Agreed. But I connect to Comcast via wired LAN all the time with the BS
Plus.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Terri Pannett" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2010 10:09 AM
Subject: Re: [GWN] frustrations about the Sense products
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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