[bookport] Re: THANK YOU GUYS!
- From: DanFlasar@xxxxxxx
- To: bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 14:15:56 EST
In a message dated 12/22/2005 11:52:41 A.M. Central Standard Time,
ring.richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
shouldn't escape blame, but the problem was there long before and has
only
> been exacerbated. Witness the replacement of clearly worded statements
with
> these mindlessly stupid symbols like a cigarette with a slash through
it to
> indicate and replace "No smoking."
>
Clearly worded statements? Okay, how about these?
Kein rauchen.
No fumar
all of which mean "no smoking". The circle witht he line through it to
indicate prohibition of the activity pictured within was developed in Europe
because there are a lot of people, all of whom speak different languages,
might
stop in a restaurant in the Czech Republic and, not speaking Czech, wouldn't
understand whatever No Smoking in Czech would be, but they would understand
the symbol.
This leads me to ask about universal 'symbols' in braille. As I
understand it, braille is an encoding system used to translate alphabetic,
numeric
and punctuation marks into an alternate, tactile code. Hence, there doesn't
seem to be a correlative international system for blind folks. Thus you
would use a braille variant to write in German (with extra characters for an
umlauted vowel) or French (for vowels with accent grav) or other diacritical
marks.
This leads me to ask, what about non-alphabetic languages like Chinese?
Are there braille variants that can translate Chinese characters into
braille?
Off topic, to be sure, so I'll bring it back.
I concur that most webpages are "too visual", but it has a lot to do
with advertising and design. Ads try to grab your attention immediately and
they do this via colors, flashing, flash movies, size, font and so on. I
have
little central vision and I have to say, most websites drive me crazy.
Some sites are now doing things like throwing up a full screen flash ad when
youc lick on a link to read, for example, some CD info.
Dan
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