[access-uk] Re: Does the digital age spell the end of Braille? - News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent

  • From: Ari Damoulakis <aridamoulakis@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 21 May 2014 15:14:15 +0200

That's what amazes me. You'd have thought that in 30 years some or
other company would have thought of a way to do it cheaper, or at
least to do it. Seika so far has the cheapest braille displays, but
nowhere near that unfortunately. I suppose the companies might try or
bother more if more blind people could read braille and buy it, they
could produce cheaper?

On 5/21/14, martin wilsher <martinwilsher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> But getting a page of braille in a reffreshable form would be so bloody
> expencive it would never be done.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
> Ari Damoulakis
> Sent: 21 May 2014 13:53
> To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [access-uk] Re: Does the digital age spell the end of Braille? -
> News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent
>
> Sighted people love paper so much that they're working on ink that can
> re-write to the paper, i.e finished using something, just remove the ink and
> reuse the paper. There is also some research that suggested that sighted
> people who hand-write things remember and recall more of what they wrote
> than if they did it on a computer or tablet. Braille is beautiful and
> wonderful and it would be the most awful thing if paper braille disappeared.
> To get braille into the digital age we need multi-line braille displays, one
> tiny line when you are trying to find something in a huge document just
> doesn't cut the mustard and is awful because you can't skim read downwards
> and look for things fast.
> Besides, if braille disappeared, I think a child growing up totally blind
> from birth would never then really be able to really picture words or
> imagine letters effectively in their heads like what a braille user can. Bet
> their reading and spelling skills wouldn't be as good as a braille user.
> Ari
>
> On 5/21/14, Clive.Lever@xxxxxxxxxxx <Clive.Lever@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Hello Angel,
>>
>> So no homer, John Milton or Aldous Huxley either...and before the form
>> becomes extinct, I'm going to use a subjunctive: Would that I were
>> joking about some blind people beginning to sound like their
>> synthesisers!
>>
>> Best,
>> Clive
>>
>>
>>
>> Clive Lever
>> Diversity and Equality Officer
>> Kent County Council
>>
>> Office: 01622 221163
>> Email: clive.lever@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>>
>> Kent County Council
>> Room G37
>> Sessions House
>> Maidstone, Kent.
>> ME14 1XQ
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
>> Behalf Of Angel
>> Sent: 21 May 2014 13:04
>> To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: [access-uk] Re: Does the digital age spell the end of
>> Braille? - News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent
>>
>> You are joking surely?  Blind people sounding like synthesizers?  How
>> sad a
>>
>> situation is it if blind people are so isolated.  When I read about
>> the possibility of Braille being replaced with electronic media, I
>> remember in the 80's when there was talk of a paperless office.  Did
>> that occur?  It did
>>
>> not.  Why was this I ask?  It was because sighted people wouldn't
>> stand for
>>
>> it, and some 30 or so years later we still have paper documents.  If
>> we blind people allow Braille to be replaced, we will be a sadder and
>> a sorrier
>>
>> lot for it.  Because our children will be considerably less well
>> educated than we blind students were in past generations.  When we
>> could physically read.  I think a lot of this talk about Braille being
>> replaced is done by sighted people who feel the code is too hard to
>> learn, and are trying to make things easier for teachers of the blind
>> and other sighted professionals.  Especially with the idea we should
>> be integrated with sighted students from the moment we begin our
>> careers as students.  Not having to worry over teaching or learning
>> the code would make our education
>>
>> a good deal easier for the sighted folk who teach us blind students.
>> Who depend on Braille translating programs to write Braille.  In the
>> 1940's and
>>
>> 50's sighted teachers of the blind learned to read Braille with their
>> fingers.  As did we.  I was taught by such.  The idea being, they
>> would be better teachers of us if they immersed themselves entirely in
>> the experience.  This total emersion is not experienced by today's
>> modern teachers of the blind .  Sighted people generally, expect us
>> blind people to
>>
>> be less capable in so many ways.  So, if our education and literacy
>> suffers
>>
>> should Braille be replaced by electronic medium  they won't even
>> understand
>>
>> we lack.  A condition similar to the deterioration by sighted children
>> in the use of the language.  They lack the understanding of its depth
>> and its richness.  In future, there will be no Shaws, or Shakespeares.
>> Not because
>>
>> they lack the life experiences of either; but, because, blind and
>> sighted children alike, won't have vocabularies exceeding 50 words.
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: <Clive.Lever@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 6:19 AM
>> Subject: [access-uk] Re: Does the digital age spell the end of
>> Braille? - News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent
>>
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> I believe that if you were born with no useful reading vision, or
>>> have had
>>>
>>> no useful reading vision since early childhood, it is dangerous to
>>> assume
>>>
>>> that Braille can ever be properly replaced by other media. Screen
>>> enlargement is of no early use to someone with no sight at all;
>>> audiobooks
>>>
>>> and computer speech technology allow a blind person to be read to by
>>> a machine. They don't allow a blind person to read, so the point
>>> about the importance of acquiring literacy skills is well made. You
>>> can read all the
>>>
>>> audio books you like on daisy players, Kindles and the like, without
>>> learning how to write, spell, punctuate, capitalise and so on. You
>>> can do
>>>
>>> some of this with computer technology, but the process is rather like
>>> travelling from Land's End to John o' Groats at the speed of a snail
>>> - it's logically possible to do it but life's too short to make the
>>> attempt
>>>
>>> worthwhile. There are other dangers inherent in expecting blind
>>> people do
>>>
>>> be educated entirely through computer speech outp ut. I've heard
>>> reports that some young blind people are beginning to sound
>>>
>>> like their synthesisers, because they are the voices they hear more
>>> than any other.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Clive
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Clive Lever
>>> Diversity and Equality Officer
>>> Kent County Council
>>>
>>> Office: 01622 221163
>>> Email: clive.lever@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>>
>>>
>>> Kent County Council
>>> Room G37
>>> Sessions House
>>> Maidstone, Kent.
>>> ME14 1XQ
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
>>> Behalf Of Gordon Keen
>>> Sent: 21 May 2014 10:52
>>> To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> Subject: [access-uk] Does the digital age spell the end of Braille? -
>>> News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/does-th
>>> e-digital-age-spell-the-end-of-braille-9405836.html
>>>
>>> Does the digital age spell the end of Braille?
>>>
>>> It took more than a century for Braille to be established as the
>>> English reading system for the blind after an acrimonious and lengthy
>>> dispute dubbed the "War of the Dots".
>>>
>>> Now it faces another battle as the rise of digital technology means
>>> its importance to blind people is diminishing. It might even fall
>>> into disuse
>>>
>>> altogether, according to the curator of a new exhibition.
>>>
>>> "Braille is embattled. The biggest threat is computer technology,
>>> which makes it much easier not to have to learn it," said Matthew
>>> Rubery, from Queen University of London.
>>>
>>> "A lot of people fear Braille won't survive because it will be read
>>> by so
>>>
>>> few people. The use has declined and there are concerns about funding
>>> to keep it going."
>>>
>>> Dr Rubery, with Birkbeck University's Heather Tilley, is curating the
>>> exhibition How We Read: A Sensory History of Books for Blind People.
>>> The exhibition, which opens in November in London, will introduce the
>>> development of alternative ways of reading over the past two centuries.
>>>
>>> These include the development of Braille and its embossed-print
>>> rivals, talking-book records, speech-synthesisers and systems that
>>> magnify text on
>>>
>>> computer screens.
>>>
>>> Many of the devices have never been displayed. Dr Rubery said it was
>>> an opportunity "to explore this significant but largely neglected
>>> aspect of the nation's literacy heritage".
>>>
>>> A series of competing systems emerged in the 19th century to help
>>> blind people read. Braille was a system published in 1829 by the
>>> Frenchman Louis
>>>
>>> Braille. Among its rivals were the embossed pages published by
>>> William Moon.
>>>
>>> About 30,000 people use braille in some form today. About 6,000 of
>>> these are heavy users, according to the Royal National Institute of
>>> Blind People
>>>
>>> (RNIB).
>>>
>>> But it faces threats from advances in low-vision technology, the
>>> greater availability of recorded materials and reading machines. The
>>> RNIB revealed
>>>
>>> fewer people are using its Braille library. Steve Tyler, head of
>>> planning
>>>
>>> at the RNIB, said the body was worried about the decline  of Braille,
>>> but
>>>
>>> that it was  putting more resources into teaching products and
>>> electronic
>>>
>>> Braille.
>>>
>>> He said: "We do see threats to the system but it is still at the
>>> heart of
>>>
>>> what we do because of its literacy and educational value."
>>>
>>> The exhibition will also chart the development of talking books for
>>> the blind, first provided for veterans blinded in the First World War.
>>>
>>> Dr Rubery said: "Ever since Edison invented the phonograph in 1878,
>>> people
>>>
>>> have been listening to spoken- word recordings. But the first
>>> full-length
>>>
>>> recordings were made for blind people in the 1930s. Before, the
>>> records only allowed a few minutes."
>>>
>>> Among the exhibits is what is believed to be the oldest surviving
>>> talking-book record, from 1935 - the BBC announcer Anthony McDonald
>>> reading Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.
>>>
>>> "Blind people started listening to long-playing records 15 years
>>> before anyone else," Dr Rubery said. The first spoken-word records
>>> released were
>>>
>>> the Bible and excerpts from Shakespeare.
>>>
>>> The first popular novels were The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha
>>> Christie and Joseph Conrad's Typhoon.
>>>
>>> Three blind types: Rival systems
>>>
>>> Braille
>>>
>>> Louis Braille invented his system at the age of 15, taken from a code
>>> invented to send military messages at night. He published it in 1829;
>>> it was established as the English system of choice in 1932.
>>>
>>> Boston Line Type
>>>
>>> Devised by Samuel Gridley Howe, founder of the New England School for
>>> the
>>>
>>> Blind, it was an embossed, simplified Roman alphabet. The first book
>>> using
>>>
>>> the system was published in 1834.
>>>
>>> Moon
>>>
>>> After losing much of his sight from scarlet fever as a child, William
>>> Moon
>>>
>>> developed a system of raised-print letters, which he published in
>>> 1845. It
>>>
>>> is still available in the UK and can be generated with computer
>>> software.
>>>
>>>
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