[blindkid] On the Future of Braille: Thoughts by RadicalBraille Advocates (Bookshare)

[Deborah Kent Stein]

The National Library Service is contemplating a Braille display for Braille 
readers, that would be distributed the way the digital cassette machines are 
today.  May it come to pass!

Debbie

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Darcirae Hooks" <draehooks at yahoo.com>
To: "Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)" 
<blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Cc: "Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)" 
<blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2013 5:51 PM
Subject: Re: [blindkid] On the Future of Braille: Thoughts by RadicalBraille 
Advocates (Bookshare)


> My biggest beef, is the cost to get the technology to my Braille reading 9 
> year old. Computers for my sighted children are way more affordable than 
> for Caiden. I don't feel this is fair. Also at what point do u take the 
> plunge, break the bank, just to be told u r better off waiting until he is 
> older bc technology gets outdated too quickly.
> My sighted kids don't worry bc we can update or afford a new computer but 
> braillenote is too expensive to have that in the plan.
>
> Any suggestions????
>
> Darci
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jul 15, 2013, at 15:26, "Dr. Denise M Robinson" <deniserob at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>
>> Amen to Braille!!!! This should not even be a question---would print for
>> the sighted ever be a question---never--neither should braille
>>
>> *Dr Denise*
>>
>> Denise M. Robinson, TVI, Ph.D.
>> CEO, TechVision, LLC
>> Specialist in Technology/Training/Teaching for blind/low vision
>> 423-573-6413
>>
>> Website with hundreds of informational articles & lessons on PC, Office
>> products, Mac, iPad/iTools and more, all done with
>> keystrokes: www.yourtechvision.com
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 2:45 PM, Allison Hilliker 
>> <AllisonH at benetech.org>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi Everyone,
>>>
>>> I thought some of you might like to read the below post from the 
>>> Benetech
>>> blog. Benetech is the company that runs Bookshare.org. The article
>>> demonstrates Bookshare's support for Braille access and global literacy.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Allison
>>>
>>> http://benetech.blogspot.com/2013/07/on-future-of-braille-thoughts-by.html
>>>
>>> Guest Beneblog by Betsy Beaumon, VP and General Manager, Benetech's 
>>> Global
>>> Literacy Program.
>>>
>>>
>>> Betsy Beaumon
>>> I recently had the honor to speak at the first-ever Braille Summit, 
>>> hosted
>>> on June 19-21, 2013 by the National Library Service for the Blind and
>>> Physically Handicapped (NLS) and Perkins School for the Blind. With the
>>> goal of promoting braille literacy, this landmark meeting brought 
>>> together
>>> braille experts from around the world to Perkins' campus in Watertown,
>>> Massachusetts.
>>>
>>> My biggest takeaway from the summit: the time could not be more urgent,
>>> and more hopeful, for the future of braille and the prospects of those 
>>> who
>>> need it. That's why braille is an important focus for us in Benetech's
>>> Global Literacy Program - we know that we must keep braille relevant and
>>> make it more available.
>>>
>>> One of the biggest reasons is that among people who are blind, braille
>>> literacy has been linked with higher education levels, higher likelihood 
>>> of
>>> employment and higher income. Accordingly, U.S. federal law supports
>>> braille instruction. In what is known as the "braille provision," the
>>> Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004 mandates that
>>> the teams who help write educational plans for students with 
>>> disabilities
>>> presume that all blind and visually impaired children should be taught
>>> Braille unless it is determined to be inappropriate.
>>>
>>> What's alarming is that for decades the number of braille users has been
>>> on the decline. And today, braille is not being taught to most blind
>>> children. Data from the American Printing House for the Blind's annual
>>> registry of legally blind students shows that in 2012 only 8.8% of 
>>> legally
>>> blind children in public and residential schools used braille as their
>>> primary reading medium.
>>>
>>> Many professionals argue that this decline in braille literacy has led 
>>> to
>>> a literacy crisis in the American population of individuals who are 
>>> blind.
>>> Community concerns have grown so strong that on June 19, the first day 
>>> of
>>> the Braille Summit, the Department of Education Office of Special 
>>> Education
>>> and Rehabilitative Services issued new guidance to States and public
>>> agencies to reaffirm the importance of braille instruction and to 
>>> clarify
>>> the circumstances and evaluation requirements under the law.
>>>
>>> At Benetech, we agree that braille is an essential literacy tool and 
>>> that
>>> every child who needs it has the right to be taught braille. We also 
>>> know
>>> that braille materials must be far more available to braille readers of 
>>> all
>>> ages in order to realize their full benefits. At the Braille Summit's
>>> kick-off event, keynote speaker Peter Osborne, Chief Braille Officer for
>>> the Royal National Institute of Blind People, U.K., argued that we must
>>> shift from spending on the provision of hard copy braille to the 
>>> provision
>>> of refreshable braille and the associated digital file formats to enable
>>> people to read so much more.
>>>
>>> "As organizations," Osborne said, "we must liberate spending to focus on
>>> the promotion, learning and innovation around braille," and recognize 
>>> that
>>> we ought to embrace today's changing economics and technology so that
>>> braille can be part of an equation which delivers access to information 
>>> for
>>> all, not just to those who can afford it.
>>>
>>> We strongly support this position and believe the digital content
>>> revolution holds the best promise for the future of braille. The massive
>>> shifts in the fields of consumer technology, education, and publishing 
>>> open
>>> the door to combating some of the major obstacles to braille 
>>> availability -
>>> high cost and time to produce hard copy braille books, as well as
>>> difficulties in distributing and storing them due to their large size 
>>> (for
>>> example, one Harry Potter book in printed braille stands about four feet
>>> high). We are confident that technology can continue to improve the 
>>> quality
>>> of electronic braille such that a blind consumer can expect both 
>>> immediate
>>> AND high quality braille on demand.
>>>
>>> As we have explained in other Beneblog and Bookshare blog posts, these 
>>> are
>>> exciting times for everyone who has been working to meet the imperative 
>>> to
>>> provide people with print disabilities equal access to published
>>> information. The increasing focus on digital content, rather than its
>>> printed form, and the shift to electronic distribution of ebooks pave 
>>> new
>>> avenues for removing the barriers to accessibility. At Benetech, we want 
>>> to
>>> ensure that in this brave new world of digital content, braille is as
>>> available as any other ebook format to those who want it. In this sense,
>>> you could say that we are radical braille advocates.
>>>
>>> With Bookshare, Benetech's online library for people with print
>>> disabilities, our ebook-based approach to the accessibility challenge 
>>> has
>>> already delivered on the promise of ending the famine of accessible 
>>> books
>>> in the United States. Now, with the new Marrakech Treaty from the World
>>> Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and our hundreds of direct
>>> publisher relationships, we are poised to help deliver on this promise
>>> worldwide.
>>>
>>> Today Bookshare adds around 3,000 books per month to the collection, 
>>> with
>>> our publisher and electronic distribution partners supplying most of 
>>> these
>>> books, at the same time as they go to electronic retailers like Amazon. 
>>> We
>>> also continue to add books from volunteers, staff and outsourcers 
>>> through
>>> scanning and proofing, including student requests. Our commitment to
>>> braille literacy means that the entire Bookshare collection of over 
>>> 198,000
>>> titles (and counting) is available not only for use in text, audio or 
>>> the
>>> combination, played with a wide variety of assistive technology tools, 
>>> but
>>> also formatted for use on electronic braille displays.
>>>
>>> Granted, due to the limitations of fully automated conversion, this is 
>>> not
>>> perfect braille, and we continuously work with experts to improve the
>>> quality of our Braille Ready Files (in the BRF format). Creating a 
>>> perfect
>>> digital braille book, particularly with subjects such as math, still
>>> requires a great deal of human preparation and is therefore very 
>>> expensive.
>>> Our belief is that having hundreds of thousands of solid - if not 
>>> perfect -
>>> braille books available to read as soon as they are available to 
>>> everyone
>>> else is far better than getting them much later or not at all. The
>>> convergence of standards in digital publishing and major advancements in
>>> braille codes - such as the recent adoption of Unified English Braille
>>> (UEB) format by the Braille Authority of North America - are on our 
>>> side.
>>> This allows a much broader group of experts to keep working on the 
>>> problem.
>>> Imagine the day when we are ready for UEB launch: the entire Bookshare
>>> collection will be made available in UEB with a click of a button!
>>>
>>> The road toward full access for braille readers has a number of other
>>> hurdles that must be overcome. One major roadblock is the affordability 
>>> of
>>> braille reading tools. The cost of electronic braille displays remains
>>> prohibitively expensive for most blind people in the world. We believe 
>>> that
>>> every reader should be able to have a braille display and we therefore
>>> support the efforts to bring this cost down, especially for those least
>>> able to afford it. We are now directly participating in the DAISY
>>> Consortium's Transforming Braille project, which seeks to dramatically
>>> lower the cost of braille cell technology, the fundamental technical
>>> building block of a braille display. This is important here in the U.S.,
>>> and critical for the inclusion and empowerment of people in developing
>>> countries.
>>>
>>> Another major challenge involves the graphic content in ebooks, such as
>>> pictures, charts, and diagrams, formulas and special symbols. Images are
>>> currently omitted altogether in electronic braille formats and require
>>> extensive human intervention to produce in an accessible, tactile form. 
>>> In
>>> response to the need to make accessible images cheaper, better, and more
>>> cost effective, we created the DIAGRAM Center with funding by the U.S.
>>> Department of Education Office for Special Education Programs (OSEP).
>>> Through this R&D Center, we are working to revolutionize the 
>>> availability
>>> of accessible images and tactile graphics by targeting standards and
>>> developing open source tools that help close the gap between what
>>> technology can do automatically and what requires expert human work.
>>>
>>>
>>> A 3D graphic test on paper substrate of a circuit diagram.
>>> Image by the National Braille Press, a DIAGRAM subcontract.
>>> We are addressing key questions such as: When is a tactile required? How
>>> can we make tactiles easier to produce, use and share? And how will
>>> changing technology impact tactile design, production and use? Against 
>>> each
>>> of these questions we are targeting projects on which we collaborate 
>>> with
>>> some of the leading experts in the field. DIAGRAM projects include
>>> automating a tactile graphic decision tree to target the efforts of
>>> experts; multiple projects around 3D printing as an inexpensive, 
>>> emerging
>>> output format for tactile objects; our Poet tool for crowd sourcing 
>>> image
>>> descriptions and MathML; tools to read QR codes as labels on tactile
>>> graphics to increase available information; and work in whole new haptic
>>> graphical models for fully electronic tactile experiences. We are also
>>> actively pursuing legal approaches to allow sharing of image 
>>> descriptions
>>> and tactile graphics files to reduce costly re-work by underfunded 
>>> schools
>>> and nonprofit organizations/NGO's.
>>>
>>> We are developing many of these free tools with publishers and content
>>> creators in mind and in consideration of the online platforms more and 
>>> more
>>> people use to author and publish information. As the entire industry is
>>> changing the ways in which content is produced and as digital content
>>> becomes increasingly media rich, we want to ensure that all content that 
>>> is
>>> born digital is also born accessible. Through intense collaboration, we 
>>> are
>>> advancing open tools and standards so that accessibility is built into
>>> mainstream products.
>>>
>>> The future of braille, empowered by innovations in technology, is 
>>> bright.
>>> And while the advancement of technology presents new types of challenges
>>> for accessibility, we at Benetech see them as tremendous opportunities 
>>> for
>>> making content truly and universally accessible. New technology will 
>>> allow
>>> breakthroughs that will continue moving people who have vision 
>>> impairments
>>> toward a better tomorrow. With cooperative and coordinated efforts 
>>> across
>>> many communities, we can achieve a future in which new technologies 
>>> improve
>>> braille proficiency and life outcomes for braille readers.
>>>
>>> Please join us in realizing this "radical" future!
>>>
>>> Bookshare is participating at the National Federation of the Blind's
>>> National Convention in Orlando, Florida on July 1-6, 2013 and at the
>>> American Council of the Blind's 52nd Annual National Conference &
>>> Convention in Columbus, Ohio on July 4-12, 2013. We'd love to meet you
>>> there!
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> *Dr Denise*
>>
>> Denise M. Robinson, TVI, Ph.D.
>> CEO, TechVision, LLC
>> Specialist in Technology/Training/Teaching for blind/low vision
>> 423-573-6413
>>
>> Website with hundreds of informational articles & lessons on PC, Office
>> products, Mac, iPad/iTools and more, all done with
>> keystrokes: www.yourtechvision.com
>>
>> "The person who says it cannot be done, shouldn't interrupt the one who 
>> is
>> doing it." --Chinese Proverb
>>
>> Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid: humans are 
>> incredibly
>> slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond
>> imagination.
>> --Albert Einstein
>>
>> It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
>> --Walt Disney
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>
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