[stylist] To ponder- taken to another level

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Aine,

I agree that using Braille is the best way in which to gather
information when reading, but it's possible to use a screenreader in
order to read and edit.

First, at least with JAWS, there are settings you can turn on so all
punctuation is read out loud, and newer versions of MS Word have a
feature that can be turned on indicating when a spelling or grammar
mistake has occurred. If sighted, this feature would be underlined in
red, but with screenreaders, it states that an error has occurred.

Second, you can slow the voice down to better hear the nuances of
sentences. The drone of the electronic voice can be frustrating at
first, but trust me, after a time, you adjust and it's not so
distracting. I think it was Lynda who said she's a visual learner and
not an audio learner, and I'm the same, so when I went back to
university and had to read primarily with audio material, it was
difficult. It took me an entire semester to adjust and learn to focus
with audio alone. And this was after extensive hours of studying in this
manner. But I did it, and I've made the switch, though I still have to
focus more than I did when sighted.

Third, for those of us who learned print visually, we may have a slight
advantage when using just a screenreader and not Braille displays. We
have a visual understanding and therefore may know what to look for upon
an audio reading without using Braille. I'm not getting this thought out
properly. Perhaps someone else will understand and can better explain.
Don't mistake me for saying sight is better, it's just a different
understanding perhaps. Someone help me out here?

I majored in creative writing, minored in PR writing, and did an
internship with a PR firm where I was primarily a writer and copy
editor. As stated in other posts, because of neuropathy, it's difficult
for me to use Braille on an extensive level. I managed to use JAWS alone
in order to accomplish writing and editing, and I'm not all that slow
when doing it. With school, I graduated with honors, so I did something
right, grin.

I use JAWS alone to edit Slate & Style, the Writers' division magazine,
and I do pretty well. It can take me anywhere from 1 to 2 hours to edit
a single piece, and this is fairly common with any editor.

My point is not to discourage Braille but that it is possible to
successfully read, write and edit without it if one must. If you can use
Braille then I strongly encourage one to do so, but if like me, it's not
impossible to do.

Now homophones are the one tricky thing. As you state, screenreaders
will not pick up if the wrong homophone is used such as there and their.
If I'm familiar with another person's writing, I will know if I need to
be cognizant of checking or not. I don't typically make this mistake as
I'm pretty anal about my writing and edit everything more than once
including casual emails, but this is probably attributed to my OCD
tendencies, smile.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter, editor, Slate & Style
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
 
"If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can
satisfy, we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for
another world."
C. S. Lewis

Message: 7
Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:03:55 +0100
From: Aine Kelly-Costello <ainekc at gmail.com>
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level
Message-ID: <5115767b.6f0db50a.0f14.ffffa30e at mx.google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed

Here are some perhaps rather jumbled thoughts ...

I learned braille as a very young child. I think I started 
pre-braille activities at 3, and I have a few vague memories of 
reading a progressive series of books at four (I lived in Ireland 
then, where starting school at four is the norm). These books 
were progressive in the sense that after I'd mastered grade 1 
(letters, punctuation and numbers only), each new one introduced 
me to one or two new contractions. I'd say I had a reasonably 
good grasp of braille by the time I was six, and would have 
finished learning all the contractions around then (for the 
non-braille readers, Braille contractions are plentiful ... 
there's probably two hundred or so in English). The risk you run 
by learning contractions "too soon" is one of not actually being 
able to spell the darn words you know contractions for in the 
first place. For example, once you know that "receive" is written 
rcv, it's very easy to forget whether it's spelled "receive" or 
"recieve", seeing as practically everything you read in Braille 
will contain the contraction. When I was little, I remember there 
being questions raised about which contractions were and were not 
legit in spelling tests. In my opinion, set letter combinations 
like ar, in, en, ing, com, con etc are okay, but writing rcv for 
"receive" or dot 5 q for "question" are obviously not. My point 
here is that even if you read Braille, spelling may still be 
tricky.

Regarding whether a blind person can learn visually ... That 
depends how you define "visual", if you ask me. I've always been 
a reasonably accurate speller (the one exception to that being 
homophones which I'll talk about below). The few times I've had 
to memorize spelling lists, I listen to the word and then an 
"image" pops up in my head which "looks" like me feeling the 
Braille. Therefore I think I remember the word by remembering how 
it looks in grade 2 (contracted) Braille, not letter by letter. 
On a side note, I think a knowledge of grade 2 makes it easier 
for me to see words in their morphemes or syllables because of 
the way contractions go. When I'm doing crosswords with my 
family, I am always the quickest to work out how many letters 
there are in a long-ish word.

Moving on to screenreaders, here are some thoughts (in no 
particular order:

1. There are many different synthesizers out there. Of course 
they all have their good points, their differences and their 
idiosyncrasies. For example, one might say "tear" as "teer" while 
another would say "tare". One calls an acquaintance whose last 
name is Mishoe "Misho" while another says "mis-hoe". This trend 
is a bit of a pain and doesn't exactly facilitate recognition of 
words which are in fact spelled the same but pronounced 
differently. It's especially a pain when the screenreader in 
question thinks it's reading one language while it's actually 
reading another. I'm very used to my BrailleNote's English 
Spanish but JAW's is totally different; I find it much trickier 
to decipher and have to pay very close attention.


2. A lot of screenreader users, from my experience anyway (and 
I'm sure I've done it before), tend to occasionally infer 
spelling of words new to them solely from listening, and without 
checking on them. I've had various screenreader users e-mail me 
with my name, "Aine", spelled "Ain" or "Ane" because according to 
JAWS, these three spellings are identical (incidentally, the 
BrailleNote's keynote gold synthesizer pronounces "Ain" as 
"Ann").

3. Homophones. I have a problem here ... Admit it, we've probably 
all written the wrong "there/their/they're" at some point. But 
I've taken this case to the extreme: I have in the past mixed up 
"role" and "roll", "route" and "root", "jell" and "gel", "sight" 
and "site" ... Now of course I know exactly what all these words 
mean and which is which (now, at least ...) but I strongly 
suspect that my accidental lack of respect for their spelling has 
rather a lot to do with reliance on speech for reading. The other 
problem, evidently, is when you're proofreading, if you rely 
solely on the speech and don't use a braille display (which I 
admit I often do with long texts as it's about thrae times 
faster) you have no way to "catch" homophones, leaving them to go 
unnoticed and for whoever you might be sending your writing to to 
see.

4. Human accents. If you live in Australia or New Zealand, or 
even some parts of England, you will know that the words 
"flaw"/"floor" and "saw"/"sore" can often sound remarkably alike 
in every day speech. So alike, in fact, that people don't always 
realize how to spell them. I have seen two e-mails, written in 
reasonably formal situations by two different sighted adults, 
informing me that such and such was a "very highly sort after" 
teacher. This is taken to another level among blind people, 
though: I've seen people talk about "Lattern" (Latin) dancing and 
"precortions" (precautions) among others. I spent three and a 
half years in Canada and have parents with mid-Atlantic accents 
so I am happily free from this problem. I do remember my brother 
arriving home from his first day of school in New Zealand though 
(he was five, and we'd just recently moved there), claiming they 
were being taught the letter w with a song that went "wheat and 
windy, wih, wih, wih". And so, he was introduced to the strong 
"ehh" sound in the New Zealand accent ...

Now on to the advantages of braille. Screenreaders, as some have 
mentioned already, are a pain when it comes to understanding form 
and recognizing pudctuation. Sure they can read you the 
punctuation, but being told there's a comma and actually reading 
that comma for yourself are in my opinion too different things). 
This is especially true of poetry. The first few times I read any 
poem, it is ALWAYS by hand. I have a BrailleNote with a braille 
display, and this is one of its many uses. To be honest, though, 
if a blind person really wants to see form clearly, you can't 
beat hard-copy  Braille in my opinion. For example, I remember 
having to multiply matrices in my year 11 Maths exam. This was 
quite literally done with one hand on one matrix reading 
horizontally and the other hand on the other one reading 
vertically. If I had tried to do that with a screen reader I 
think my brain might have overloaded ...

Beyond seeing form and punctuation, there are obviously more 
advantages of being able to read Braille. Braille Music, for 
instance. I'd never have been able to join orchestras and be 
where I am at the moment music-wise without it. What about 
learning a new language? I like to be able to read books in 
Spanish by hand because, it not being nearly as strong as my 
English, I still miss detail when using speech. It's also great 
for giving speeches and debates. I would not be at all amused if 
I had to speak in an impromptu debate without being able to read 
my notes in Braille. Being able to participate in class when 
people are reading out, say, lines from different characters in a 
play, is definitely nice. Moreover, I know I'd really have 
struggled to do well in Maths without Braille, and I'm not just 
talking about the matrices. I don't know how you could proofread 
long, complicated calculus with a screenreader in an exam, it'd 
surely be slow at best.


Anyway, there are my musings on the topic ...


Aine