and loudly applauded by a once sighted and now blind gentlemen who has a doctorate and is 20 credits short on a second degree and earned both sets after he lost his sight.
I am also in the middle of writing a book for publication, all without the use of Braille, other than a few labels on some of my disks!
are you going to call me illiterate?btw California is big on Braille, and of the more than a score of restaurant chains here, only 5 have made and maintained Braille menu's
it might be a good idea for the originator of those quoted phrases in ken's reply to take note and practice the wisdom of my signature!
good day, inthaneelf "in waking a tiger, use a long stick" - Mau See Tung.----- Original Message ----- From: "Sina Bahram" <sbahram@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 7:40 PMSubject: RE: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historical perspective
What Ken said. Take care, Sina -----Original Message-----From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ken PerrySent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 12:44 PM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxxSubject: RE: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historical perspectiveYou said ,"Take away your tech, your electricity, your computer, your gadgets, your willing friends to read to you, hand you a greeting card from a friend, a recipe, a medicine bottle with a braille label on it, and what happens? Go to a nice restaurant with a sighted friend, have the waiter hand you a braille menu which they have gone to the trouble and expense of providing you, have that friend step away to go to the restroom, the waiter approach you and ask: "What will you have today?" What happens? "Sorry, can you read me your menu? I can't read this." Litterate or illiterate? You tell me."You assume a lot of things in the above. I have been blind 20 years and got one Braille Christmas card, I have only recently started seeing any Braille menus. If you took the tech from most sighted people they would be lost as well. I have never got one bottle of pills with a Braille label. Most of the Pill bottles I get come with barcodes though and read fine. As for Cards my son and daughter have given me audible ones. Hell I got one this year with actual letters I could feel true this is like brailed so don't really count. The point is Tech is here to stay and if it went away then maybe it would be worth me gaining speed with Braille. It is like saying you don't know how to ride a horse so you won't be able to travel more than 20 to 40 miles a day because you will have to walk if you don't have a car. . When I want to read a menu I download one and I do that on my Braille plus and or Iphone both. I actually take pictures of menu on my IPhone and read it that way many times. I am sorry but my brother has started going to restaurants in Atlanta only if they have online menus does that make him illiterate? Kids in college now couldn't do Calculus if you took their calculator away but I could does that make them lost in the world of business because theyuse a tool?I never said that my way I s the best way. What I said is to call them illiterate is asinine. If they can write and read and spell they are literate. You might not call them fully self sufficient but I would argue that until every written word is in Braille then no blind person is self sufficient when it comes to reading but then it looks like Google will fix access to text long before paperBraille ever catches up. KenThe funny thing is you say take your tech away and yet what you were talkingabout originally is reading with a Braille display.Find yourself in a place with no new batteries for your machines, no power, access to a PC ETC. Hand you a slate and stylus or, heck, just a sharp pin and some paper. Instruct you to leave a note for a friend that you stepped out for an hour and will be back,and what happens?Take pride in your abilities, do. Even boast about how well your memory works, your accomplishments in programming, your mathematical prowess, whatever you like but, don't tell me there is no value in reading and that implying that if some can't actually interact directly with text for themselves, know that letters on that page are forming themselves into words and so forth, that this is an assinine thing to say. For one thing, it's rude, discourteous, ETC. for another, it's not true. Do as many studies as you like, ask as many people as you like, whatever. You are not illiterate because you learned to read and write as a child. You used print. You have some knowledge of braille. If you can't do grade II, it is probably because you chose to deny yourself this skill. If you can learn computer code, you can learn braille code be it Nemeth, computer braille, musical notation, whatever you like. If you can learn alternate keyboards, you can train your mind to learn the feel of different symbols. The only reason you couldn't is if your sense of touch is not working for some reason. In spite of this, the fact that you were taught your letters and how to read and write them as a child and learned them makes you literate. You just haven't fully transferred those skills to another medium because you chose to rely on tech instead of putting forth the time and effort it took to master them. There are those who never really truly learn their letters unless they are the ones doing the writing, output, not input. Their knowledge of letters is more akin to their ability to put words together in a spoken sentence. They know how to type out letters on a computer keyboard to get the computer to say what they want. A lot of them write ate when they mean eight, break when they mean brake, speach when they mean speech and so forth because the computer speaks them out just the same and their mind never skips a beat when they hear it spoken and when their friends hear them spoken from a screen reader. They can write, they can not read. ugly? Unyielding? Yes, the world often is. Yes. Uncomfortable? You tell me. Fact?Absolutely. It is immutable, uncontradictable, inarguable. Sorry about the rant. I will stop since this has gotten off topic. It was never my intent to offend anyone. Regards, Alex M On 12/21/10, Ken Perry <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: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 outputmethods(i.e. My unique way of Braille scrolling on the Braille+ and Icon) and Icancode games like Sudoku for the same devices. I can also read labels butifyou give me a Braille book be ready to age before I finish a paragraph.NowI realize if I would have learned Braille when I was young it would bemuchfaster but I have said all this to say this. The idea that someone is illiterate because they don't read Braille andaretotally 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 ofcourseis not really that accessible now that it's a windows app but when it wasados 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 whenItook Calculus I could and did do five page problems in my head. Myteacheractually 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 coulddoon 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 thingsright 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 andtestus 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 informationandyou 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 guycorrectthe 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 mathonpaper and now one I do everything in my head or on a computer. I findusingmy brain a much better exercise than writing everything down. I callpaperwhether it be sighted paper or Braille a disability in itself. I don'twhipout a book to take down a phone number I either remember it or poke itintomy 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 theylosetheir 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 whenshelistens because her mind can both listen to what she is reading and assimilate the information without having to do the work of actuallyreadingthe text and if you think that doesn't make a difference again I thinksomestudies 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!Myremaining fingers are just too insensitive now from nerve damage andendlessblood tests. She has been a teacher at a blind school for at least 20yearsand 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 anyrealsubstance, value, and content that I just try to make sure that I amworkingon 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 perspectiveGlad 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 inpopularity 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 in1981.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. Thesethreedevices took RS-232 data and either acted like terminals or interpreted terminal sequences and sent the data along through another serial porttobe displayed. They were not screen readers running on the computer whose screen was being read. It was revolutionary to think that you couldbuya $300 Type 'n Talk instead of a $5,000 talking terminal to speak thedatacoming 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 endof1983 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 thoseofthe Library of Congress, NLS. -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of AlexMidenceSent: Monday, December 20, 2010 3:24 PM To: programmingblind Subject: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historicalperspectiveHi, all.. I thought this was rather interesting. It is an article written in 1982 about some of the techniques used back then to write screnereadersor "talking terminals" as they called them. I was struck by some of the predictions the author made with regard to the future, some of wichcametrue and others which did not. There was also a very interestingsectionon 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 acronymandwhat 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/talkingterminals.htmlOh yeah, and get a load of the prices for that stuff! Keep in mindthatwas in 1980's money too. Put like a 33% markup on it and you might approximate what it would cost in today's money. 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