Well, by saying what you have to say on this list you are part of a community of mostly blind people saying what is good for the blind and the sighted people on the list certainly can read what we blind people have to say. As for myself, I can see what you mean. Hearing my screen reader say star star star too frequently can be annoying, but the very annoyance can also cause it to perform its function. I think we all have a problem with minor attention drift. Just a word or phrase in a book can remind you of something and off you go thinking about it instead of what you are trying to concentrate on. For the most part that attention drift is only very momentary and you don't miss much, but if it happens at the wrong place then the very little that you miss can be very important. A little bit of annoyance can jolt your attention back and just before a block of footnotes can be a good place to have it jolted back. On the other hand, we are using stars to denote blank spaces too. It might not be real apparent all the time that it means that you have reached the footnotes if the footnotes are in narrative form instead of those abbreviations that are usually used tor reference footnotes. I would say that the word footnotes in brackets is pretty unambiguous. There is another place where that would be more helpful though. Since the footnotes are numbered and the beginning of a page is also numbered and since the beginning of a page comes right after the footnotes it might not be all that easy all the time to distinguish between a footnote and a page number. Imagine that the last footnote is numbered 19 and then the next page is numbered 20. How can you be sure that you have gone to another page unless you have been very careful to keep track of all footnotes on the page? In a case like that the words end of footnotes in brackets at the end of the footnotes would be very helpful. I think that Deborah's method would do just as well though. If each footnote number is preceded by an asterisk then it would be pretty easy to tell the difference between that and a number that is not preceded by an asterisk. It would still be helpful to have some kind of indication that the footnotes are beginning though. I think the word footnote in brackets would do and it would be pretty hard to confuse that with the three asterisks that indicate a blank line. I think it might not be a bad idea to have both though. After all, when the footnotes appear at the bottom of a page isn't it customary to have a blank line between the text and the footnotes? If asterisks are used to indicate a blank line then that would be just continuing the practice.
On 7/18/2012 12:13 AM, Dornetta wrote:
Hey guys, Recently (this past spring semester) I had to download The Norton Anthology of American Literature shorter 7th ed. by Nina Baym for my American Literature English class in which the book had tons of footnotes and I do mean tons. From a reader prospective, I found those square brackets necessary. Now keep in mind that I most often read the book straight from the computer opting not to use the stream or Packmate (which I don't use often anyway) simply because it made navigation much easier as well as I could "see" the form of the work...end of the line for poems and the like. With that being said, those square brackets made knowing where actual text ended and "the footnotes" begin. It is not that obvious when reading text. I often find it more annoying when JAWS says star, star,star,star. Rather than open brack text the close bracket. Yes, the square brackets are more often used when a author has altered the text during a direct quote, for example, "After the notes is generally the end of the page and it seems fairly obvious [not so obvious] where the end of the page is and a new one begins." --this may have not been an good example but hopefully you get my point. This is not always an obvious situation--where the page ends and another one begins as I have stated this in an earlier email (page numbers, I think). Like I said, using those brackets with the word-begin footnotes and end footnotes seems to be the better choice then again, what do I know. When changes like these are made it seems that the blind community is never asked or given the choice. Most changes that are made for the "benefit of the blind" are usually made by sighted people who know what's best for us. **venting** Netta "Just because you are blind does not mean you lack vision"-Stevie Wonder To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to 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.
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