When I was losing my eyesight I had numerous eye surgeries. On occasion I found myself in a hospital bed with my eyes bandaged and the nurses would come around. This blindness stuff was rather new to me, so I asked the nurses to describe themselves. Some of them went into very great detail and I formed mental images of them. Then the bandages would come off and I could see them and I saw that their descriptions were very accurate. However, none of them looked anything at all like I had them pictured. The simple fact is that if you have normal eyesight and you merely glance at something you, without even necessarily being consciously aware of it, take in an enormous amount of subtle detail. These details include very subtle grades of color, texture,minute features, a wayward hair, a dust mote levels of lighting, sources of lighting, background detail and so many other things that neither I nor anyone else can go into them. This is all in just a single glance, not even a careful study. Your description may be good, but it cannot possibly cover everything. There is just too much, including details that even though you are looking right at them you are not consciously aware of and that other people seeing the same thing may be aware of. I once met a blind woman who insisted that describing was just as good as seeing because she could describe someone well enough that you could pick them out in a crowd. She had never seen, though, and my disagreement with her was based on my previous experience as a sighted person. She still insisted though. I am sure that those nurses had described themselves well enough that I could have picked them out in a crowd too, but they still did not look anything like I had them pictured. Descriptions often have to do and some descriptions do better than other descriptions, but there is no way that a description will reproduce the picture.
On 6/23/2012 2:11 AM, Cindy wrote:
I must take issue with your comment that "no" words can cover all the
detail in a picture that an eye can take in a single glance. It
does,however, take a great many words. If you look at some of the
early children's books for which I described pictures, you'll see they
are very detailed--including the pictures on the walls, the furniture
in rooms, the clothes the people wore, what the people looked like,
what food was fallng from the sky, and more; I was so used to being
very detailed in my picture descriptions that I kept on when I
described the various photos and pictures in Medals of Honor;
especially when it was pointed out that many blind people had no idea
what the medal of Honor was or what some of the statues and locations
that I identified looked
It occurred to me, later that it was not necessary in adult books that
I later proofed that I had to describe the illustrations; I could just
identify them. When I began describing images for the Poet Project, I
continued being detailed in my descriptions; check the descriptions in
the the early pages of Glencoe Health book. Then I was told that the
image descriptions should be *short* complete sentences; so I stopped
describing what the person looked like and what he/she was wearing and
the surroundings. I wish I could remember which history book the
textile mill photo is in. That description took a great many words
(and time) to describe.
Cindy
*From:* Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
*To:* bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Sent:* Friday, June 22, 2012 5:20 PM
*Subject:* [bksvol-discuss] Re: Awesome - 151,663 Titles on Bookshare
Actually, I think a picture is worth so many times a thousand
words that the count is unimaginable. That is, no description can
possibly cover all the detail in a picture that a single glance
can take in.
On 6/22/2012 6:05 PM, Chela Robles wrote:
> And, you do know a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
>
> -- "Passion is a great motivator. Music is a life-long learning
experience."
> -- Chela Robles
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> On 6/22/2012 3:00 PM, Ali Al-hajamy wrote:
>> It may sound odd, but even as a blind participant who has never
had sight of any sort, illustrations are important to me because I
read many fictions which use illustrations in an effort to produce
a certain desired effect with pictures, and even just knowing what
is on the page is enough to get me involved enough in the book to
feel the effect they're trying to accomplish. Two examples are The
Raw Shark Texts, by Steven Hall, and The Tunnel, by William H.
Gass. In the former case, at one point, the main character falls
out of a ship and into water, and a giant shark made entirely of
words and information (it's complicated) begins to swim through
the water twoards him. For maybe forty pages, the picture of the
shark is printed on the page, and it keeps getting larger and
larger. Because each page had a description of the shark swimming
twoards the character, growing with each page, my experience of
the book was more enhanced than if I didn't have those
descriptions. My reaction to the rest of the book was mixed, but
that was one trick which I thought worked very well. It was
hilarious and terrifying at the same time.
>> The Tunnel is a more complicated case.
>> (SPOILERS AHEAD! It doesn't matter since I can't think of
anyone here [or anywhere, really] who would be interested in
reading that book, but just in case...)
>> It is about a college professor, called William Frederick
Kohler, who is working on his hypothesis concerning the Germans,
called Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany. he has almost
completed it, save for the introduction, but cannot manage to
write those final pages:
>> "It was my intention, when I began, to write an introduction to
my work on the Germans. Though its thick folders lie beside me
now, I know I cannot. Endings, instead, possess me. all ways out.
>>
>> Embarrassed, I'm compelled to smile. I was going to extend my
sympathy to my opponents. Here, in my introduction, raised above
me like an arch of triumph, I meant to place a wreath upon myself.
But each time I turned my pen to the task, it turned aside to
strike me.
>>
>> As I look at the pages of my manuscript, or stare at the books
which wall my study, I realize I must again attempt to put this
prison of my life in language."
>>
>> He begins to write an extended meditation about his own life
instead of the introduction to the book he thought he had to have.
Around two hundred pages in, he also begins to dig a tunnel out of
his basement, creating his own physical metaphor and giving the
books title duel meanings. We, the readers, are tunnelling into
his thoughts, he is tunnelling out of the life he hates, with the
new book he is writing about himself he is tunnelling away from
the hypothesis he can't finish. And all the tunnels lead to a dead
end. (There's a point to this, I swear). Gass uses numerous
graphical tricks to immerse you in the experience. Drawings,
cartoons, at one point, a page that is made to look like a
crinkled grocery sack, ETC. I haven't read the entire book yet,
but one that stands out at me is the very last page. Kohler has
created his own imaginary political group, called the party of the
Disappointed People, yet he knows that this, like everything else,
would be a failure because it's the type of party few would want
to admit they've joined. At the end of the book, he is in ruins.
His wife is leaving him, he has nearly been buried alive by his
tunnel, he doesn't know what the point to both his books was:
>> "Write no more propaganda for the PdP. Achieve dignity Sport a
swatch of Shawwhite beard bleached to remove cig stains, and
trimmed square to greet the face of its maker. In short, to abide.
In the last hamlet of feeling. I'm inclined to say why not? Sure.
Or dump every dirty drawer onto my desk--wasn't that really
Martha's suggestion?--till the desk's hid, as well as Tabor's
turning chair and the floor which firmed our feet, covering the
pages of my History as my History sheeted me; there to let my
words wait, like the disappointed people bide, before they try
life again. Meanwhile carry on without complaining. No arm with
armband raised on high. No more booming bands, no searchlit skies.
Or shall I, like the rivers, rise? Ah. Well. Is rising wise?
Revolver like the Führer near an ear. Or lay my mind down by
sorrow's side."
>>
>> The final page simply contains the symbol for the PDP. I've
likely mangled everything in my description, because I haven't
read the entire book, I've never had to put my admiration for it
into words like this, and there's so, so much more to it than what
I've just described here, so the effect is always diminished if
you haven't read the entire thing first, but to have gone through
everything we have with Kohler for 651 pages, to have tunnelled
with him, so to speak, and then to read his final declaration,
followed by that reminder of his final failure...It's quite
devistating. And I don't think I would have experienced the book
in that manner if the images were not described. I don't even need
an especially detailed description, though it helps, just
something to signify what is on the page. And Bookshare staff and
volunteers do both wonderfully.
>>
>> Tl;dr (too long; didn't read) version (since I think there
might be one person who has read this entire message):
>> I REALLY LIKE THE DESCRIPTIONS THEY'RE VERY HELPFUL AND MAKE
THE BOOK-READING EXPERIENCE BETTER!
>>
>> On 22-Jun-12 15:40, Judy s. wrote:
>>> I just looked at the new version of Bookshare's entry page on
the website (http://www.bookshare.org
<http://www.bookshare.org/>). I love the new feature on the right
hand side of the page that's a counter of how many books are in
the collection. As of today, there are 151,663 titles. That is
totally awesome.
>>>
>>> As a sighted but disabled member, I'm also grateful for and
thrilled by the number of publisher quality books that have
entered the collection in the last 18 months with the original
illustrations intact. I haven't read a book where I can look at
the illustrations for over 20 years. Way to go, Bookshare! I'm
psyched about the POET project to get illustrations described. It
gives me hope that eventually everyone can have access to both
illustrations and good descriptions of the illustrations in the
future.
>>>
>>> Judy s.
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