If all the blind tech dropped in price then I would be happy to get it.
braille is making a resergence in the education arieas here.
We don't get laptops we get braille displays now.
ofcause the units we use can cost from 7000 to 30000 bucks depending
on where we get them from and I think they are humanware.
An average laptop costs about 1000-2000 depending on the system.
add about 500 to 1000 for office and a reader for say 1-3000 for
reader and training, and maybe then say a scanning app for another 1000.
Ok so the initial cost is probably about 10000 but ongoing costs are quite low.
if you ran the basics I think 3-4000 tops would cover the basic
laptop, office, a reader and any misc items maybe even less than 3000.
And well there you go its cheaper.
Sertainly I could never afford a braille display if I ever had one in
the first place.
So chances are I would have gone and got a laptop anyway.
As I said though if I restarted I'd get a braille unit and also a mac
which can cost about 2000 and have everything basically loaded in it.
True I'd probably have to get a vm software and windows for gaming
but still to maintain what I have costs a lot if you have to lump it.
At 05:30 a.m. 7/08/2012 -0400, you wrote:
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is no longer needed, braille is no longer useful, braille is outdated,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.
>
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