[bksvol-discuss] Re: Visual Perception was Awesome - 151,663 Titles on Bookshare
- From: "Lori Castner" <loralee.castner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2012 10:25:28 -0700
Roger, I find your comments in this thread to be extremely intriguing and
thought-provoking.
I have been blind all my life and I always enjoy knowing how eyes perceive
the world!
Could go on and on about this topic, but this probably is not the place to
do so! So I?ll go away and ponder.
Lori C.
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2012 9:45 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Awesome - 151,663 Titles on Bookshare
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
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 <mailto:rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
<rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
To: 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
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> 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.
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