Re: When is the last time anyone has read a braille book?
well, hmm, the last time I picked up a braille book was perhaps last year on a stormy day when everything was off. They cut off the electricity and I drained the battery of my laptop and phone as well.
I found a braille book of an english course I had previously attended which read essential on its cover. Being the A2 level of English language, I leafed around 30 pages and ran up on a story with Mr Smith and his children.
I did well in the first lines, but when I bumped into the word "reason" (r,e,a,s,o,n), I failed! What a shame! I say and write this word more than 10 times a day and was unable to read it. I got pissed off and I started thinking of ordering whatever kinds of braille books were available at a blind association but then they came up with arguments like we do not have funds to cover you, or our braille printers are not working at the moment.
In 2010, I held a braille display in my hands for the first time. My English teacher at my special sc
hool familiarised me with it, and I said, what an amazing device! At that moment, I started thinking of buying one, but when I got the answer that it had cost 2000 euros, I got shocked. I was terrified of my future, cause I was told that I would have to write long documents and projects at high school or at the university.
Honestly, I said, [[wow]]! 2000 euros? and the teacher told me not to get surprised because there are actually braille displays which cost even 4000.
It's sad to hear this even if you are a blind person or a sighted one. Here sighted students buy a copybook and a pen together for 50 cents while a copybook braille costs around 5 dollars, if not more. In my opinion, All groups of people, despite their abilities or disabilities, should have the full rights to access writing and reading at an agreed price which shall not change among different communities. By this statement, I, as a blind person, am not pretending to get a type writer for something like
ten dollars, but not 500 or 2000! It's ridiculous!
At the moment of speaking, I am studying at the faculty of linguistics. I specialise in English language, (very few blind people do this in Albania). Of course, it was a long journey to get here. I used my laptop in my high school to acquire English language in general and to learn proper writing and spelling as well. However, it required a very hard work because if I came across an English word which sounded unfamiliar to me, I would need to read it letter by letter. This happened in an extremely large number of cases untill I learned a great number of difficult English words and improved my vocabulary significantly. For the most part I used Eloquence and jaws because it is the only synthesyser that I can understand properly. I believe this work would have been easier if I had used braille, although I wholeheartedly admit that the process of reading braille is slower than reading using eloquence. Another point is that te
achers do not usually know how to write in braille, so your work, no matter how good it is, is to some extent inaccessible to them so you have to use a computer.
I do not have many comments about braille, because there is not so much to say. Braille has equally the same importance as normal writing for sighted people. Both convey words and sentences and in general communication. Yes, it is different from normal writing but its purpose is the same. To access written or printed information.
And, as someone mentioned printed material, or visual material that sighted people may read from a computer screen, it makes no difference to the method of writing they use. It's intirely the same. It's like reading braille through a big braille display. The difference is that a computer may cost 500 dollars and a sighted person is fine with it, while a computer plus a braille display may cost 2500 dollars and a visually impaired may need to pay an arm and a leg to be fine with
it.
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
