is also improved by braille. I spell-check in my head by writing words in contracted braille as I type in qwerty.
It's funny, in a way, that sighted people like to praise blind people for the most mundane, uninteresting things we do. Walking around unassisted. Walking out the door looking presentable. Walking out the door at all. Getting up in the morning at all. Few people bother to be impressed by the things we use and learn that actually require significant knowledge, incredibly deep understanding, and tremendous focus. And patience, of course. We never get kudos for our patience—not just with tech, but with answering people's endless, monotonous questions, dealing with their discomfort and ignorance, just existing in the world. But it continues to be strange to me that, though they love the tech, most sighted people have no idea how trying and wearing it can be, even for a blind person who's accustomed to dealing with it. With one update, an app can become entirely different and largely inaccessible, and we have to waste precious time re-learning, reorienting, and, if we're feeling noble, writing to the creators to inform them that they've irreparably destroyed accessibility once again. We have to master countless pieces of technology. To make things work, we need numerous programs, across many devices, screenreaders, browsers, and even operating systems.
In my day, you wrote an essay and handed it in. Sometimes I touch-typed it, sometimes I brailled it, but always, it was simple. Nowadays, there's Google Docs and Drive and Classroom and Slides, Dropbox and the Cloud, ChromeBooks and braille notetakers and computers and iDevices, the web version and mobile version and app version of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.
I'm grateful for tech—I really am—but I'm also so grateful not to be a blind or disabled student right now. Because it's beyond difficult. Still—note the blind pun—there's a bright side. Having to work so hard at braille and tech and mobility and all the rest equips blind and VI folks with so many wonderful skills and qualities that our sighted peers rarely possess at our level. Tenacity, creativity, ingenuity, interdependence, self-advocacy. Those things serve us in amazing stead, forever.
As a blind teacher, I often can't access the technology used by my sighted students. I can't read print over their shoulders. I can't understand all the visual aspects of their math. In a way, I understand the plight faced by those of you educators who, while sighted yourselves, are guiding your blind students through a world of tech, braille, and experiences which you're only partially able to understand. You and I are both visitors in worlds that aren't ours, that won't ever entirely be ours. Just as you may not know what it's like to be blind, I don't know what it's like to be dyslexic, or autistic, or learning-disabled. And it's for this reason that I bring us back to Louis Braille, to the push-back he received when he first created braille. We have to push back, too—not against innovation, but against that paternalistic attitude of "You don't need that ... you already have something that works ... be grateful you have anything at all ... don't make a fuss ... I know what you need better than you do."
As teachers—as humans—it does us so much more good to listen than to talk. The temptation, for many teachers, is to fix: to say, "Here's what you need. I learned about this—I know." Really, though, we need to say, "Talk to me. Tell me what you need. How do you learn? What's working? What's not? Tell me what makes you feel frustrated and what makes you feel successful. We'll figure this out together."
That last part, I think, is the most important. It's true that we all have different experiences, different learning styles, different strengths and struggles, different lives. But just as old-school braille is made more magical when inbined with new-school tech, so the old-school wisdom of us teachers does its best work when we're listening—really, truly listening to and hearing—our kids. Meeting them where they are, supporting them through trials and triumphs, truly being receptive to what they want and need—that's where the magic happens.
And—it goes without saying—never, ever smack a blind kid across the hands ... unless you want to feel a cane against your shins.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

2019-09-02 18:45:29

I agree with post 6, and I would like to add that I have two braille displays, which I use everyday. Braille helps me with my spelling and grammar, but braille does have its limits. For example, speech is faster, and even the most well made braille display can break. I am hopeful with the rise of cheaper  braille displays, that braille will be more widely available.

I think every blind person should learn braille, but when and how you use it, should be up to you.

2019-09-02 20:04:17

I disagree on the "oh, you can't learn how to spell or put punctuation marks in their proper place without braille" argument; in essence, its the "You can't learn to read or write/illiteracy" argument. Yes, the computer is reading to you, but with the right TTS synthesizer (ESpeak being the best for this) you can very easily learn where to put punctuation marks and how to spell (not just because of the spellcheckers that will wine and complain when you misspell a word or make a grammatical error, but when your language arts teachers also make complaints too). Does braille help? For sure it does! But the argument that I have heard of, "If you can't read braille, your illiterate" doesn't make any sense. If someone has no idea how to read or write braille and they're blind, but they're typing flawlessly, how are they not literate? How is someone illiterate just because they don't read and write in the natural methods that we classify as literacy? Surely, if someone is able to type extremely well-written essays, but not know braille (or only know some braille, or have very little practice), and they can't read or write print, they are literate, in a way?
I raise this point because the definition of literacy is not the ability to read or write print or any form of constricting definition. The definition of literacy is the ability to read or write, end of story. Not the ability to read or write using any particular method(s) or in any particular language(s).
No, I don't think the problem is what "literacy" constitutes; rather, I think its the extremely constricting definition of "read" and "write". The definitions of "read" are (1) look at and comprehend the meaning of (written or printed matter) by mentally interpreting the characters or symbols of which it is composed; and (2) discover (information) by reading it in a written or printed source. The definitions of "write" (or at least the ones that we're concerned with) are (1) mark (letters, words, or other symbols) on a surface, typically paper, with a pen, pencil, or similar implement; (2) compose, write, and send (a letter) to someone; and/or (3) compose (a text or work) for written or printed reproduction or publication; put into literary form and set down in writing. This set of definitions is probably the most open to future advancements. The definition of reading is the most constricting though, since, according to it, blind people are illiterate because they cannot read.
Perhaps I'm over-analyzing it, I dunno; thoughts?

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2019-09-02 21:18:47

Imo, literacy necessarily involves decoding written symbols directly, and having them read by a TTS shouldn't count. Writing is more ambiguous, since I can't think of any reason that typing shouldn't count. All throughout history, and still today, those who are fully literate tend to have far better outcomes than those who are not, and we find the same trend among blind people who are Braille-literate and those who are not.
But it seems that these days, I mostly just use Braille to read the SSA letters claiming they totally sent out a previous notice explaining why they were charging me $1542 extra, even though it mysteriously hasn't appeared from the dimentional abyss that my mailbox apparently is, while OCR has been helpful on a daily basis, so idk.

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2019-09-02 21:56:59

I agree with Jade for the most part. It's very important for a blind student to learn Braille at the same time their sighted peers are learning to write print, assuming, of course, that the person didn't lose their vision later in life. I completely understand that those sorts of scenarios present unique challenges, but at the same time, one would assume that they already have the basic foundations of literacy mastered by that point.

Given my background, I should hate Braille. I went to a tiny elementary school where kids constantly made fun of me, especially when I was using a Braille writer to do my assignments. This would often cause kids to throw stuff at me while the teachers did nothing, or complain haughtily about how the noise was impacting their learning, when half of them most likely couldn't care less about learning anything except how to get a +1 to their assholeishness skills. In any case, once I got a Braille Lite at the age of 8, everything changed. I had always enjoyed reading, but with a notetaker, I could conceivably have any book I wanted, and I took great pleasure in reading during class, not only to escape a lot of the things that were happening to me, but also because I genuinely enjoyed doing so.

The cost of Braille displays is starting to come down, slowly but surely. As the more barebones units that are on the market at this point continue to evolve, I have no doubt that one day, overpriced, hopelessly out-of-date notetakers will become a thing of the past. I would think that this would be able to bring Braille into the classroom in a way that it might not be at this point, especially in developing countries where resources are scarce as it is. If that happens, maybe the associations with bulkiness and antiquity will die, thus making it more appealing to students.

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

2019-09-02 22:07:50

Like I said, I don't hate Braille. I hate the attitude that it's a cure-all. I would rather have someone or something read to me, thanks to my idiotic aid in grade school, who wouldn't let me so much as think about using contracted braille because she was too lazy to learn how to translate it. I just feel like human readers give more personality. Sure, some people can give characters distinct personalities and voices in their heads, but I just want to know how things sound. Before I had Braille, I had my ears.

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2019-09-02 22:10:21

As someone who used a manual brailler for foreign languages like French and Spanish right through high school, and who thus often had to carry the damn thing everywhere through my academic career before post-secondary, I can attest that bulk is a pain in the ass. And yes, it's also a bit loud. There's a sort of pad thing you can put your brailler on which nullifies some of the vibration and thus mitigates a bit of the noise, but most braillers are not quiet, even now, so I respect that argument to some extent. I remember once in seventh grade, a kid behind me said something about how he was finding my brailler distracting; for reference, this was a kid who was always talking to his friends quietly while the teacher was at the front trying to lecture, the kind of student who really didn't seem to give much of a rip about school. To my utter surprise, the teacher said something like, "Okay, it's a little loud, and I'm sorry about that. But you know what? If you were whispering with so-and-so less, I'd be willing to listen to you. You can't selectively ignore your own useless contributions to room noise when it suits you." And while the kid didn't specifically get in any further trouble, I was also not harassed in that class for making brailler-related noise. Bringing the volume down, however, is definitely a good thing, which is why I used the notetaker I had as often as I could; it still creates noise, just as typing on a laptop does, but at least it's not nearly so damn loud.

Ethin, I agree that definitions of reading and writing (reading especially) are a bit restrictive. I actually had an argument about this with a family member, who opined that me listening to an audiobook did not constitute reading. My argument is that she's right, technically it doesn't, at least when one is trying to learn. Listening and reading are two different skills. However, my counterpoint is that I learned to actually read over thirty years ago, more or less, and so at this point, I was simply consuming media in a way I found accessible; as such, why argue about whether I said I was reading or listening?
As Turtlepower pointed out, I think it's important to actually learn to translate symbols you see or touch into tangible letters, sounds and whatnot. Necessary? Perhaps not. But a good idea, at least insofar as the current system is concerned. It's important to make those associations early, too. So for me, personally, if you are unable to read braille, then you are, in some ways at least, not able to read. That said, I'd love to see the writing of someone who does not know how to read braille at all; how many spelling/syntactical/punctuation mistakes are there, for instance?

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

2019-09-02 22:36:53

same post 4 is not saying i hate braille, not really. I love it, it's my main thing: i'm writing with it, reading. Just i said i am using slite and stile for write, and it's so really annoying when you have write so much. Brailler is more cool when you have write much, cause your fingers are not hurt, and braille keys look like piano's lol.

Yours kindly

2019-09-02 22:47:26

@13, you have a fair point. I just personally hold the belief that reading is consuming media/text in a way that is comfortable for the reader; how they do it doesn't really matter to me. Same goes for writing; if so long as I can consume their writing using my methods, how they write it doesn't matter. I'm just talking about general composition; I would mind if someone sent me an email professionally and it had a ton of grammatical errors in it. But that's off-topic. My point is that:
1) If you are able to consume content in a way that allows you to understand that content on a preliminary level (i.e. understanding/interpreting the content into words, phrases, and other linguistic structures), I really could care less how you do it. I will still classify that is 'reading'. I might ask if you do it in a way I'm unfamiliar with, just so I can try it for myself though!
2) If you are able to compose content that can be consumed by me, or by anyone else, then I consider you to have the ability to write. How you compose that content should have no impact on how I consume it.
So, yes, I consider you to "write" if you type something. I don't see that is being different from you physically taking a pen or pencil and writing each letter onto a paper made from trees. Similarly, I consider you to be "reading" if your having a computer read a document to you. Yes, your not reading via a conventional method using a physical body part; your (technically) using a computer to read. But I still would consider that reading.
Allow me to put this into perspective. Steven Hawking was diagnosed with MND at the age of 21. In his later years, MND caused the death of neurons that controlled his brain and spinal cord. As such, he couldn't write via conventional methods. As a consequence, under our current "logic" of describing the qualifications for literacy, he was illiterate because he couldn't write (but he could read). Yet he wrote a lot, thereby defying our definition of literacy (therefore making him literate)! He's well known for the book "A Brief History of Time", the discovery of hawking radiation, and so on. Yes, he used a computer attached to his wheelchair to prepare lectures in advance. He may even have used a full-on desktop computer with disability adaptations. Still, he wrote lectures, and sent them in chunks to his TTS synthesizer when giving them. Under the two qualifications above, I would classify him as perfectly literate: he may not be able to read and write the natural/traditional way; that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
But back to the original topic: I don't use braille that often. I'm not going to say that braille is a cure-all -- because it is not. I would never subject myself to code with braille because all I can see that generating is a nightmare. It would be slow, difficult, and just downright irritating. Similarly I could never see myself writing BASH/shell scripts with it because of the same reasons. Braille is used for a lot, and I respect that. I'll use it when I need it. But I'm not going to use it for every possible task that people claim they've used it for. I don't see it as a cure-all; I see it as a tool tha can be used, but am going to be realistic on its limitations.

"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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2019-09-02 22:53:49

My only caveat re: your definition of reading, Ethin, is that in technicality, every time you converse with someone, you're both reading. Why? Because you are listening to content, consuming it and processing it. So by your definition, conversation = reading. Nevertheless, I find this sort of thing fascinating.

Steven Hawking also had the ability to read and write, and clearly understood the function of how letters, sounds and words worked. I think when people talk about functional literacy, this is what they're getting at. So if all you've ever understood is people talking to you, then you're not really literate. If you can speak and hear, or otherwise process auditory input somehow, then you can communicate. But if you can't write, read or both (at least to some extent), then functionally speaking you have literacy issues. It's a bit of a hair-splitter, maybe, but there it is.

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

2019-09-02 23:14:25

@16, I like your definition better than mine, to be honest. My definition was me trying to define my exact parameters -- something I clearly didn't do too well. Yes, I suppose that by my own definitions conversation equals reading. My overarching point, which I shall reiterate (even though I think its not necessary), is that our definition of literacy should not be constrained to what instruments we use to express ourselves or to consume content. If you understand how letters, sounds, and words work, as you put it, then I honestly could care less how you write content, so long as I, too, can consume it in whatever manner I find suitable, and vice-versa.

"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

2019-09-02 23:30:53

The overarching point here is that literacy, and illiteracy for that matter, have been used to stigmatize certain behaviour, or certain classes of people, and that's not cool. The word, then, is kind of loaded, which causes some to bristle when it's used.
I generally agree with you. I'd prefer that you communicate as clearly as you're able to, and I'll endeavour to do the same, but expecting anyone to be perfect is just silly. I recognize, for instance, that spelling mistakes are not as big a deal as they feel to me, particularly if they're not egregious and don't get in the way of comprehension.

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

2019-09-02 23:42:57

@18, fair enough. We have two different points but they're pretty much the same thing, just worded differently. smile Yes, I wish that literacy and illiteracy weren't so overloaded and overused myself.

"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

2019-09-02 23:57:20

On a slightly related topic, should braille be capitalized? I would say no because it is not a language. Anyone else know for sure? I have seen some people capitalize it while some others do not.

2019-09-03 00:07:08

Drinking game: take a shot every time you read the word literacy in this thread... tongue
Braille, like anything, is but one tool to use where necessary. It makes more sense to leverage Braille in say, STEM fields (physics, chemistry, biology, etc) than perhaps an environment where you're interacting with English prose on the regular. It also depends on personal preference and learning style of course, but I would find it difficult for somebody to avoid Braille entirely when engaging in some iteration of the sciences.
I recommend math courses be done in Braille solely on the basis that it's significantly faster to navigate math in a Braille document than an electronic file containing mark-up that might not even be written properly. Speech synthesis kinda inhibits you from from getting the "big picture" when analyzing several lines of math at a single time, at least in my opinion. Maybe some others feel very differently, but I'm a person who reads nemeth faster than listening to speech.
I agree that physical books are a nuisance. The day we can get a device that uses refreshable Braille on every line in an 8.5 x 11 fashion is the day we start questioning the feasibility of embossing. I'm certain it wouldn't eradicate physical hard-copy Braille (at least not right away), but the biggest issue with hard-copy is that it's a pain to store and transport. We already carry 1,426 times the amount of stuff sighted people carry around, throwing even one thick volume is just making it so much worse.
This is all to say that I tend to agree with the idea of the OP. Fun fact: most blind people don't read Braille or have never learned to. It's interesting to see how stereotypical it is for the world to assume that just because you're blind that you read Braille, but the numbers prove otherwise. Just Google it and you'll see all kinds of different studies conducted by APH, NFB, and other blind-based organizations. I'm pretty sure it's been labeled as an epidemic, but I don't have enough of an opinion to really bark up that tree.

What game will hadi.gsf want to play next?

2019-09-03 00:32:12 (edited by Chris 2019-09-03 18:07:55)

I don't agree with Ethin a lot, but I have to agree with the conversation above. It's very interesting to think about. Just because I cannot really read or write printed characters doesn't mean I'm illiterate, in the same way listening to an audiobook doesn't mean I'm not reading. I'm still "reading" it, just not in the way most people do with prink characters or Braille dots. Since I have been taught how to read and write English, I am able to comprehend material I receive orally. Oh, the fact I'm typing this message on a computer keyboard in clear English means I'm literate as well. My thoughts and ideas make sense and are translated into "printed" characters for someone to "read" with the eyes if they so choose to do so.

Yes, I think Braille is an important tool. Yes, I think it's worthwhile to teach it to a child at a very early age. Yes, it helps with literacy and comprehention, but I believe proper literacy could be taught using other means. The problem is that the broken education system isn't teaching people how to properly read or write anymore. My thought is that if a blind person tries to write phonetically based on how words sound, these issues should be detected by the teacher and corrected immediately.

Braille needs to be moved fully into the 21st century. We need multi-line displays which will allow us to read books, tables, charts, etc. The idea is to give us an experience that's as equal to a sighted person reading a tablet or computer screen as possible given the nature of the info barrier and what can be done with the shere size of Braille itself. The current single-line displays are not efficient for reading books, or other complex materials that require formatting. If you *must* read Braille, they work, but they're definitely not what I'd call acceptable in the 21st century.

I will never go back to lugging around ridiculously large Braille books, manual Braille writers, etc. Yes, they're good options for when the power fails, but unless you live in the middle of nowhere or in a really really bad country, that shouldn't be an issue. The digital age has done so much to help break down the obnoxious information barrier. I wouldn't dream of going back to a time before all this access. I can carry around thousands of audio or electronic text books in a device that fits in the palm of my hand. Imagine how many Braille volumes it would take if I decided I had to have hardcopy versions of every single book I've read and plan to read in my lifetime. That is beyond ridiculous, because it would take up multiple rooms at the very least. At most, it may be several dedicated buildings!

Maybe some of you will disagree, and that's fine. Either way, I maintain my views on this subject. Braille needs to catch up with the information age, just like so many other things for blind people. Why the NFB and everyone else ignores this is beyond me.

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2019-09-03 00:41:26

@20: I think probably, since it comes from a person's name. IDK if other encoding systems are capitalized... Morse Code? Which is also named after its inventor.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
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2019-09-03 00:48:28

@22, fully agree. My book library is over 5 GB in digital formats -- both EPUB and HTML. I have over 200 books on a ton of subjects, some being mathematical in nature, but most being on OSes, programming and such. If I wanted all of those in braille, it would not only cost me more than 15 times the purchase price of all of those books combined, but it would probably take up half a city. (As a side note, I refer to the Intel Software Developer Manuals occasionally for various peaces of information or for curiosities sake. The combined volume set is 4,922 pages in its PDF form, though they do offer smaller volumes.)
So yes, I hope I never have to lug around physical hardcopy braille books ever again. The full-page braille display stuff should've been solved years and years ago. If only the market was a bit larger...

"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

2019-09-03 00:49:45

I personally have hard copies of several books, most notably The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I got them several years ago for Christmas, and love them. I do like hard copies of particular books, but it's not realistic to expect that everything I read come in this manner, nor that I'd be able to keep it thus. That said, I like the thought of having a bookshelf or three in my home for some of my favourite Braille books, in much the same way that some sighted individuals have bookshelves for the same thing.

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