[stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level
Donna Hill
penatwork at epix.net
Sat Feb 9 17:53:24 UTC 2013
Aine,
For something important to you professionally, I would assume that using all
the tools in your toolbox would be the best option. For e-mails, one or the
other should put you way ahead of the curve.
Donna
-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Aine
Kelly-Costello
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2013 3:47 AM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level
Donna,
Speaking of dislexia with Braille contractions don't worry-my fingers still
occasionally mix up to and by when writing at speed (I don't write in UEB)
to this day haha, and I use a Braille keyboard for writing 90% of the time.
Re homophones - here is another problem of different synthesizers. I have to
say you're right that JAWS is pretty good for it, except the problem I run
into here is that there are words the keynote gold synthesizer on my
BrailleNote let's me know if I've spelt wrong where JAWS does not. These are
mostly things that spellcheck finds anyway, though. I suppose now you
mention it, it wouldn't be a bad idea to proofread stuff using both
synthesizers (I can access the JAWS-SOUNDING one on my BN but don't use it
much as it tends to create a lot of lag and I prefer the other one).
Aine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donna Hill" <penatwork at epix.net
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org Date sent: Fri, 8
Feb 2013 21:29:08 -0500
Subject: Re: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level
Aine,
This was fascinating. You are one of the lucky ones in terms of getting
Braille early, and you make a good point about learning the contractions
prior to learning the spelling being a negative. I rarely visualize Braille
contractions and still tend to be rather dyslexic about some of them -- like
with and of. This is more of an issue in writing than reading.
I think the homonym thing is tricky for a lot of people -- blind and
sighted. First of all, there are so many more of them than we generally
think. When I edit, I try to deliberately stop and have Jaws spell anything
that could possibly be a homonym. Word catches a few of the normal ones like
its and it's and whose and who's, but (with the outrageous exception of one
sentence in my novel with several wrong spellings that passed right under
the noses of a half dozen readers including myself) they're not the ones I
mess up.
I Google any word that I know has more than one meaning to see what my
chosen spelling actually means. There were a number of words that I had
assumed simply had two different meanings, only to find that they were
actually two different words -- discreet and discrete come to mind, for
instance. I found a list of homonyms on the internet that was rather
extensive. Before I looked for it, I made a list of the ones I could think
of. I had dozens, but it was a small portion of the list I found.
The other thing, which I personally believe accounts for a lot of the
misspelling in the writing of screen reader users, is the habit that many
people have of listening at anelevated speed. This simply doesn't work for
editing, and I always recommend that, whatever speed you like to read at,
slow it down to at least the default speed for editing -- unless you never
make mistakes that you miss. One reason beyond what would seem obvious is
that Jaws, at least, has subtle differences in pronunciation that can clue
you in to the fact that the word is misspelled. They're and their, for
instance, and in context to and too. "I'm going too the store, and I won't
be to happy if I can't find scones!" Both of those "to" words are wrong in
context, and I can hear that.
That said, lots of sighted people have atrocious spelling. We're becoming
more illiterate as a society by the day, in my opinion. People are ahead of
the curve if they use Spell Check, but they don't really understand how
limited it is, or they would read through their stuff. I must stop myself;
I'm heading for a rant.
Donna
-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Aine
Kelly-Costello
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 5:04 PM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level
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
---- Original Message ------
From: "Aine Kelly-Costello" <ainekc at gmail.com
Subject: Fw: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level Date sent:
Sat, 9 Feb 2013 07:21:12 +1300
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lynda Lambert" <llambert at zoominternet.net
To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2013 7:02 AM
Subject: Re: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level
This is a really good question, Robert.
I have noticed that so many blind people spell things so wonky,
and maybe
this is why. I always wonder is spelling is really taught and
learned
visually. I really have no experience with any of the discussion
on Braille
because I do not use it - I do everything with electronics and
some things with a CCTV. I have only had sight loss for 5
years, so I
really have no idea how blind children learn things like
spelling,
grammar, formatting, and punctuation. To me, they are all visual,
and it is
very hard for me to understand it any other way - well, I really
don't
understand it any other way. When I am reading (listening to a
voice on a
machine) I am still listening visually. I see it in my mind, and
if I
cannot see it that way, it's confusing to me. Auditory skills
would rate
very low for me. Everyone has strength in certain skills and
ways of
learning - and I am a Visual learner above all else. That did not
change -
I still have to be able to SEE it to remember it - I have to stop
and SEE a
picture in my mind before it sticks with me.
Writing and reading, for me, has always been a visual
experience. This
makes me wonder, can a person who has always been blind be a
Visual
learner? And, then, I wonder, how does a blind person visualize
things?
These are some things I am thinking about and working with a
blind painter
friend to put together an exhibition on how people see and
visualize.
Lynda
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Leslie Newman" <newmanrl at cox.net
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 9:03 AM
Subject: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level
We were discussing how the impact of what is read is influenced
by the
reader, themselves (by what they personally bring to the
reading-table).
And here is an interesting thought or outcome that is happening
to too
many blind people! First as a baseline thought - the sighted
student/reader
who uses print to read literature, educational stuff and the
like - they
are reading the words themselves, visually scanning, actively
processing
--- while during this process, the student is being exposed to
important
"reading related/literacy" features/elements such as: format,
punctuation,
spelling, and features like tables, graphs, pictures, etc. Also,
along the
same line of literacy, of actively reading for oneself --- The
blind reader
who has the skill of Braille can get the same basic exposure to
content,
plus all the important literacy features as - format,
punctuation, spelling
and the other stuff. However, in today's world, at least in this
country,
Braille is not being taught as a first-line method of reading for
the
non-print reader! And yeah, you all have heard this gripe, this
warning
before. There again my point today is a bit different: My
thought, question
is --- hey --- picture this- if you could not read print, did not
know
Braille and could only hear new information, be it a textbook, or
poem or
piece of prose --- you were not getting exposed to formatting,
punctuation,
or spelling of anything you heard; And so I ask does this then
essentially
take the blind person back to the preprint era, back to learning
via the
oral tradition? Yeah --- what are these teachers thinking?
(Another bazaar
thought - what do you think these teachers who are doing this
to the blind
would do --- if they were to find that in school their very own
sighted
children would have print taken away and their child was
restricted to
only listening to what was being
taught??)
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