No I think what finally sent me over the edge is you said you would not hire someone who didn't know Braille well. Truthfully that is amazing. What that's says is if I can do the job but I can't prove to you I read Braille well, tough cookies. I can tell you that even some of the kids from KSB next door would fail your test and thus have not a chance of getting a job with you even though they could do it. Shrug I have heard some interesting reasons for blind people not getting work but choice of tools is not one of them. Ken -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alex Midence Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 11:20 AM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historical perspective Hi, Sina, Please see my responses below. I want to make it clear that I don't decry the use of technology. I think I came across as thinking this way when I responsed to Ken's message by stating that braille is useful when you don't have your tech around to help out. I did not mean that you should not use it, give it up, or that it needed to go away. On 12/22/10, Sina Bahram <sbahram@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I can read grade 2 Braille at possibly 100 words per minute, on a good day. > I'm also, or at least used to be, fluent in nemeth for > the level of math I took, which was several semesters of calculus, linear > algebra, differential equations, etc. Came in handy, did it not? > I definitely think braille is necessary, and amazingly useful, My point exactly! > when doing > things like matrices, integrals, and complex derivatives, > but there are other approaches to accomplish the same things. Glad you said so. I use braille a lot in math and find using speech only rather cumbersome for this task. Long calculations require that you can write your work out and refer to it as you go through it. Lowers the margin for error since you eliminate reliance on memory and remove the "forget" factor. Braille and print for that matter, doesn't get sleepy, doesn't get distracted and doesn't have brain farts. It is the constant in the equation. > > Now, as a comparison, I understand synthetic speech at over 1,000 words per > minute. Awesome. Congratulations! I wish I did. I can do 400 but that's about it. > Forgive me for not giving up my 10X efficiency. Noone's asking you to. Speech is a tool, braille is a tool, both do good things and both are worth having and using to the best possible advantage. You should not cheat yourself out of either. > Take care, > Sina > Regards, Alex M __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind