Hi Dark, Sadly, you are probably right. The number of people who claim braille is no longer needed, braille is no longer useful, braille is outdated, etc has been growing steadily over the last 20 years as computer technology has improved. There are certain elements within the American special education system who believe braille should be dropped in favor of some other alternative such as e-books and computerized educational materials. So you may be correct that braille is on its way out.
However, it still begs the question of what people would use in stead of braille. I personally maintain that there is a special niche where braille comes in handy and is still useful on a day to day bases, and people would be missing out if it is taken away from them. Let's take card and board games as a simple example. I can walk into any store in America and buy a board game and braille the cards, braille the money,and put braille labels on the various squares to make it accessible. I suppose there probably are alternative ways to accomplish the same thing, but braille seems to be the most practical in this case. I don't imagine someone would by a pen friend, whatever you call it, and use it to label the game, money, and playing cards when braille would suffice. Another use for braille is labeling items around the home. It is easy to make up several labels using label tape, sticking it on a rubber band, and then slip it over various cans of food. I use to have reusable braille labels I could put on cans of food saying corn, peas, green beans, baked beans, etc. It was nice and handy. I'm sure someone could get by just by organizing their cans of food or using some sort of talking label, but I've found braille just as helpful and a very practical solution in that instance. However, I'll freely admit that I learned braille early enough in my life to grown comfortable with its use. I began learning braille when I was 10, long before I totally lost my sight,so when I did loose my sight I was prepared to make the most of what braille has to offer. Moreover when I began learning braille things like OCR technology were in their infancy and well beyond the price range of the average blind person. My first encounter with a scanner was of a Curswhile Reading Edge, which was extremely heavy, and cost something like $5,000 USD. Jaws was also in its infancy, and was also about $1,000 without a synth which was extra. Considering the prices of computer technology in the late 80's and early 90's a person could easily pay $5,000 for an IBM I286 with PC Dos, Jaws for Dos, Word Perfect,a printer, etc. In short, at the time it didn't look like computers would ever become a replacement for braille, because the cost of ownership was beyond someone's means. While Curswhile's Reading Edge was the cat's meow in terms of reading print materials I didn't imagine that technology would come down in price. Now, of course, that situation has reversed itself somewhat. A person can walk into Wal-mart and buy a fairly new desktop or laptop for under $500, download a free screen reader like NVDA, and purchase a scanner for less than $100. Probably the most expensive piece of software would be buying a decent OCRpackage like Omnipage 18 for about $500, but a person can realistically have a fully accessible computer for just slightly more than the cost of Jaws. That's assuming he or she uses Windows. These days its possible to purchase a new Del laptop or desktop preloaded with Ubuntu Linux for much less than the going Windows PC. All or most of the necessary Linux software including operating system, screen reader, speech synth, OCR software, etc is 100% free. A person's investment is totally in hardware. So the cost of ownership for accessible computer technology has gone way down in the last 20 years. Bottom line, technology has changed, I'm certainly all for that, but I grew up with braille so am attached to it. For me I am happy to balance my use of computer technology with less technical forms of reading and writing using braille. Cheers! On 8/7/12, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote: > Hi tom. > > if braille displays were cheaper I'd agree, but the money involved is just > too much for most private individuals to afford, which is why many blind > people don't have them sinse the only way your going to get that sort of > money is out of the state, and the state can vary on what they provide, > indeed in Britain your unlikely to get a braille display out of them unless > > you really push while in full time education. > > This is indeed why i don't have one myself, sinse I only used my student > support grant to pay for stuff I actually! needed, and there was no earthly > > reason why I would need a braille display specifically at university, sinse > > I wasn't studdying a science or mathematical subject that would provide > problems for a screen reader. > > Where as with screen reader support there are free alternatives, or indeed > no! alternative via sapi, i'm less convinced about the braille display as a > > gaming device, unless it was only an optional extra in a game, rather than a > > completely necessary requirement. > > As I said, I'm fairly convinced myself that unless the technology changes to > > a full tactile display in the future, braille is unlikely to survive for > that much longer as a medium anyway. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.