The reason two sighted people can look at something and see different things is because of all of those details. Some details will catch one person's attention and other details will catch another person's attention. Some details will seem more important to some people and other details will seem more important to others. That is one reason why a description can never replace the picture. The describer is describing the details that strike the describer as important. There is no telling what may not be mentioned that you would have considered important if you had known about it. As for distractions, well, being able to see all of those details certainly gives you more to be distracted by. I have found that when I became blind I was forced to concentrate on a lot of things that were not matters of concentration before. When I even walk down the street I have to concentrate on virtually every step, keep track of where I am, think ahead to the next landmark or street corner and so forth. When I could see I could just walk down the street concentrating solely on what I was going to do when I got to my destination. Frankly, it would be really nice if I could go back to concentrating on what I want to concentrate on rather than what I have to concentrate on, but I have to put up with the situation I am in. Some people are more easily distracted than others. That is one reason why some people are better at learning something than others. Some people can sit in a classroom and look at the material on their desk and listen to the teacher and be absorbed by it. Others glance up at the window and find themselves thinking about what they see outside and completely miss the lesson in progress. A totally blind person may not have those distractions, but I am sure they do still have their distractions even if it is a matter of thinking ahead to what they are going to have for dinner. It takes self discipline to filter out the unimportant distractions and some people are successful at it and others are not. It can be annoying to be trying to engage someone and then realize that the person is not paying attention to you, but that is the way things go.
On 6/23/2012 12:02 PM, Sandi Ryan wrote:
Just one thought on this topic: Since one sighted person sees something different from another's perception, who is to say who sees "the whole picture" and who doesn't? You have a right, of course, to believe that sight is the way to "see" things as they are, and nothing else is as good. Having been blind all my life, I find that too many details just clutter up my brain. Do I want description? Yes, I do. It gives me a mental picture--valid or not--of what I'm reading about. Many authors do this extremely well without pictures--they do it in words. Those are the best descriptions, because they come directly from the author's mind. But do I need to know about missing hairs, dust motes, etc.? Only if it has value to the story. I've always felt a little lucky not to have to be distracted by everything people can see. Nothing annoys me more than standing somewhere having a conversation with a sighted person, who's purportedly paying attention to our conversation, and to have them suddenly yell out "Hey, Judy, I need to talk to you!" As a blind person, when I'm with you talking, I'm with you! In that way, I think blindness is better! Now, before you think I believe everyone should be blind, I'll tell you I do not. But I do think a lot of sighted people need to stop being distracted by every little thing they can see and learn to focus their vision, as I must focus my hearing, touch, smell and taste, to "see" not the whole world, but the important parts!There you have the opinion of a blind person. Sandi ----- Original Message ----- *From:* Roger Loran Bailey <mailto:rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx> *To:* bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> *Sent:* Saturday, June 23, 2012 10:22 AM *Subject:* [bksvol-discuss] Re: Awesome - 151,663 Titles on Bookshare When I was losing my eyesight I had numerous eye surgeries. On occasion I found myself in a hospital bed with my eyes bandaged and the nurses would come around. This blindness stuff was rather new to me, so I asked the nurses to describe themselves. Some of them went into very great detail and I formed mental images of them. Then the bandages would come off and I could see them and I saw that their descriptions were very accurate. However, none of them looked anything at all like I had them pictured. The simple fact is that if you have normal eyesight and you merely glance at something you, without even necessarily being consciously aware of it, take in an enormous amount of subtle detail. These details include very subtle grades of color, texture,minute features, a wayward hair, a dust mote levels of lighting, sources of lighting, background detail and so many other things that neither I nor anyone else can go into them. This is all in just a single glance, not even a careful study. Your description may be good, but it cannot possibly cover everything. There is just too much, including details that even though you are looking right at them you are not consciously aware of and that other people seeing the same thing may be aware of. I once met a blind woman who insisted that describing was just as good as seeing because she could describe someone well enough that you could pick them out in a crowd. She had never seen, though, and my disagreement with her was based on my previous experience as a sighted person. She still insisted though. I am sure that those nurses had described themselves well enough that I could have picked them out in a crowd too, but they still did not look anything like I had them pictured. Descriptions often have to do and some descriptions do better than other descriptions, but there is no way that a description will reproduce the picture. On 6/23/2012 2:11 AM, Cindy wrote:I must take issue with your comment that "no" words can cover all the detail in a picture that an eye can take in a single glance. It does,however, take a great many words. If you look at some of the early children's books for which I described pictures, you'll see they are very detailed--including the pictures on the walls, the furniture in rooms, the clothes the people wore, what the people looked like, what food was fallng from the sky, and more; I was so used to being very detailed in my picture descriptions that I kept on when I described the various photos and pictures in Medals of Honor; especially when it was pointed out that many blind people had no idea what the medal of Honor was or what some of the statues and locations that I identified looked It occurred to me, later that it was not necessary in adult books that I later proofed that I had to describe the illustrations; I could just identify them. When I began describing images for the Poet Project, I continued being detailed in my descriptions; check the descriptions in the the early pages of Glencoe Health book. Then I was told that the image descriptions should be *short* complete sentences; so I stopped describing what the person looked like and what he/she was wearing and the surroundings. I wish I could remember which history book the textile mill photo is in. That description took a great many words (and time) to describe. Cindy *From:* Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx> <mailto:rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx> *To:* bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> *Sent:* Friday, June 22, 2012 5:20 PM *Subject:* [bksvol-discuss] Re: Awesome - 151,663 Titles on Bookshare Actually, I think a picture is worth so many times a thousand words that the count is unimaginable. That is, no description can possibly cover all the detail in a picture that a single glance can take in. On 6/22/2012 6:05 PM, Chela Robles wrote: > And, you do know a picture is worth a thousand words, right? > > -- "Passion is a great motivator. Music is a life-long learning experience." > -- Chela Robles > Facebook/Linked-In/E-mail/AIM/GoogleTalk: cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxx> > Windows Live Messenger: cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxxxx> > E-Buddy ID: cdrobles693 > Skype: jazzytrumpet > Learning Ally Blog A Lady And Her Trumpet feel free to post comments by filling out the form on the page at: http://tinyurl.com/84tucwv > I volunteer for Bookshare, to find out more and to volunteer with us,visit: http://www.bookshare.org/ > Join us in celebrating our 10th Anniversary! > http://tinyurl.com/752cyrs > Need more space, come join dropbox and start with two gigs of free space as is this is my referral link to you: http://db.tt/XpUTe0E > -- > On 6/22/2012 3:00 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. >> The Tunnel is a more complicated case. >> (SPOILERS AHEAD! It doesn't matter since I can't think of anyone here [or anywhere, really] who would be interested in reading that book, but just in case...) >> It is about a college professor, called William Frederick Kohler, who is working on his hypothesis concerning the Germans, called Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany. he has almost completed it, save for the introduction, but cannot manage to write those final pages: >> "It was my intention, when I began, to write an introduction to my work on the Germans. Though its thick folders lie beside me now, I know I cannot. Endings, instead, possess me. all ways out. >> >> Embarrassed, I'm compelled to smile. I was going to extend my sympathy to my opponents. Here, in my introduction, raised above me like an arch of triumph, I meant to place a wreath upon myself. But each time I turned my pen to the task, it turned aside to strike me. >> >> As I look at the pages of my manuscript, or stare at the books which wall my study, I realize I must again attempt to put this prison of my life in language." >> >> He begins to write an extended meditation about his own life instead of the introduction to the book he thought he had to have. Around two hundred pages in, he also begins to dig a tunnel out of his basement, creating his own physical metaphor and giving the books title duel meanings. We, the readers, are tunnelling into his thoughts, he is tunnelling out of the life he hates, with the new book he is writing about himself he is tunnelling away from the hypothesis he can't finish. And all the tunnels lead to a dead end. (There's a point to this, I swear). Gass uses numerous graphical tricks to immerse you in the experience. Drawings, cartoons, at one point, a page that is made to look like a crinkled grocery sack, ETC. I haven't read the entire book yet, but one that stands out at me is the very last page. Kohler has created his own imaginary political group, called the party of the Disappointed People, yet he knows that this, like everything else, would be a failure because it's the type of party few would want to admit they've joined. At the end of the book, he is in ruins. His wife is leaving him, he has nearly been buried alive by his tunnel, he doesn't know what the point to both his books was: >> "Write no more propaganda for the PdP. Achieve dignity Sport a swatch of Shawwhite beard bleached to remove cig stains, and trimmed square to greet the face of its maker. In short, to abide. In the last hamlet of feeling. I'm inclined to say why not? Sure. Or dump every dirty drawer onto my desk--wasn't that really Martha's suggestion?--till the desk's hid, as well as Tabor's turning chair and the floor which firmed our feet, covering the pages of my History as my History sheeted me; there to let my words wait, like the disappointed people bide, before they try life again. Meanwhile carry on without complaining. No arm with armband raised on high. No more booming bands, no searchlit skies. Or shall I, like the rivers, rise? Ah. Well. Is rising wise? Revolver like the Führer near an ear. Or lay my mind down by sorrow's side." >> >> The final page simply contains the symbol for the PDP. I've likely mangled everything in my description, because I haven't read the entire book, I've never had to put my admiration for it into words like this, and there's so, so much more to it than what I've just described here, so the effect is always diminished if you haven't read the entire thing first, but to have gone through everything we have with Kohler for 651 pages, to have tunnelled with him, so to speak, and then to read his final declaration, followed by that reminder of his final failure...It's quite devistating. And I don't think I would have experienced the book in that manner if the images were not described. I don't even need an especially detailed description, though it helps, just something to signify what is on the page. And Bookshare staff and volunteers do both wonderfully. >> >> Tl;dr (too long; didn't read) version (since I think there might be one person who has read this entire message): >> I REALLY LIKE THE DESCRIPTIONS THEY'RE VERY HELPFUL AND MAKE THE BOOK-READING EXPERIENCE BETTER! >> >> On 22-Jun-12 15:40, Judy s. wrote: >>> I just looked at the new version of Bookshare's entry page on the website (http://www.bookshare.org <http://www.bookshare.org/>). I love the new feature on the right hand side of the page that's a counter of how many books are in the collection. As of today, there are 151,663 titles. That is totally awesome. >>> >>> As a sighted but disabled member, I'm also grateful for and thrilled by the number of publisher quality books that have entered the collection in the last 18 months with the original illustrations intact. I haven't read a book where I can look at the illustrations for over 20 years. Way to go, Bookshare! I'm psyched about the POET project to get illustrations described. It gives me hope that eventually everyone can have access to both illustrations and good descriptions of the illustrations in the future. >>> >>> Judy s. >>> To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to >>> bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> >>> put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. >>> >> To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to >> bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>> put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' byitself in the subject line. >> >> > > > To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to > bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' byitself in the subject line. > To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
