[stylist] To ponder- taken to another level

Sat Feb 9 18:04:03 UTC 2013

Bridgit,
You reminded me that I went from print to audio in my freshman year of
college. Of course, in those days, we didn't have computers and the old NLS
books were on 16 rpm vinyl and the "RFB" books were on reel to reel tape. I
had a hard time adjusting to listening though. I couldn't pay attention.
Either my mind went off on a tangent and I didn't realize it until several
pages had gone by unnoticed, or I would simply fall asleep. As much as I
rely on audio for pleasure reading and everything on the computer, I still
have the same issue. I tend to read line by line when I'm editing and by
paragraph when I'm listening or content editing. But, when I'm listening to
audio books -- well,  I not infrequently wake up having the memory that I
had stopped the book, which was merely a dream. I wonder why I have that
dream? Sometimes, I think it's to absolve myself of the guilt of not having
made a deliberate decision to stop.
Donna  

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Bridgit
Pollpeter
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2013 4:03 AM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
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

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