There's no such thing as a "one-size-fits-all" product and I think it's a
mistake to compare notetakers designed for the blind with netbooks designed
for the sighted. We have a unique need the sighted people don't. We use
braille as our medium for reading and writing. The majority of the people
on this list prefer using a Perkins style keyboard for writing. They want
to read in braille. They need to be able to translate braille into print so
they can either print hard copy for the sighted people to read or convert
the braille into a text format to be used with a PC and shared with sighted
people who have PC's but don't read braille. Blind people need an
environment which is user-friendly to them taking advantage of hearing and
touch instead of sight. Everyone knows that notetakers with braille output
are very expensive because of the hardware needed to make the braille dots.
Translation software adds to the price and the notetakers must have the best
translation software they can accommodate. It takes time and money to make
good notetakers.
Notetakers for the blind have made us more efficient. Before the days of
computers and notetakers, we used braillers and slates to write braille, but
we could only communicate with each other, not with the sighted. If we
wanted a sighted person, like a teacher, to be able to read what we have
brailled, we had to manually type each word on a standard typewriter. Some
smart souls, (not me), could compose and type documents without first
brailling a copy, but they had no feedback about what they were typing and
if they were interrupted, they would have to ask a sighted person to read
what they had typed and they couldn't proofread or spellcheck their own
typed documents.
In the old days, we had to lug around bulky braille volumes. We could never
take an entire book with us. We couldn't "mark up" the book. We couldn't
read any text document unless it had been transcribed into braille. We
couldn't edit our braille documents, add new text, cut and paste, etc.
Creating braille schedulers took time and lots of paper or those lousy
little index cards. Math was a nightmare, foreign languages were a
challenge.
Notetakers for the blind with calculators, address books and schedulers have
made all of these things easier. We can take along entire books, we can
"mark them up", we can edit our writing, we can even share text with sighted
people by email cf or sd card, or visual display. We can, with some
notetakers, read and write foreign languages. (I hope the Sense products
will support this soon.) We can calculate problems without using a
brailler. We can create schedulers and address books without using reams of
paper.
Because of our unique needs, it's unreasonable to expect one thing, the
notetakers, to be our only tool. It's just as unreasonable to expect a PC
to be our only tool. A PC cannot replace a notetaker and a notetaker can't
replace a PC. Why? PC's aren't designed to do what the notetakers for the
blind can do. Notetakers aren't designed to do what PC's can do.
We should expect improvements: a word processor with more formatting
capabilities, a calculator that supports fractions, faster processor, more
memory, the ability to connect to the internet using Comcast or another
cable network, and so on.
Terri Amateur Radio call sign KF6CA.
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