Hi Tom.
Up until recently I would've fully agreed with you that despite advances in
computer technology, the instant access braille provides for lables and
other bits of information is absolutely irriplaceable. However, the
penfriend has largely for me replaced the function braille used to perform,
sinse all I need to do is stick a sticker on something, touch the penfriend
to it hit record and speak, which is actually far easier than writing,
cutting and correctly sticking a braille lable on something, and in terms of
cost, the penfriend machine itself cost less than a brailler and it's lables
are less expensive. It also takes far less time and can be done with a none
braillist, indeed I paid my research assistant for an hour's work and got my
entire unlabled dvd and cd collections done, ---- including all 7 seasons of
star trek voyager and several rather large box sets.
Undoubtedly, the penfriend labeling system isn't perfect. You can't for
instance avoid it speaking out the lable it reads, which would make playing
cards with it say pretty difficult, but I'm fairly certain a version with
headphones is just around the corner, also a version with different levels
of tactile labeling so that you could mark squares on a board for basic
layout and use the penfriend for specific square reading.
of course, if braille technology can catch up, then this situation might
change. For instance, the current braille display designs of about a line of
text represented by motorized pins are pretty much the same as they were
when first developed in the mid nineties. A few years ago however, I did
discuss with several engineers of specialist tech (it was at the Uk vi tech
sexhibition site village), the possibility of the developement of a plastic
which would tense when an electric current ran through it.
A sheet of this could be used with correct internal programming to create an
A 4 sized tactile display comparatively cheaply. under those! circumstances,
with large, relatively cheap displays able to show an a full screen of
infomation in tactile form i could see braille very muh making a come back,
sinse then any and all spacial information woule equally available to a vi
computer user, and in a far more efficient method than with a screen reader.
Imagine playing chess on a computer with a real tactile board, or better
still, having a game like time of conflict where you could run your hands
over aa dynamic map overview and read the identity of labled units as they
moved around.
That sort of developement would be a total change, and not just in games,
sinse graphs, tables, pie charts, tree diagrams and other forms of spacial
representative data would be just as accessible to a vlind user, which would
have great applications for business, science, and goodness knows what else.
Failing this sort of developement in technology though, I can see braille
being made completely obsolete in the next 20 years or so, sinse with the
rise of scanning and coding technology like the penfriend, even it's
essentially fast labeling functions will soon be things which can be done
far more easily via electronics.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
---
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