[access-uk] Re: Does the digital age spell the end of Braille? - News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent
- From: <Clive.Lever@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 21 May 2014 14:29:24 +0000
Hi all,
Though it's possibly not off-topic, and so I feel guilty about prolonging the
thread much more, the more I read the more I feel we as blind people should
fight back.
HOOB (hands off our Braille), ,
Clive
Clive Lever
Diversity and Equality Officer
Kent County Council
Office: 01622 221163
Email: clive.lever@xxxxxxxxxxx
Kent County Council
Room G37
Sessions House
Maidstone, Kent.
ME14 1XQ
-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Shaun O'Connor
Sent: 21 May 2014 15:18
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Does the digital age spell the end of Braille? - News
- Gadgets and Tech - The Independent
while not a braille user myself.
ridding the world of braille would be tantamount to removing a fundamental
right to read independently , and by extension communicate and participate in
society effectively.
On 21/05/2014 13:37, Clive.Lever@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hello Angel,
>
> So no homer, John Milton or Aldous Huxley either...and before the form
> becomes extinct, I'm going to use a subjunctive: Would that I were joking
> about some blind people beginning to sound like their synthesisers!
>
> Best,
> Clive
>
>
>
> Clive Lever
> Diversity and Equality Officer
> Kent County Council
>
> Office: 01622 221163
> Email: clive.lever@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> Kent County Council
> Room G37
> Sessions House
> Maidstone, Kent.
> ME14 1XQ
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
> Behalf Of Angel
> Sent: 21 May 2014 13:04
> To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [access-uk] Re: Does the digital age spell the end of
> Braille? - News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent
>
> You are joking surely? Blind people sounding like synthesizers? How
> sad a situation is it if blind people are so isolated. When I read
> about the possibility of Braille being replaced with electronic media,
> I remember in the 80's when there was talk of a paperless office. Did
> that occur? It did not. Why was this I ask? It was because sighted
> people wouldn't stand for it, and some 30 or so years later we still
> have paper documents. If we blind people allow Braille to be
> replaced, we will be a sadder and a sorrier lot for it. Because our
> children will be considerably less well educated than we blind
> students were in past generations. When we could physically read. I
> think a lot of this talk about Braille being replaced is done by
> sighted people who feel the code is too hard to learn, and are trying
> to make things easier for teachers of the blind and other sighted
> professionals. Especially with the idea we should be integrated with
> sighted students from the moment we begin our careers as students.
> Not having to worry over teaching or learning the code would make our
> education a good deal easier for the sighted folk who teach us blind
> students. Who depend on Braille translating programs to write
> Braille. In the 1940's and 50's sighted teachers of the blind learned
> to read Braille with their fingers. As did we. I was taught by such.
> The idea being, they would be better teachers of us if they immersed
> themselves entirely in the experience. This total emersion is not
> experienced by today's modern teachers of the blind . Sighted people
> generally, expect us blind people to be less capable in so many ways.
> So, if our education and literacy suffers should Braille be replaced
> by electronic medium they won't even understand we lack. A condition
> similar to the deterioration by sighted children in the use of the
> language. They lack the understanding of its depth and its richness.
> In future, there will be no Shaws, or Shakespeares. Not because they lack
> the life experiences of either; but, because, blind and sighted children
> alike, won't have vocabularies exceeding 50 words.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <Clive.Lever@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 6:19 AM
> Subject: [access-uk] Re: Does the digital age spell the end of
> Braille? - News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent
>
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I believe that if you were born with no useful reading vision, or
>> have had no useful reading vision since early childhood, it is
>> dangerous to assume that Braille can ever be properly replaced by
>> other media. Screen enlargement is of no early use to someone with no
>> sight at all; audiobooks and computer speech technology allow a blind
>> person to be read to by a machine. They don't allow a blind person to
>> read, so the point about the importance of acquiring literacy skills
>> is well made. You can read all the audio books you like on daisy
>> players, Kindles and the like, without learning how to write, spell,
>> punctuate, capitalise and so on. You can do some of this with
>> computer technology, but the process is rather like travelling from
>> Land's End to John o' Groats at the speed of a snail - it's logically
>> possible to do it but life's too short to make the attempt
>> worthwhile. There are other dangers inherent in expecting blind
>> people do be educated entirely through computer speech outp ut. I've
>> heard reports that some young blind people are beginning to sound
>> like their synthesisers, because they are the voices they hear more than any
>> other.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Clive
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Clive Lever
>> Diversity and Equality Officer
>> Kent County Council
>>
>> Office: 01622 221163
>> Email: clive.lever@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>>
>> Kent County Council
>> Room G37
>> Sessions House
>> Maidstone, Kent.
>> ME14 1XQ
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
>> Behalf Of Gordon Keen
>> Sent: 21 May 2014 10:52
>> To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: [access-uk] Does the digital age spell the end of Braille? -
>> News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent
>>
>>
>> http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/does-th
>> e-digital-age-spell-the-end-of-braille-9405836.html
>>
>> Does the digital age spell the end of Braille?
>>
>> It took more than a century for Braille to be established as the
>> English reading system for the blind after an acrimonious and lengthy
>> dispute dubbed the "War of the Dots".
>>
>> Now it faces another battle as the rise of digital technology means
>> its importance to blind people is diminishing. It might even fall
>> into disuse altogether, according to the curator of a new exhibition.
>>
>> "Braille is embattled. The biggest threat is computer technology,
>> which makes it much easier not to have to learn it," said Matthew
>> Rubery, from Queen University of London.
>>
>> "A lot of people fear Braille won't survive because it will be read
>> by so few people. The use has declined and there are concerns about
>> funding to keep it going."
>>
>> Dr Rubery, with Birkbeck University's Heather Tilley, is curating the
>> exhibition How We Read: A Sensory History of Books for Blind People.
>> The exhibition, which opens in November in London, will introduce the
>> development of alternative ways of reading over the past two centuries.
>>
>> These include the development of Braille and its embossed-print
>> rivals, talking-book records, speech-synthesisers and systems that
>> magnify text on computer screens.
>>
>> Many of the devices have never been displayed. Dr Rubery said it was
>> an opportunity "to explore this significant but largely neglected
>> aspect of the nation's literacy heritage".
>>
>> A series of competing systems emerged in the 19th century to help
>> blind people read. Braille was a system published in 1829 by the
>> Frenchman Louis Braille. Among its rivals were the embossed pages
>> published by William Moon.
>>
>> About 30,000 people use braille in some form today. About 6,000 of
>> these are heavy users, according to the Royal National Institute of
>> Blind People (RNIB).
>>
>> But it faces threats from advances in low-vision technology, the
>> greater availability of recorded materials and reading machines. The
>> RNIB revealed fewer people are using its Braille library. Steve
>> Tyler, head of planning at the RNIB, said the body was worried about
>> the decline of Braille, but that it was putting more resources into
>> teaching products and electronic Braille.
>>
>> He said: "We do see threats to the system but it is still at the
>> heart of what we do because of its literacy and educational value."
>>
>> The exhibition will also chart the development of talking books for
>> the blind, first provided for veterans blinded in the First World War.
>>
>> Dr Rubery said: "Ever since Edison invented the phonograph in 1878,
>> people have been listening to spoken- word recordings. But the first
>> full-length recordings were made for blind people in the 1930s.
>> Before, the records only allowed a few minutes."
>>
>> Among the exhibits is what is believed to be the oldest surviving
>> talking-book record, from 1935 - the BBC announcer Anthony McDonald
>> reading Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.
>>
>> "Blind people started listening to long-playing records 15 years
>> before anyone else," Dr Rubery said. The first spoken-word records
>> released were the Bible and excerpts from Shakespeare.
>>
>> The first popular novels were The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha
>> Christie and Joseph Conrad's Typhoon.
>>
>> Three blind types: Rival systems
>>
>> Braille
>>
>> Louis Braille invented his system at the age of 15, taken from a code
>> invented to send military messages at night. He published it in 1829;
>> it was established as the English system of choice in 1932.
>>
>> Boston Line Type
>>
>> Devised by Samuel Gridley Howe, founder of the New England School for
>> the Blind, it was an embossed, simplified Roman alphabet. The first
>> book using the system was published in 1834.
>>
>> Moon
>>
>> After losing much of his sight from scarlet fever as a child, William
>> Moon developed a system of raised-print letters, which he published
>> in 1845. It is still available in the UK and can be generated with computer
>> software.
>>
>>
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