RE: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historical perspective
- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:16:46 -0500
Well I agree that Braille should be taught and is good to know. I have to
put my 3 cents in. I went blind at 20 and in my now 20 years of being
blind, I have only been able to learn to read Braille to the see dick run
levels. That means I read enough to be able to code Braille output methods
(i.e. My unique way of Braille scrolling on the Braille+ and Icon) and I can
code games like Sudoku for the same devices. I can also read labels but if
you give me a Braille book be ready to age before I finish a paragraph. Now
I realize if I would have learned Braille when I was young it would be much
faster but I have said all this to say this.
The idea that someone is illiterate because they don't read Braille and are
totally blind is just stupid and asinine. I have Taken High level math
classes with no Knowledge of nemeth, True I would not have had to use a
reader if I knew nemeth then but I also could have done it alone if they
would have let me use the tools I can use for example I could do all my
calculus by hand with my Calculator/ worksheet called xplore. It of course
is not really that accessible now that it's a windows app but when it was a
dos app it was awesome for doing math by hand on the computer. Yes the
computer did some of the work when I wanted it to but hell seen a sighted
person take calculus without an hp48 in hand lately? Now I will say when I
took Calculus I could and did do five page problems in my head. My teacher
actually insisted I do this for him once because he thought my reader was
doing the math. Little did he know I did the stuff better than he could do
on paper in my head. I definitely couldn't do that now but back then I
could. Ask Sina I am sure he has that same ability.
Now you say there is a difference from reading something by hand to
listening to it? Hell yeah the thing don't always pronounce things right
and you can read a hell of a lot faster and retain more when listening.
Doubt me? Test me against anyone who can read Braille at what would be
considered 100% give us 10 books to read in the same amount of time and test
us on it. True this would really need to be done in a large group to make
sure the people involved just were not stupid but I will guarantee the
person listening to the text will retain more.
You say yes but what about graphics and table. Um sorry but getting
graphics and tables into Braille still takes translation of information and
you will lose something there as well. I actually found my Calculus books
on tape from RFBD very well read and well described in fact the guy correct
the text book like 3 times that I remember while describing the graphics.
Note I have lived in both worlds a world where I had to read and do math on
paper and now one I do everything in my head or on a computer. I find using
my brain a much better exercise than writing everything down. I call paper
whether it be sighted paper or Braille a disability in itself. I don't whip
out a book to take down a phone number I either remember it or poke it into
my phone. Most of the time I remember it just because that works for me.
Now am I saying people don't need to learn Braille no. As I started out I
think people should learn Braille from the beginning and even if they lose
their site it's a useful tool but I fully disagree that a person is
illiterate just because he or she cannot read Braille well.
I want to end by saying my wife who has a Kendil, and and IPad still loves
to listen to Audible books and find she gets more out of the books when she
listens because her mind can both listen to what she is reading and
assimilate the information without having to do the work of actually reading
the text and if you think that doesn't make a difference again I think some
studies should be done.
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alex Midence
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 9:14 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historical
perspective
Hi, Don,
For someone like you, braille isn't a viable solution. Your case is
special and understandable. You can't read braille unless you can
feel your way across a line. About the most sensitive organ remaining
to you short of your tongue for this purpose is probably the tip of
your nose and, that would be ... well ... Let's just say that audio
tech is a wonderful thing. We can't have folks giggling at us when we
read, you know. =) I'm talking about kids who grew up blind and have
two perfectly functioning index fingers (never could read with my
pinky, can anyone?) and a mind to go with them. They should be able
to use both braille and audio to good effect.
alex M
On 12/20/10, Don Marang <donald.marang@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> My older sister was upset at me because I was unable to learn braille! My
> remaining fingers are just too insensitive now from nerve damage and
endless
> blood tests. She has been a teacher at a blind school for at least 20
years
> and is a huge advocate for braille litercy. She even reads braille while
> she is driving!
>
> Don Marang
>
> There is just so much stuff in the world that, to me, is devoid of any
real
> substance, value, and content that I just try to make sure that I am
working
> on things that matter.
> Dean Kamen
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Alex Midence" <alex.midence@xxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 6:03 PM
> To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historical
> perspective
>
>> Glad you liked it. I was hoping someone on this list would have
>> personal recollections of this time and the tech available. Neat how
>> there was braille output as far back as the 50's. It's a shame that
>> that stuff is stil as expensive as it is. Perhaps, some day, as
>> happened with speech technology, blind people will see the price of a
>> braille display drop to something affordable as in, under a thousand
>> dollars? Same for a braille printer/embosser. I am enormously
>> concerned at how many of the blind kids I have met recently have poor
>> braille reading skils and don't really seem to care that they are
>> bordering on illiteracy. Having something or someone read to you is
>> not the same as direct input from a written document to your mind
>> without an intermediary. In this age of electronic texts, you would
>> think that braille would explode in popularity since you no longer
>> have to fill a room with tomes of the stuff.
>>
>> Alex M
>>
>> On 12/20/10, Rasmussen, Lloyd <lras@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> That was fascinating. Dr. Stoffel worked at NIH for a period after he
>>> wrote
>>> that article. I could go on and on about this ancient technology, but
>>> had
>>> better do it off-list.
>>>
>>> People had produced braille from computers since the 50's. The first
>>> speech
>>> for a blind computer user was for Jim Willows, an engineer at the
>>> Lawrence-Livermore Laboratories in 1968 (letters and numbers played out
>>> through a digital-to-analog converter).
>>>
>>> The context of this article ... Votrax devices had been on the market
>>> for
>>> several years, but the SC-01 chip was put into the Type 'n Talk in 1981.
>>> This device had built-in letter-to-sound rules, so you didn't have to
>>> send
>>> phonemes to it as you did the earlier V S A and VSB boards. These three
>>> devices took RS-232 data and either acted like terminals or interpreted
>>> terminal sequences and sent the data along through another serial port
to
>>>
>>> be
>>> displayed. They were not screen readers running on the computer whose
>>> screen was being read. It was revolutionary to think that you could buy
>>> a
>>> $300 Type 'n Talk instead of a $5,000 talking terminal to speak the data
>>> coming from an RS-232 device. The Echo II synthesizer (using the T I
>>> technology) was added to the Apple II at about this time. By the end of
>>> 1983 there were screen readers for the Apple II and for the IBM PC.
>>>
>>> I worked a little bit with the FSST-3 and the VERT terminal, and heard
>>> Deane
>>> Blazie demonstrate the TotalTalk at various conventions.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Project Engineer
>>> National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
>>> Library of Congress 202-707-0535
>>> http://www.loc.gov/nls
>>> The preceding opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those
of
>>> the Library of Congress, NLS.
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alex Midence
>>> Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 3:24 PM
>>> To: programmingblind
>>> Subject: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historical
perspective
>>>
>>> Hi, all..
>>>
>>> I thought this was rather interesting. It is an article written in
>>> 1982 about some of the techniques used back then to write screne readers
>>> or
>>> "talking terminals" as they called them. I was struck by some of the
>>> predictions the author made with regard to the future, some of wich came
>>> true and others which did not. There was also a very interesting
section
>>>
>>> on
>>> speech synthesis and how to get the hardware and software to do many of
>>> the
>>> things we take for granted nowadays like starting and stopping speech,
>>> repeating previously spoken text, deciding what to say as an acronym and
>>> what to speak as a word, punctuation levels and so forth. It was
>>> fascinating stuff.
>>>
>>>
http://web.archive.org/web/20060625225004/http://www.edstoffel.com/david/tal
kingterminals.html
>>>
>>> Oh yeah, and get a load of the prices for that stuff! Keep in mind that
>>> was
>>> in 1980's money too. Put like a 33% markup on it and you might
>>> approximate
>>> what it would cost in today's money.
>>>
>>> Alex M
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