2020-09-28 19:58:13 (edited by RTT entertainment 2020-09-28 20:00:05)

Hi folks.
I hope everything is going well.
I really need some advice.
So, I go to a mainstreem school.
I don't do the South African Curriculum as this school teaches Caimbridge.
I have a Major, Major problem
I don't have any braille textbooks.
The only textbooks I have are textbooks from the elevate website, they are computer sciences and business studies.
I find it quite hard to use these books as I can't find an accessible way to get the page numbers.
Afrikaans and english do not really use textbooks.
I need History, Business studies and Computer science textbooks in braille.
However, I was told that Caimbridge refuses to sell us the books for some reason.
As I do not do the South African curriculum, I don't think the government will help me.
There are 2 reasons for this.
Firstly, not even some of the government run schools have braille textbooks for their blind students.
Second, they have enough problems to deal with as it is.
The braille printing company that does a lot of the printing here has agreed to print the books for me, all for the tiny sum of R120000 per book (about $7000).
There is no way in hell that I would be able to pay for the 3 books I might need, only to need new ones next year.
I also contacted the presidency about this, but I got no response.
I don't mean to sound entitled, but I have no idea what I'm going to do.

Hopefully, we'll get a fully accessible open world game someday.

2020-09-28 20:13:34

Hi,
I had to threaten to sue my university back in the day when I was studying CS for them to finally get me Braille material. Sadly, you're not alone in finding accessible CS material.

I think I still have a BRF of one of the books which deals with data structures. I will see if I can dig it up and send it to you. The rest were hard-copy Braille, all of which I've since sent out to other CS students over time once I graduated, so I no longer have them.

2020-09-28 20:51:03

Is braille %100 necessary for all of your books.

for those in history and other arts subjects wherre you don't need specifically tabulated layout, you might want to look at getting either digital, or audio copies instead, since odds are those would be easier to obtain for either yourself, or the school.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2020-09-28 21:20:24

@Munawar, thanks, that would help a huge amount.
@Dark, the history isn't availible in digital form.
If it isn't aavailible in digital form, I highly doubt that there is an audio version.

Hopefully, we'll get a fully accessible open world game someday.

2020-09-28 22:47:00

Have you tried doing a google search for websites like libgen or b-ok or scihub?  Other sites like that also exist if those don't have it.
And if you have a braille display you might be able to read math and science books that way as well, or if they aren't formatted right, it would probably cost allot less to have a third party fix them than it would to print new braille books.

2020-09-29 06:07:10

@Defender, what are these sites for?
Also, is fixing books for a braille display a service?
I mean, could I go to them and ask them to fix it for me?

Hopefully, we'll get a fully accessible open world game someday.

2020-09-29 10:30:16

IMO you'd be better off just going digital. You shouldn't need audio versions of the material, most documents should be accessible, there's basically no reason to be totally braille in 2020. I won't deny that braille has it's uses, such as on signs, elevators etc, but besides that, it's dying, or already dead, and the reason why can pretty much be explained by taking a quick glance at this thread. It just isn't practical for anyone.

2020-09-29 10:32:05

This is what happens if you study in a main school.
Special schools are much better prepared. It is indeed, indeed, a stupid trend to direct children with problems to mainstream schools. They are simply not ready to face it.
I agree that we need to mix as much as possible among normal people, but here I think it is the only area where the exception applies.

2020-09-29 11:19:14

Don't count on digital materials being accessible. Yes, I know, in this day and age it ought to be that any digital text out there should be accessible. Sadly, there are almost certainly still cases where digital text is locked away in some proprietary format, with no known way to extract the text out of this format, and the only reader of this format is not accessible using any screen reader. Worse yet, it might not even be text in that format, but images. In that case, even if you could rip the images out of the locked format, you'd still have to OCR them, and even then you probably wouldn't get a 100% accurate representation of the text.

And then, sometimes, especially with older titles, it just isn't available in a digital format, period. If this is the case, and nobody has produced it in an accessible format, or if they have, but a copy of the accessible version can't be found, your only option is to get a print copy and scan it or have it scanned, but again, OCR probably won't be 100% accurate.

2020-09-29 13:01:41

haily_merry wrote:

IMO you'd be better off just going digital. You shouldn't need audio versions of the material, most documents should be accessible, there's basically no reason to be totally braille in 2020...it's dying, or already dead, and the reason why can pretty much be explained by taking a quick glance at this thread. It just isn't practical for anyone.

Here we go again. OP wasn't asking whether or not Braille is relevant to you; it is relevant to them and we should be trying to help them instead of scorn them for even thinking of suggesting hard-copy Braille (how dare they use Braille in today's modern age?) All I'll say here is that your premise is misguided. But we can debate this in another topic.

2020-09-29 13:15:25 (edited by Aron Leppik 2020-09-29 13:18:01)

Went totally digital in 6th grade (about 4 years ago now). never looked back.
+ braille books can be heavy as crap. Braille does have it's uses though, sometimes. And unfortunately no I can't really help you.

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2020-09-29 13:53:24

@10, I wasn't saying it's not rellevent. I was saying that there are much bigger things OP could be concerning them self with. For me at least, if I couldn't exactly get hard copy braille versions of anything without paying shit loads of money I don't have, and no grants or funding of any kind was available, I'd have thought the logical option would be to, well, not use braille. Some battles just aren't worth fighting, particularly if the accessible alternative is pretty much right there begging to be used.
And, no, JBird is indeed correct that not all digital materials are accessible. You at least have a better chance though, and if something is totally inaccessible, it can be fixed with no editional cost to the university, making fixing it something of a no brainer.

2020-09-29 16:30:17

@8 That is not always true though. For me, going to a mainstream school was the best thing that could've happened. The jump from school to university was also much easier that way and I learned from the start how to normally interact with sighted people.

We are pleased, that you made it through the final challenge, where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lay on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Assume the party submission position or you will miss the party.

2020-09-29 17:36:19

Hi guys.
Some of the sighted history textbooks came with a CD wrom with some things on it, so I gave that a try.
Well, it seems to be additional exercizes and some sort of interactive quiz test thingy that isn't accessible at all.
The history book isn't available in digital form.
I know braille is dying, but it is way easier to study with imho.

Hopefully, we'll get a fully accessible open world game someday.

2020-09-29 17:57:06

There are some pretty short-sighted responses in this thread. First of all, if done correctly, mainstreaming can be an invaluable experience. Not only do you learn how to actually study and take notes which will prepare you for college, but you learn how to socialize which is sorely needed because just look at what passes for blind school socialization. Second, you'll never convince me that braille isn't important. It's the difference between literacy and illiteracy. If you don't know braille, you're functionally illiterate, end of discussion. Audio is not the same, and while you may be able to get by, you're using a passive process to do it.

Besides which, I can definitely see where computer science stuff would be very suitable for braille, since I'd imagine it's a lot of mathematical formulae and equations that are just better suited to an active process of absorption.

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2020-09-29 18:47:10

RTT:
 
I think Bookshare is doing more stuff with non-US books now, have you checked there? You should be able to get an educational membership and I think, if the book quality is high enough, you can get it in braille. I don't know how much it costs or who does it though.

Here's another alternative. Here in the US anyway, there are some volunteer organizations that do braille. If you could get the books and get them scanned, either as OCR or images, you might be able to find a volunteer organization, locally of course, to braille it for you.

_____________________________
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2020-09-29 20:01:22

@16, thanks.
I havn't heard of any organisation that would be willing to help, but I'll look into this.
Thanks again.

Hopefully, we'll get a fully accessible open world game someday.

2020-09-29 20:33:33

I have attended a mainstreem school too, but sadly I was not in much contact with organizations for the blind, nor did my school have a kind of braille translator or so. I have depended mostly on audio and digital materials later on, which also weren't accessible by the way. I didn't really have the need for braille back then which made me as a child so skeptical to it since I had some vision that actually helped me to learn the sighted alphabet.
Nevertheless, I do agree now that audio is never enough, and I have actually learned braille but sadly I can't read fast enough, because I have no practice.
What I have done is paying for someone to write the materials for me in a word document, well of course it is not the best solution out there but it's the only thing I had.
So I would advice you to look for individual workers, not a kind of office or so since these usually charge you much more, and ask them to not format anything, just to type it. Honestly I was lucky since where I am living you can find people who do that for really really cheap prices. around 6 or 8 pages for one dollar.
the disadvantage here that they of course take time, so you'll need to provide the materials early so that you get your books on time.
If you find it to be expensive in your country, you can pm me to work something together, I maybe can do it locally for you.
Also, I didn't try that out, but another suggestion is Fivver or such websites, that way you can give your books to many people to write them at the same time, and probably they provide cheap prices too, check them out.
Here we actually have organizations that prints out your books in braille if you get them in a word format so you could check if you have something similar.
Finally, sometimes you find real nice colleagues who are willing to help correct the OCR for free. Actually, once my friends recorded for me a whole science materials during the summer without me asking for any help, I was surprised to find them giving me the CD's back then when we started school.
Good luck, I hope one of these suggestions work out for you.

“If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”

2020-10-01 03:22:28

I attended a mainstream school and, for the most part, had a wonderful experience. I was the only blind student in my school, but the other kids really worked with me the best they could and we had a good time. I worked with an Association for the Blind and was able to get all of the training that I needed to receive. Up until my junior year, I was getting all my books in braille, but from that point on there were some I was unable to get. My aid actually recorded as much of them for me as she could, which I never expected she would do. I agree that digital is much easier nowadays, but accessibility still has a long way to go, especially where math books are concerned. I hope things work out for you.

2020-10-01 04:33:40 (edited by serrebi 2020-10-01 04:34:06)

ironcross32 wrote:

There are some pretty short-sighted responses in this thread. First of all, if done correctly, mainstreaming can be an invaluable experience. Not only do you learn how to actually study and take notes which will prepare you for college, but you learn how to socialize which is sorely needed because just look at what passes for blind school socialization. Second, you'll never convince me that braille isn't important. It's the difference between literacy and illiteracy. If you don't know braille, you're functionally illiterate, end of discussion. Audio is not the same, and while you may be able to get by, you're using a passive process to do it.

Besides which, I can definitely see where computer science stuff would be very suitable for braille, since I'd imagine it's a lot of mathematical formulae and equations that are just better suited to an active process of absorption.

Yep, truth of the matter is sighted people multi task in jobs a lot, and the only way we're going to be able to do that is to use Braille, where it works that is. I don't know how I would have understood math, even as well as I do without Braille. There just isn't a digestible way of doing that out there. Still hate it though.