[bksvol-discuss] Re: Awesome - 151,663 Titles on Bookshare

  • From: Dasha Radford <dasha95@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 21:26:07 -0400

Sorry what I meant to say was that the one time and actually saw the true 
British braille code was in a non-bookshare related publication that was 
printed in the UK. My advice if you weren't raised reading it be warned it can 
be difficult. If you were raised reading it have fun with it. Is anyone who 
learned the American braille code ever does read British braille I hope you 
have patience with it because you'll need it at least the first time or two 
until you get used to the way it's written.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 22, 2012, at 9:17 PM, "Martha Rafter" <mlhr@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>  I know that what I am saying here is not really on topic, but I have to say 
> that I am very proud to be a volunteer for an organization such as Bookshare. 
>  Judy, I'm so, so, so glad for you!
> Marty
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Judy s.
> Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 6:42 PM
> To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Awesome - 151,663 Titles on Bookshare
> 
> Ali, that's a great example of how much a description adds to a book.
> Thank you! I want to have descriptions of images in every book. It's one
> of the reasons why as a sighted volunteer I've tried to do descriptions
> as much as I can. But as a sighted member, it's just fantastic to
> suddenly have images in books again that I can look at myself, to
> enhance my own reading experience.
> 
> Even the choices of topics for the print disabled have been geared
> almost entirely towards making accessible books that are accessible for
> the blind, with what I can only describe as "censoring" as to what the
> population of print disabled gets overall, and more so when it comes to
> subgroups of the print disabled who aren't blind, or who are both blind
> and deaf.
> 
> In the past the organizations that provide books for the print disabled
> have focused pretty much exclusively on what they've viewed as the needs
> of the blind print disabled. These organizations didn't have any call
> (from their perspective) to put their efforts towards producing, for
> example, accessible versions of books on photography much less books on
> photography with images in them.  But for the sighted reader, seeing
> those images is critical to understand, in a book on photography, what
> the author is trying to teach or demonstrate about a skill that relies
> on the visual senses. In the last 18 months Bookshare has added at least
> 25 publisher quality books on photography that have the original images
> in them included. It feels like being plucked from a desert island and
> getting dropped inside a candy shop.
> 
> I do feel that in a different fashion the folks who are deaf and blind
> both have had their choices limited, too.  Organizations like the NLS
> produce mostly audio books, with relatively few braille books (either
> printed or electronic) to choose from.  In terms of how many there are,
> similar to the group of sighted but print disabled people, there aren't
> that many people who are both blind and deaf. So like us they kind of
> exist on the fringe, getting accessible version of only some of the
> stuff, basically a subset of the titles that are available to the blind.
> And of course the blind have only gotten a subset of the books that are
> available to everyone who isn't print disabled.  Bookshare's approach,
> towards making all printed material accessible to all, really resonates
> with me because of that.  When a book becomes available, it's available
> in forms that are accessible to the sighted disabled, the blind
> disabled, and the blind plus deaf disabled, with Bookshare working
> towards making content within those that currently isn't accessible more
> accessible in the future.  It's great.
> 
> Judy
> 
> 
> On 6/22/2012 5:00 PM, Ali Al-hajamy wrote:
>> It may sound odd, but even as a blind participant who has never had sight of 
>> any sort, illustrations are important to me because I read many fictions 
>> which use illustrations in an effort to produce a certain desired effect 
>> with pictures, and even just knowing what is on the page is enough to get me 
>> involved enough in the book to feel the effect they're trying to accomplish. 
>> Two examples are The Raw Shark Texts, by Steven Hall, and The Tunnel, by 
>> William H. Gass. In the former case, at one point, the main character falls 
>> out of a ship and into water, and a giant shark made entirely of words and 
>> information (it's complicated) begins to swim through the water twoards him. 
>> For maybe forty pages, the picture of the shark is printed on the page, and 
>> it keeps getting larger and larger. Because each page had a description of 
>> the shark swimming twoards the character, growing with each page, my 
>> experience of the book was more enhanced than if I didn't have those 
>> descriptions. My reaction to the rest of the book was mixed, but that was 
>> one trick which I thought worked very well. It was hilarious and terrifying 
>> at the same time.
> 
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