[stylist] To ponder- taken to another level

[Aine Kelly-Costello]

Bridget,

Oh I totally agree. I'm not saying screenreaders don't work for 
editting, only that it's sometimes easy to miss things more than 
I would if reading the whole thing in Braille. Having said that, 
the only times I really do edit primarily with Braille are when 
writing something in Spanish or with poetry. I use my 
BrailleNote's synthesizer a lot for reading for pleasure and it 
doesn't bother me at all :)

Re the sighted vs blind thing, I'm not sure. I know my concepts 
of structure for projects are not always exactly spot on, but I 
definitely know to look for things like whether fonts on headings 
are working, whether the paragraph spacing is consistent etc etc.


Aine

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Bridgit Pollpeter <bpollpeter at hotmail.com
To: <stylist at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Sat, 9 Feb 2013 03:03:12 -0600
Subject: [stylist] To ponder- taken to another level

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


_______________________________________________
Writers Division web site
http://www.writers-division.net/
stylist mailing list
stylist at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info 
for stylist:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/ainekc%40gma
il.com