[blindkid] Question: Braille Displays or Paper Braille for Increased Reading Speed?

Wed Jul 17 16:57:27 UTC 2013

I just asked my 10-year-old daughter-- she says tactile diagrams aren't  very useful to her, but I have seen some of the diagrams they produce for her at school. They are crude, sloppy things most of the time. I have made some better diagrams for her when producing a sort of "twin vision" charts for presentations of hers-- things she will show to the class, so she needs to be able to identify what the rest of the kids will observe visually. She says mine are a bit better than from school, but the reason is I spend a LOT of time making them-- too much time to be reasonable for casual graphics from day-to-day.

Again, I don't have a great solution to offer. Kendra does underscore that she wants the same charts and graphics available as the rest of the kids have though, and I agree. So again, a notetaker textbook solution would need some sort of embossed "tactile addendum" to accomplish that on any level.

On Jul 16, 2013, at 11:43 PM, Arielle Silverman wrote:

> Agreed, if page numbers are missing and the instruction is to read
> specific pages or paragraphs that are numbered, this is a problem.
> although it can also be a problem with hard-copy Braille books if the
> page numbers given are print page numbers and such numbers aren't
> contained in the Braille book.
> I also agree about open-book quizzes, but maintain that for homework
> assignments and other "practice" work prior to a test, reading the
> whole chapter is, in my experience, a more effective learning method
> than merely skimming. Full reading takes a little more time on the
> front end, but requires less studying and re-reading later. I advise
> sighted students against skimming and highlighting in favor of fully
> reading all the content presented to them. In fact, I credit my
> inability to skim as a contributing factor to my academic success.
> Regarding tactile diagrams, this may be a controversial statement, but
> I personally have found almost all tactile diagrams to be either
> superfluous or useless, and would have preferred they be either
> omitted entirely or verbally described. It is very difficult to get
> the required degree of detail into a tactile diagram that you can get
> into a print one. Again this is just my opinion, and I am genuinely
> interested to know if other blind people find tactile diagrams to be
> worth the trouble of making them. It could also be different for folks
> who have had useful sight at one point in their lives (I never did). I
> also think there are a few times when tactile diagrams are beneficial,
> for example when learning basic algebraic concepts such as slopes and
> parabolas. But for many subjects spatial knowledge just isn't very
> important for understanding the higher-order concepts. As a biology
> major, I found that knowing what a cell looks like was important for
> only a tiny fraction of the curriculum, and it was much more critical
> for me to understand the processes involved in photosynthesis, for
> example. Diagrams are highly valued by sighted learners because they
> help sighted learners organize information, but I'm not convinced they
> hold the same benefits for blind learners (particularly
> congenitally-blind ones, who from the start are used to organizing
> information nonvisually). Thoughts?
> Arielle
> 
> On 7/16/13, Richard Holloway <rholloway at gopbc.org> wrote:
>> I maintain that Kendra is faster at reading books on her braillenote than
>> paper (though I would like to time this soon if she will cooperate just to
>> confirm this with actual data), but it should be said that the Braillenote
>> has proven somewhat disastrous with certain textbooks which have been
>> supplied electronically and without page numbers of any kind.
>> 
>> When an assignment comes home that says to "read pages 87-93" and there are
>> no page numbers chapter references, or content hints, the "find command" is
>> entirely useless.
>> 
>> Then there are the issues about having no tactile diagrams or illustrations
>> on a note taker. Maybe with a full page Braille display one day that won't
>> be an issue, but a simple text dump of a print textbook is insufficient to
>> produce Braille diagrams, so much of the problem is probably as much related
>> to the porting process from print to Braille as it is to any display
>> limitations.
>> 
>> We could probably quickly produce another lengthy thread about Braille text
>> books. In our experience, certainly paper Braille texts work best, though
>> ideally we would have paper Braille and electronic.
>> 
>> Our biggest Braille text issues last year were probably the no-page-number
>> issue for e-Braille-only books, and comments in paper Braille texts like
>> "diagram omitted". Diagram of what? (And why could such diagrams not be
>> produced as tactile pieces, if not well described in Braille?)
>> 
>> The problem of open-book quizzes was also a frustrating one for us. It seems
>> to us that reading a lengthy Braille passage (perhaps a whole chapter) for
>> answers is somewhat different than glancing visually for a headline to zero
>> in on the right section of a textbook so you can read just the right
>> paragraphs. It is doable, but surely a different (and slower) testing
>> process.
>> 
>> Then there is the web-based text solution that has become a new trend here--
>> the county supplies some texts on-line only and the site is entirely
>> inaccessible without some sighted assistance. JAWS cannot navigate these
>> books, and the text, though self-reading (it reads aloud) can't be started
>> reasonably by a blind user, and stops at random locations (and needs another
>> mouse click to restart, generally mid-paragraph, in a location that, so far,
>> is generally impossible to find with a screen reader).
>> 
>> I'm not clear why the county would license tens of thousands of electronic
>> copies of various textbooks from a vendor supplying inaccessible products. I
>> doubt the texts are even legal to sell in the configuration supplied.
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On Jul 16, 2013, at 8:34 PM, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Sally,
>>> 
>>> It surprises me that your son couldn't efficiently navigate back to
>>> specific parts of the text on the BrailleNote. Although there is the
>>> disadvantage of not being able to locate section headings, the
>>> BrailleNote does have the find command, which allows one to search for
>>> a specific word or phrase anywhere in the text. Did he try using the
>>> Find command (space + F)? It may also be possible to replace section
>>> headings with double paragraph breaks.
>>> I agree with you, though, that hard-copy Braille allows us to see how
>>> documents are formatted.
>>> 
>>> Arielle
>>> 
>>> On 7/16/13, Sarah Thomas <seacknit at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Although I think a braille display could be a faster way to absorb
>>>> braille
>>>> if one is an efficient user, I worry about the thought that the display
>>>> could be thought of as a replacement for paper braille.  One important
>>>> difference in my mind, is learning how a page is formatted.  Also,
>>>> formatting is a means of conveying information.
>>>> 
>>>> When the school district my son attended learned that print could be
>>>> converted to braille with a .doc file on the braillenote, they tried to
>>>> give
>>>> him 40 (print) page reading assignments with questions at the end that
>>>> referred to specific paragraphs in the text.  It was not possible for him
>>>> to
>>>> navigate the assignment on the braillenote with efficiency.  As
>>>> unfortunate
>>>> as it is, there is not one solution to the braille reading issue.
>>>> 
>>>> Sally Thomas
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Jul 17, 2013, at 3:29 AM, Allison Hilliker <AllisonH at benetech.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I had a question that came to my mind due in part to the fascinating
>>>>> Braille discussion we've had on this list lately. Do you know if
>>>>> Braille
>>>>> format has any impact on Braille reading speeds and fluency? In other
>>>>> words, is one more likely to increase their reading speed by using
>>>>> hardcopy Braille as opposed to a Braille display? Or does Braille
>>>>> reading
>>>>> speed simply increase with practice regardless of how one gets their
>>>>> Braille? Are your kids/students increasing reading speeds through their
>>>>> displays or do they still use hardcopy a lot when learning?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I ask because an NFB member who is also a Braille instructor once told
>>>>> me
>>>>> that It is harder to increase reading speed using a Braille display
>>>>> than
>>>>> it is using paper Braille. Does anyone know if this is true?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Allison
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
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>>>> 
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