Re: When is the last time anyone has read a braille book?
Well I can't say I'm surprised by the direction this topic has taken. It makes me both very happy and very sad.
Sigh. Right, let's go.
First of all, to answer the actual question posed by this topic: the last book I read in braille is the UEB Braille Primer, which is still on my shelf and which I consulted very recently. This probably gives you some sense of, at the very least, how I feel about braille as an essential instrument of literacy, without which I feel very strongly we are at a substantial disadvantage. I learned braille at a young age and still have (and relish, despite the fact I no longer use it) my Perkins Brailler and Braille-'n'-Print. My everyday use of braille is also entirely palpable: from checking the time, to checking my spelling and homonyms, to coding and handling layout, and to proofreading my writing. I also think braille is still the best way to represent maths and code, and find it lamental that it's disappearing from education. This puts me on the same page as ironcross32 and friends. I'll address some specific points argued later. But first ...
UEB is an insult. The designers of that particular abomination started from the wrong premise, in an attempt to align technology and the needs of the braille-challenged (i.e., the print-using public) with the interests of braille readers and writers, in a hopeless and entirely misguided effort to make braille more relevant in an age of automatic translation and overpriced braille displays. And you'll never guess what happened next. The resulting code is inefficient, alien, and so lacking in beauty or approachability as to seriously make me question whether its committee members even used braille at all. The actual number of changes is very small, but the minutiae borderline excessive, so that far from promoting braille as an alternati ve but equivalent medium for the print-disabled, it only furthers the already close-cut stereotype of the vulnerability and helplessness of blindness. So if you're wondering what the braille committees think of this forum topic, I hope they at least take from this that I, a devoted braillist, think they're all insensitive dickheads, who should spare a thought for the sanctity of braille as a freeform system used by and for the braille readers and authors for whom it was intended, and not fuck about with things they clearly don't understand.
Ahem. Now that that's out of the way ...
I do agree that "Reading" does not necessarily involve braille in and of itself, but disagree that there isn't a big difference between listening to it narrated audiobook or a TTS engine and reading it under one's finger. Between the latter I think that the TTS is closer to reading, although one can certainly use ones imagination to compensate for poor na
rration too. I have been surprised by how well I can adapt to TTS, in fact, whereas narration just feels to me like it's been half-digested. And of course a TTS engine with which your very familiar often gives clues about the actual text that a normal narrator might not, like punctuation. But braille is simply wonderful: I can freeze and thaw time in the story or game whenever I like, without any ill effects, I can be totally silent and immersed without loss of other senses or concentration on the environment, I can learn new words and also their spellings for checking a dictionary, I can be private, and I can be one with the world and be always aware that this is a pleasurable and soul-improving experience, rather than the microwaved, hasty appeal of an audiobook or TTS reading. What's not to like, really?
For braille vs print: Dark has already elaborated in post 9, al
though I think that the big reason is speed. Basically, printed glyphs are tiny compared to the equivalent braille characters, so it's far easier for a sighted person to look at print and make a lot of sense of it in very little time with almost no point of reference. This also contributes to the absurd size of braille books, of course. I don't believe that this is sufficient reason not to use braille, though, and believe it or not there is even such a thing as braille signage ( which I have never quite worked out the purpose of ). A lot of what we do in everyday life makes up for the loss of sight; reading is no exception. Using TTS to speed-read is one such possibility, but so is memorisation of the page layout, or using format indications to skip chunks of text. As with so many other things, the one real difficulty appears to be instant information extraction. There's
really no such thing as braille in large type.
As for braille and tech: I would love to see the prices come down, and less cynical attempts by "Market forces" to keep the prices high for the benefit of governments rather than individuals. Same for a multi-line display. Having said that, I'm not complaining with what I now have: choice, and the means to pay for it. I think it's a shame others are not so fortunate, and there are always more important things for me to be spending my money on, but I'd sooner have a single-line 32-cell braille display than not have one at all. The worst part about the cost of braille displays, in my mind anyway, is actually that although they are entirely affordable by employers, many will see them as symbolic of the sorts of outlays they would sooner dispense with, so we need all these schemes for offsetting the costs of emp loyment of blind people. This, of course, just heightens the risk that blind people face of discrimination, and yes, it helps the schemes instituted a lot who engage in their own discretionary policing of a person's needs, which may well be different from their actual requirements, purely for financial gain. So a lot of it is down to lining other peoples' pockets for cutting deals, at the expense of the actual technology users, and that really makes me sad. I guess the silver lining is that the same greed which is putting braille out of reach is also disincentivising its use to the exclusion of the greedy bastards themselves, thus speeding their eventual demise.
For spell checking: I am so glad OS X includes a system-wide spell checker, because I'm happy to report that even I'm not perfect. I know well enough that words are not merely spelled as they sound (one of the worst things about English, sadly) but unless I know I'm missing something (which is usually when I check) it's very probable that I'll give into temptation and either guess or listen to what the TTS is saying for guidance. I'm with Nocturnus here: braille gives you another chance to compare what you've written against what you know or suspect the correct spelling is, even if you don't back-translate the braille word into print so you can compare, often having the braille word in front of you is sufficient to jog your memory because you see whether or not that's how you remember reading it, rather than specifically if it's spelled correctly. I often get -ence and -ance confused and yet braille fixes it; I often proofread what I just wrote and am astonished by embarrassing homonym substitutions, and only because of braille. And oh look, I just spelled "Embarrassing" with only one r for the umpteenth time; once again braille confirmed it. I can well imagine that this won't be true for everybody with different styles of learning; I didn't learn English informally at all, but very much more according to written lessons and tuition and lots and lots of repetition. Phonetics is of course also a good guide, but I'd definitely be a bit lost without the opportunity to read and learn the spelling of words as I go along.
Wanted: braille iPad. Ooh yeah!
If an iPad or a Kindle could emerge whereby the touchscreen could be generalised to provide any haptic experience, including the sense of braille or even print letters, combined with the frames and shapes of controls, well, wouldn't that just rock maximally? We'd be able to appreciate e-reading, just like other folk. As it stands you need one of these note-takers (or to pair your iPhone and then prey it doesn't come unpaired while you're reading) and you have to put up with Apple's oh-so-stellar braille support. S
ee also these guys, whose embosser I used at university with mixed results--but at least they're looking forward. I had the good fortune to meet my old maths teacher while I was exhibiting at Sight Village while these dudes were sponsoring, and I can honestly say I'm glad I learned the traditional UK maths code in spite of the fact that this is the sort of thing that actually has a flaming chance of moving us forward (arbitrary tactile embossing).
I don't think it's really fair to blame the high cost of braille entirely on the technology companies, though. Ultimately, it _is_ a small market, and every attempt to build this revolutionary braille display has either changed the nature of reading, or changed the nature of braille displays. There is a reason why the single-line displays we have now cost so much, even if you don� 39;t count the disgusting profits: the braille cells are delicate, manufactured to high tolerance, and are expensive to produce in parts and labour. Clearly, any replacement needs to match the same quality. Requiring you stick your finger in a hole to read a line of braille, or requiring that you wait 8 seconds for a line to be redrawn, isn't going to cut it. Unless there's a margin for lower quality, the problem with getting the developing world in particular into braille is simply coming up with a better way (besides piezo-electric) to actually synthesise braille inexpensively and accurately. And yeah, I'd love to see it, really.
But you're right about Windows CE. I mean, FFS! That's where it all falls down. I'd seriously get a standalone braille display, only this Windows CE device is just useful enough that I have to keep the yucky bits as well. It's a BrailleNote Apex and it has a USB-serial interface in it, for emulating the old serial- line protocol used by BrailleNote Classic. And my PACMate display, which has no input, is used exclusively for rescuing me from losing situations when Linux won't boot. What a world.
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