[nfbcs] Help for older students

[Nancy Coffman]

I agree that the focus at learning Ally has shifted. Newsletters tend to be about people with learning disabilities, and blindness appears to be totally overlooked. You are correct that a learning disabled person probably has a book, or is using a device that also shows the charts and diagrams being described. Please give them the feedback they need to provide a good service to their blind users. They still use volunteers, and the quality has dropped. The price has not.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 26, 2016, at 5:40 PM, Deborah Armstrong via nfbcs <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Learning ally still does describe some visual elements in books but aren't as thorough as they used to be. And no more raised diagrams.
> 
> One thing I find frustrating is they will often give a lot of detail about what color everything on a chart is without actually describing the chart. I know when they read books in the past they actually had a subject expert create the descriptions and they were written on notes pasted directly to the page where the volunteer was to read. When books I had purchased for their volunteers were returned to me there were all sorts of post-it notes and penciled notes in the margins.  But nowadays I believe the volunteer reader just makes up a description on the fly. I also think they have a lower caliber of volunteers, seemed like they used to have many retired teachers reading and now the volunteers are of all ages and all reading abilities, sadly.
> 
> Because there are more sighted people with reading disabilities using the service demand is higher and turnaround needs to be faster. But, many of those users don't require or even want detailed diagram descriptions. Sadly we blind people are a low-incidence disability these days!
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of rjaquiss via nfbcs
> Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2016 5:40 PM
> To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'
> Cc: rjaquiss
> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Help for older students
> 
> Hello:
> 
>     I remember seeing diagrams from RFB in one of the books I had for college.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Robert
> 
> 
> 
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