This is an article I read in the New York Times a couple of years ago about this topic. I went back and found it as it appears to be relevant to this whole theme. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/magazine/03Braille-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted= print This is a link to the printable version which is less cluttered than the regular page.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of alex wallis Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2012 12:03 PM To: [email protected] Subject: re: great iphone article Hi Raul, your message was quite interesting that you sent to the list, having said that, I must disagree with you about speech and audio meaning that people don't often capitalize sentences, or at least, I think maybe its a factor that makes people less likely to do it, but I think its also down to quality of education. I am not sure if you know this, but in the UK braille system, there is no official rule that says you must capitalize sentences and words using a dot six, or at least there wasn't when I was growing up. Having said that, I don't know if this is still correct as I believe when I finished education the powers that be were considering introducing this from the American braille code. Having said that, for most of my life up til the age of 12 I had little contact at all with computers, towards the end of primary school I did get the chance to use my first computer, a bbc micro and from then on my use of computers steadily increased to the point where braille is pretty much unused in my daily life. I am pretty good at capitalizing sentences, and words, though I must admit the spell check is very useful for this, and I do sometimes have to make a conscious effort when correcting messages before sending them to think about capitalizing certain words and sentences. But I always go through and check any e mail before sending it. What I think is a major factor in blind people being bad spellers is a combination of things, firstly the use of grade 2 Braille, I think that my learning this really impacted on my ability to spell correctly as I don't think I thought as much after learning it about how words should be spelled, and was thinking more about what contraction should be used where. The second thing I think that has impacted on the ability of blind people to spell is the use of spell check, as I don't know about anyone else, but normally when I use a spell check I don't stop to listen to the correct spelling always, though I do try to make an effort to do so when I have the time. Another area I am quite bad on is the use of punctuation and paragraphs, I find it quite hard knowing when to place punctuation, so I probably use far two much of it, and paragraphs I admit I hardly use unless I really think about it or someone checks something I have written and reminds me about them. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en.
