Mike, Very true, and I agree -- it's really how much a person wants to sound (and be read as) literate. My suggestion was that in reading Braille (and I hadn't really thought until now about Grade 2 Braille with its contractions) helps a person to know the spelling of words just by the act of reading. It also helps to establish accepted rules of sentence structure and correct pronoun usage during the reading process. A sentence can have all the words spelled correctly but be grammatically unintelligible. So a good point on using JAWS (to keep this on topic) to help in spelling words while reading and of course the amount of literacy is directly dependent on the amount of work using the tools we all have. Dave Created in the Audio Recording and Mixing Studios, San Jose, California ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Arnowitt" <MA@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 15:30 Subject: Re: To Braille or Not to Braille I would say literacy is more a matter of how much time and effort you're willing to spend. Jaws can spell out any word for you and speak punctuation. Whenever I hear a name on the radio these days now that I am blind I do get curious as to its spelling, and I find knowing the spelling makes me remember words and names much better. You don't even need to know any fancy Jaws command to read letter by letter, just put the cursor at the beginning of the word and right arrow one by one. Jaws could be a way to increase literacy, if you're willing to take the time. I don't do texting, but from what I understand nobody spells out words in texts, or intentionally misspells them, and these are mostly sighted people working in a purely visual medium. It's part of the times, not just a disease of the so-called illiterate blind. And I have heard some very good writers say they proofread their writing by reading it aloud. I certainly catch mistakes in my writing through Jaws' speech output. So to me, there's really no superiority or inferiority to learning language by writing, hearing, or feeling it. It's really more a question of do you have the motivation and energy to make the effort. Michael Dave wrote: >Jerry, > >Good point. and to make another point that was mentioned in this >forum, a very important aspect to learning and reading Braille is in >learning how to spell. > >I've seen far too many posters on various lists for the blind who >are writing at a 2nd grade level. It is clear to me that they are >spelling strictly based on how a word sounds -- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw Alternative archives located at: http://n2.nabble.com/JAWS-for-Windows-f2145279.html If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw Alternative archives located at: http://n2.nabble.com/JAWS-for-Windows-f2145279.html If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx