[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 12:37:15 +0000
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-the-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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