That’s fine as long as you are not writing for publication. Andy
From: Brett Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2015 1:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Replacing Braille Notetaker with iDevice I personally don’t use UEB. I find it faster to read and write in contracted braille than in UEB and since the only time I read Braille these days is either with my computer or iPhone, I don’t really see any reason for me to use UEB when its slower and I am able to pick the type of output I want anyway. I don’t read Braille books these days, plus its too hard to get anything I would actually want to read in Braille in a paper format these days. Just my thoughts. Cheers, Brett. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Joe Quinn Sent: Sunday, 21 June 2015 11:29 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Replacing Braille Notetaker with iDevice It does. I've almost been thinking of going back to the regular English braille instead of UEB just because it takes up less room. I hope Apple doesn't take out that option. Though they may, considering that everyone has switched to it by the time IOS 9 comes out. Sent from my iPhone On Jun 20, 2015, at 4:04 PM, Alex Hall <[email protected]> wrote: Agreed; contracted braille is really important to me when I have to read it. It's faster and, vitally in today's market of tiny cell counts, more fits on one line. The OP asked specifically about 32-cell units, and if you think about it, even those are quite small compared to what a sighted person can see on an iPhone's screen. The more that can fit, the better. I love UEB for removing the ambiguities, but the trade-off is that it takes up more room, especially as you start using it for math or science. On Jun 20, 2015, at 4:32 PM, Jonathan Mosen <[email protected]> wrote: Hi David. I think this is a separate issue from what we are discussing. I disagree with you because as someone who must read a lot for public presentations and audio production work, I find contracted Braille helps me process information much more quickly than uncontracted Braille. That's important for fluency. But it's an interesting discussion. UEB has significantly reduced translation ambiguities. In the end though, this is a decision for blind people to make. Braille belongs to us. We should not be forced to alter our practices due to a single company's inability or unwillingness to get their Braille implementation right. Jonathan Mosen Mosen Consulting Blindness technology eBooks, tutorials and training http://Mosen.org On 20/06/2015, at 9:35 pm, David Chittenden <[email protected]> wrote: Jonathan, I respectfully disagree with you about braille. Contracted braille is like print shorthand. It became mainstream because braille is so large on paper, so it was developed to drastically reduce the footprint of braille. Now that we have electronic braille, we should be learning and teaching computer braille rather than noncontracted and contracted literary braille. This would give us blind people parity with sighted people. We would not need to rely, in any way, on contracted braille translators which cause much complications with computer interfaces. A few years ago, the AFB published a study where some blind children were taught using computer braille. There was no difference in learning or information retention between those children and children who are taught using contracted literary braille. David Chittenden, MSc, MRCAA Email: [email protected] Mobile: +64 21 2288 288 Sent from my iPhone On 20 Jun 2015, at 17:31, Jonathan Mosen <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Joe, I want to address your question about Braille input in iOS. In my view it is not fit for purpose. I don't know what it is about Braille input Apple doesn't get, whether the blind people they consult with about these things aren't Braille users, or what the deal is. They have the financial and technical resources to fix the issues if they were of a mind to, but sadly it appears we are going to see another major release of iOS without appropriately robust Braille input being available. As you know, some manufacturers have chosen to do Apple's work for them, and work around the woeful Braille input in iOS by keeping text in a buffer, then sending it to iOS all at once. I guess this is a pragmatic response, but it also let's Apple off the hook. Apple is a mainstream technology company, but they have also made the choice to be a screen reader company, and I don't believe they should be held to any lesser standard than any other screen reader company. They are receiving awards and praise and I don't begrudge them any of it. It is well deserved. But those of us who are passionate about not just the spread of Braille, but the very survival of Braille, need to stand up and be counted. There's no doubt that notetaker products can no longer keep up with the phrenetic pace of technology, if they ever really could. So just in terms of the range of things that can be done, getting an iThing is probably a better bet than a notetaker. And some adults may well be confident enough in their Braille skills to work around the shortcomings in Apple's Braille input. What really concerns me though is the kids, and in this case I believe notetakers will have a place unless and until Apple get it together when it comes to Braille input. I am pasting below a blog post I wrote a couple of years ago called "The Apple Braille Crisis, it's got to be fixed for the kids". While some minor changes were made in iOS 8, it is mostly still relevant. Here it is. People from all walks of life, not just blind people, can get extremely partisan about their technology preferences. Anything their team does is unquestionably wonderful, while anything another company does is rubbish, simply by virtue of the fact that it’s the other guys who did it. If you criticise the company such people support, you’ve committed heresy. As blind people, I don’t believe we have the luxury of being so childish. Unemployment is high. Misconceptions abound regarding how capable we can be in the workplace, and in society as a whole. We need to be open to all solutions, and where possible, use the best mix of technology we can to be as productive, functional and self-reliant as we can. To be clear, I have enormous admiration for the way Apple has changed the game in assistive technology. When they released VoiceOver in 2009, I was concerned that Apple might do just enough to get people off its back regarding the inaccessibility of the iPhone. But that has not been the case. With every release, Apple has added tangible enhancements such as alternative forms of input, innovative ways for us to use the camera, and so much more. So Apple’s commitment to accessibility is real, its ongoing, and it has earned enormous praise and respect. Is there a “but” coming? Yes, there is, actually., because being grateful for a product doesn’t mean we don’t have rights as paying consumers to point out where a product falls short. But more than that, if Apple’s innovations risk killing off a category of product, and the literacy of our kids is threatened, we have a moral obligation to speak up constructively and ask Apple to engage with us as a community about fixing the issue. The Internet is buzzing with reports of bugs in iOS 7. I’m not unduly concerned about most of these, because I believe the majority of them will come out in the wash. iOS 7 was a massive refactoring of the OS. I hope that there’ll be fixes released steadily across the coming year. However, I am deeply troubled by Apple’s ongoing apparent failure to understand what constitutes Braille support of an appropriate quality. We’re not talking bugs in this case, we’re talking a fundamental user interface failure – a feature not fully fit for purpose. Since Braille was introduced in iOS, it has supported contracted Braille in English markets. This is a means by which space is saved, and speed increased, by using a series of symbols and abbreviations. When one reads contracted Braille in iOS, it works quite well. When one writes it, it is the worst implementation of contracted input I’ve ever used on any device. Since its inception, if you input a letter in contracted Braille which would be the abbreviation for a word if surrounded by spaces, iOS expands the word it represents if you pause for a short time before inputting the next character. For example, write “p” and it will quickly be expanded to the word “people”. If you are proofing a document you’ve brailled and wish to insert a letter in the middle of a word, you must preface the letter with a letter sign, dots 5-6, to prevent it from being expanded. This is not in accordance with the Braille code and is simply wrong. Apple must surely know about this poor implementation. It’s been talked about in many forums, including an excellent presentation by Judy Dixon at the CSUN Technology Conference on Persons with Disabilities. I, and I’m sure others, have also raised it. It’s also evident that Apple knows about the issues, because to its credit, it appears to at least have made an effort to try and fix the problem in iOS 7. It now offers an “Automatic Braille Translation” toggle. This feature is so below par compared with most of the design of all other VoiceOver features, that it must surely be the case that Apple is getting no advice, or poor advice, from anyone actually using Braille in their daily life. When you toggle “Automatic Braille Translation” off, you can take as long as you wish when inputting characters, and they’re not back-translated. Isn’t that what we want? Well yes, it would appear to be a step in the right direction. Except when you use it, you find that Braille is not readable on the display until you either press the space bar, or dots 4-5-cord. Why Apple believes this is acceptable, I have no idea. Can you imagine a sighted person finding it acceptable in any other scenario other than password entry, to not be able to look at what they’re entering until they press “Space”? But it’s worse than that. If you backspace over what you’ve typed, you run into back-translation issues similar to those experienced when automatic translation is set to on. Additionally, having to press dots 4-5-cord after inserting a letter in the middle of a word is counterintuitive, and again, an implementation far more primitive than anything else that offers contracted input. Apple seems to have implemented a pretty crude buffer, that is simply dumped when you type one of two commands to empty it. That is not a solution. The Braille implementation in iOS does not meet the “it’s intuitive and it just works” test that has been the hallmark of Apple products including VoiceOver. Now if it were just about us as Braille reading adults, I wouldn’t bother writing this post. It would get on my nerves, but I’d continue to work around it and just put it down to a bizarre, less than optimal implementation. I’m not writing this for me. I’m not asking blind people, and the world’s consumer organisations, to come together on this for me or people like me. I’m writing this for the kids. It’s the kids who matter. If you’re a Braille user, you’ll have seen the implementation of Nemeth in iOS 7. It’s there because Apple’s going after the education market, particularly in the US. Good for Apple. I can see enormous benefit in a kid being given an iPad and a Braille display for use at home and in school. Don’t underestimate how mainstream tech can be a great way to help blind kids blend in with sighted kids. Parents feel more empowered, because the iPad is technology they know and understand, so when the child gets in trouble at home, they can help out. Classroom teachers in mainstream schools know what an iPad is as well and feel similarly empowered. But all of these benefits have to be secondary considerations to the one that matters above all else, – equipping our kids with good Braille literacy skills. Braille is their ticket to higher education. Braille offers a greater chance of gainful employment. Braille is absolutely critical, and Braille is not to be trifled with. Half-baked Braille solutions are not appropriate for our kids when there’s a crisis in getting Braille instruction to them already. We should not expect our kids to have to learn to work-around Apple’s poor implementation, we should expect Apple to fix its Braille. For the last 20 years or so, blind kids have increasingly used proprietary notetaker technology. I’ve no problem whatsoever with technology moving on, and a category of product becoming obsolete. I love the idea of investing in a good Braille display that will last you for years, and upgrading the technology that drives the display on a more regular basis. But that technology has to do the Braille properly. There are cost savings to be made by cash-strapped agencies who purchase equipment for blind children, and that’s also why I’m writing this post. I can see bean-counters concluding that the combination of an iPad and a Braille display is a good solution for kids now. Many of these purchasers are not Braille users themselves, and I believe we have a duty of care to our kids to spread the word that Apple is not there yet. It is trying, and should be applauded for doing so, but still, it’s not there. You will remember the huge backlash caused by the initial release of Apple Maps in iOS 6. In terms of fitness for purpose, Apple Maps was far superior at release than Braille is now. The only difference is that Braille affects a tiny fraction of Apple’s user-base, not hundreds of millions of people. Lest anyone think I’m whining without a solution, I actually know a lot about this subject, having worked as a product manager with a range of products that use contracted Braille. I have a good feel for where Apple has got it wrong and what it might do to fix it, while not of course being familiar with the VoiceOver code. But I am absolutely confident that it’s fixable. Let’s not forget, Apple invented a way for blind people to make effective use of touch screens. Apple gave us unimagined access to taking photos. It is certainly not beyond Apple to look at best practice and figure this one out, because unlike some of the other things it’s done, the solutions already exist. If this poor-quality support had been offered to us by an assistive technology company, we’d have jumped all over it long before now. But given that Apple develops screen readers, that makes it both a mainstream technology company, and an assistive technology company. We should hold it to no less a standard. Having outlined the problem, here’s what I think needs to happen. Typically, I’d suggest that Apple needs to engage with the community with a view to fixing these issues for the sake of our kids, but that’s not really been its style. It is secretive by nature. In that case then, it needs to buy the expertise to make Braille truly viable in the education market. As Braille readers, we need to politely articulate the problems to Apple, and let Apple know we consider it important that they are fixed. Consumer organisations should do what they’ve done so many times before, and focus on their unity when it comes to Braille issues. A broad-coalition of consumers, educators and parents needs to ensure this issue is not allowed to drop. And finally, no one in charge of any purse strings should consider it an appropriate solution to give a kid an iPad in the classroom if they’re a Braille user. If purchasers want to move away from the blindness notetaker, and I get that, a laptop and Braille display is a far better solution in terms of Braille reliability and consistency. I’ll be the first to cheer loudly, and sing Apple’s praises, if it fixes its Braille. And I’ll continue to praise all it has done right, which I often do in media interviews and blindness tech forums. But please, for the sake of the kids, lets do what we need to do to advocate for good quality Braille on Apple devices. We have a duty to the next generation to do no less. I’ve done what I can as an individual to make Apple aware of these failings, but clearly, we need to do more to help it gain an appreciation of why this is so important. Jonathan Mosen Mosen Consulting Blindness technology eBooks, tutorials and training http://Mosen.org On 20/06/2015, at 9:24 am, Joe <[email protected]> wrote: Hi, I'm curious to hear from people who have replaced their Braille notetaker with an iDevice. I've been toying with the idea of investing in a U2 for reading books, taking notes and performing similar quick tasks. Questions: 1. I've heard there are displays that let you type text and then send to the iDevice in one burst. I don't understand the mechanics of this, but what are the displays you know that do this? 2. Is Braille input in iOS as dreadful as some people have made it out to be? I don't mind learning various keystrokes, but I do mind delays in transmition. 3. Is there a means to read BRF in iOS? 4. What 32-cell display would you personally recommend? Thanks guys for any help. Joe -- Musings of a Work in Progress: www.JoeOrozco.com/ Twitter: @ScribblingJoe -- The following information is important for all members of the viphone list. All new members to the this list are moderated by default. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. The archives for this list can be searched at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. 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Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- The following information is important for all members of the viphone list. All new members to the this list are moderated by default. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. The archives for this list can be searched at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone. 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For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Have a great day, Alex Hall [email protected] -- The following information is important for all members of the viphone list. All new members to the this list are moderated by default. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. The archives for this list can be searched at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone. 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