Hi I think we had a very long discussion on this an year ago.
Personally, I'm not able to read and write only for the past 2 or 3 years. Hence I haven't learnt Braille yet. But since I started relying on Jaws for reading, I for got the spellings of many words. So, I think that's the main advantage Braille has over screen readers. But the main advantage of screen readers over Braille is speed at which we can read. I set the reading speed of Kurzweil at 300 words per minute which helps me to cover good ground while reading. I doubt how helpful Braille would be in this. I think organisations shouldn't encourage Braille only for the sake of it's existence. If screen readers are really advantageous over Braille to blind people, it's better to let Braille extinct and become a script in history. I'm sorry if this hurts any Braille lovers, but what I mean is that we should not rub something on someone when there something more useful than it. -- G. Vamshi PH Res : +91 877-2243861 Mobile: +91 9949349497 E-mail ID: [email protected] Skype: gvamshi81 God helps those who help themselves On 1/19/10, Suman Kumar Bhokray <[email protected]> wrote: > hi sir > my self i dont know brail > i dont thing that its going to help us a lot > in my point of viue if i take some thing on brail only i can understand it > no one with site can read it > it was inportement in those days when computers and other devises r not > accessbal > but now its very esey to handel this things > we should take it for granted that computers and other accessbal devises r > the only things witch helps a blind to interact with peabl have hearing > problum i meen deff > any ways its my feeling only > > Suman Kumar Bhokray > mobile: +91 9912746392 > US number: +1 3608122369 > skype: sbhokray > windows live: [email protected] > yahoo: sumankumarbhokray > Gtalk: [email protected] > sip phone: [email protected] > gizmo: sbhokray > orkut: [email protected] > face book: [email protected] > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Subramani L" <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 4:59 PM > Subject: Re: [AI] For the Blind, digital misgivings > > >> Sorry for raking up an old discussion. I have certain questions which I >> thought I can put across to the group for consideration. >> >> First of all, despite agreeing to the view that Braille is the most >> important aspect of communication for the blind (particularly for >> reading and writing), should we regard Braille as something sacred? My >> appologies if this question sounds politically incorrect, but my >> objective in asking this question is to know if we are failing to accept >> the fact that Braille is indeed losing its relevance today or at least >> is trying to rediscover its relevance. >> >> Another seeming anomaly in our approach is that besides insisting on >> Braille's importance, we don't seem to do anything to actively promote >> Braille. I don't know if surveys are done in this regard, but if we were >> to do a survey amongst the 20 and below age group (blind persons) today, >> surely the number of them who are proficiency in Braille will be very >> less. >> >> So, instead of regarding Braille as something sacred, we need to >> understand that its role in the coming decades will be reduced as >> technology starts to replace it in many aspects of a blind person's >> life. It is after all a vehicle of communication and not a monumental >> edifice. >> >> What do you folks think? >> >> Subramani >> >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] >> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Vetrivel >> Adhimoolam >> Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 2:15 PM >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: [AI] For the Blind, digital misgivings >> >> It is an excellent article except that it fails to mention the attitude >> of >> western world in general and the United States in particular towards >> brail >> literacy which considers teaching brail to visually challenged students >> is >> undesirable. No wonder, 90% of the American visually challenged lack the >> >> ability to read and write in brail. This attitude does get tied to the >> general tendency of considering brail script as hierarchically inferior >> to >> the normal script. Just to illustrate this, I met people at the NFB >> convention who were forced to learn normal script despite the fact that >> their vision was not enough to retain it. In fact it was so bad that >> many >> actually ended-up loosing little vision they had because of the constant >> >> exposure to CC TV and other similar tools. >> >> Vetri. >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "SC Vashishth" <[email protected]> >> To: <[email protected]> >> Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 3:09 AM >> Subject: [AI] For the Blind, digital misgivings >> >> >> FYI from mydigitalfc >> For the blind, digital misgivings >> >> By RACHEL AVIV Jan 03 2010 >> At 4 o'clock each morning, Laura J. Sloate begins her daily reading. She >> calls a phone service that reads newspapers aloud in a synthetic voice, >> and >> she listens to The Wall Street Journal at 300 words a minute, which is >> nearly twice the average pace of speech. Later, an assistant reads The >> Financial Times to her while she uses her computer's text-tospeech >> system to >> play The Economist aloud. She devotes one ear to the paper and the other >> to >> the magazine. >> >> The managing director of a Wall Street investment management firm, Ms. >> Sloate has been blind since age 6, and although she reads constantly, >> poring >> over the news and economic reports for several hours every morning, she >> does >> not use Braille. ''Knowledge goes from my ears to my brain, not from my >> finger to my brain,'' she said. As a child she learned how the letters >> of >> the alphabet sounded, not how they appeared or felt on the page. She >> does >> not think of a comma in terms of its written form but rather as ''a stop >> on >> the way before continuing.'' This, she said, is the future of reading >> for >> the blind. >> >> ''Literacy evolves,'' she said. ''When Braille was invented, in the 19th >> century, we had nothing else. We didn't even have radio. At that time, >> blindness was a disability. Now it's just a minor, minor impairment.'' >> Ms. >> Sloate regrets not having spent more time learning to spell in her >> youth, >> but she said she thinks that using Braille would only have isolated her >> from >> her sighted peers. ''It's an arcane means of communication, which for >> the >> most part should be abolished,'' she said. ''It's just not needed >> today.'' >> Braille books are expensive and cumbersome, requiring reams of thick, >> oversize paper. The National Braille Press, an 83-year-old publishing >> house >> in Boston, printed the Harry Potter series on its Heidelberg cylinder; >> the >> final product was 56 volumes, each nearly a foot, or 30 centimeters, >> tall. >> Because a single textbook can cost more than $1,000 and there is a >> shortage >> of Braille teachers in public schools, visually impaired students often >> read >> using MP3 players, audiobooks and computerscreen- reading software. >> >> A report released last year by the National Federation of the Blind, an >> advocacy group with 50,000 members, said that fewer than 10 percent of >> the >> 1.3 million legally blind Americans read Braille. About half of all >> blind >> children learned Braille in the 1950s, but today that number is as low >> as 1 >> in 10, according to the report. >> >> For much of the past century, blind children attended residential >> institutions where they learned to read by touching the words. Today, >> visually impaired children can be well versed in literature without >> knowing >> howto read; computerscreen- reading software will even break down each >> word >> and read the individual letters aloud. Literacy has become much harder >> to >> define, even for educators. >> >> ''If all you have in the world is what you hear people say, then your >> mind >> is limited,'' said Darrell Shandrow, who runs a blog called Blind Access >> Journal. >> >> ''You need written symbols to organize your mind. If you can't feel or >> see >> the word, what does it mean? The substance is gone.'' Like many Braille >> readers, Mr. Shandrow says that new computers, which form a single line >> of >> Braille cells at a time, will revive the code of bumps, but these >> devices >> are still extremely costly and not yet widely used. He views the decline >> in >> Braille literacy as a sign of regression, not progress. >> >> ''This is like going back to the 1400s, before Gutenberg's printing >> press >> came on the scene,'' he said. ''Only the scholars and monks knew how to >> read >> and write. And then there were the illiterate masses, the peasants.'' >> Until >> the 19th century, blind people were confined to an oral culture. Some >> tried >> to read letters carved in wood or wax, formed by wire or outlined in >> felt >> with pins. Dissatisfied with such makeshift methods, Louis Braille, a >> student at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, began studying >> a >> cipher language of bumps, called night writing, developed by a French >> Army >> officer so soldiers could send messages in the dark. >> >> Braille modified the code so that it could be read more efficiently - >> each >> letter or punctuation symbol is represented by a pattern of one to six >> dots >> on amatrix of three rows and two columns - and added abbreviations for >> commonly used words like ''knowledge,'' ''people'' and ''Lord.'' >> Learning to >> read is so entwined in the normal course of children's development that >> it >> is easy to assume that our brains are naturally wired for print >> literacy. >> >> But humans have been reading for less than 6,000 years and literacy has >> been >> widespread for no more than a century and a half. The activity of >> reading >> itself alters the anatomy of the brain. >> >> In a report released in 2009 in the journal Nature, the neuroscientist >> Manuel Carreiras studied illiterate former guerrillas in Colombia who, >> after >> years of combat, had abandoned their weapons, left the jungle and >> rejoined >> civilization. >> >> Mr. Carreiras compared 20 adults who had recently completed a literacy >> program with 22 people who had not yet begun it. >> >> In M.R.I. scans of their brains, the newly literate subjects showed more >> gray matter in their angular gyri, an area crucial for language >> processing, >> and more white matter in part of the corpus callosum, which links the >> two >> hemispheres. >> >> Our definition of a literate society inevitably shifts as our tools for >> reading and writing evolve, but the brief history of literacy for blind >> people makes the prospect of change particularly fraught. >> >> Since the 1820s when the Braille system was invented - so that blind >> people >> would no longer be ''despised or patronized by condescending sighted >> people,'' as the inventor put it - there has always been, among blind >> people, a political and even moral dimension to learning to read. >> Braille is >> viewed by many as a mark of independence, a sign that blind people have >> moved away from an oral culture seen as primitive and isolating. >> >> In recent years, however, this narrative has been complicated. >> Schoolchildren in developed countries, like the United States and >> Britain, >> are now thought to have lower Braille literacy than those in developing >> ones, like Indonesia and Botswana, where there are few alternatives to >> Braille. Tim Connell, the managing director of an assistivetechnology >> company in Australia, said that he had heard this described as ''one of >> the >> advantages of being poor.'' Braille readers do not deny that new reading >> technology has been transformative, but Braille looms so large in the >> mythology of blindness that it has assumed a kind of talismanic status. >> >> Those who have residual vision and still try to read print - very slowly >> or >> by holding the page an inch or two from their faces - are generally >> frowned >> upon by the National Federation of the Blind, which fashions itself as >> the >> leader of a civil rights movement for the blind. >> >> Its president, Marc Maurer, a voracious reader, compares Louis Braille >> with >> Abraham Lincoln. At the annual convention for the federation, held in >> Detroit last July, the mantra of ''listening is not literacy'' was >> repeated >> everywhere, from panels on the Braille crisis to conversations among >> middle-school girls. Horror stories circulating around the convention >> featured children who did not know what a paragraph was or why some >> letters >> are capitalized or that ''happily ever after'' was made up of three >> separate >> words. >> >> Declaring your own illiteracy seemed to be a rite of passage. A vice >> president of the federation, Fredric Schroeder, served as commissioner >> of >> the Rehabilitation Services Administration under President Bill Clinton >> and >> relies primarily on audio technologies. He was openly repentant about >> his >> lack of reading skills. >> >> ''I am now over 50 years old, and it wasn't until two months ago that I >> realized that 'dissent,' to disagree, is different than 'descent,' to >> lower >> something,'' he said. ''I'm functionally illiterate. >> >> People say, 'Oh, no, you're not.' Yes, I am. I'm sorry about it, but I'm >> not >> embarrassed to admit it.'' While people like Laura Sloate or the >> governor of >> New York, David A. Paterson, who also reads by listening, may be able to >> achieve without the help of Braille, their success requires >> accommodations >> that many cannot afford. >> >> Like Ms. Sloate, Mr. Paterson dictates his memos, and his staff members >> select pertinent newspaper articles for him and read them aloud on his >> voice >> mail every morning. >> >> Mr. Paterson called himself ''overassimilated'' and said that as a >> child, he >> had been ''mainstreamed so much that I psychologically got the message >> that >> I'm not really supposed to be blind.'' Among people with fewer >> resources, >> Braille readers tend to form the blind elite, in part because it is more >> plausible for a blind person to find work doing intellectual rather than >> manual labor. >> >> A 1996 study showed that of a sample of visually impaired adults, those >> who >> learned Braille as children were more than twice as likely to be >> employed as >> those who had not. At the convention this statistic was frequently cited >> with pride, so much so that those who did not know Braille were >> sometimes >> made to feel like outsiders. >> >> ''There is definitely a sense of peer pressure from the older guard,'' >> said >> James Brown, a 35-year-old who reads using text-to-speech software. ''If >> we >> could live in our own little Braille world, then that'd be perfect,'' he >> added. ''But we live in a visual world.'' When deaf people began getting >> cochlear implants in the late 1980s, many in the deaf community felt >> betrayed. The new technology pushed people to think of the disability in >> a >> new way - as an identity and a culture. Technology has changed the >> nature of >> many disabilities, lifting the burdens but also complicating people's >> sense >> of what is physically natural, because bodies can so often be tweaked >> until >> ''fixed.'' Arielle Silverman, a graduate student at the convention who >> has >> been blind since birth, said that if she had the choice to have vision, >> she >> was not sure she would take it. Recently she purchased a pocket-size >> reading >> machine that takes photographs of text and then reads the words aloud, >> and >> she said she thought of vision like that, as ''just another piece of >> technology.'' The modern history of blind people is in many ways a >> history >> of reading, with the scope of the disability - the extent to which you >> are >> viewed as ignorant or civilized, helpless or independent-determined >> largely >> by your ability to gain access to the printed word. For 150 years, >> Braille >> books were designed to function as much as possible like print books. >> >> But now the computer has essentially done away with the limits of form, >> because information, once it has been digitized, can be conveyed through >> sound or touch. >> >> For sighted people, the transition from print to digital text has been >> relatively subtle, but for many blind people, the shift to computerized >> speech is an unwelcome and uncharted experiment. >> >> In grappling with what has been lost, several federation members recite >> various takes on the classic expression Scripta manent, verba volant: >> What >> is written remains, what is spoken vanishes into air. >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Warm regards, >> >> Subhash Chandra Vashishth >> Mobile: +91 (11) 9811125521 >> Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. Consider >> environment! >> >> >> To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] >> with >> the subject unsubscribe. >> >> To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, >> please >> visit the list home page at >> >> http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.i >> n >> >> >> >> >> To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] >> with the subject unsubscribe. >> >> To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, >> please visit the list home page at >> >> http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.i >> n >> >> Email secured by TPML Electronics >> >> >> >> To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] >> with the subject unsubscribe. >> >> To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, >> please visit the list home page at >> http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in >> > > > > > To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with > the subject unsubscribe. > > To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please > visit the list home page at > http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in > To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
