[stylist] To ponder- taken to another level

[Anita Ogletree]

Donna,

I found that to be my problem as well.  Thank you for reminding 
me of that.  I could not follow through with what was being read 
to save Christmas.
And pbbease don't let it be a readw with a monotone voice! It 
didn't matter how much caffeine I tried pouring into my system, I 
fell asleep waking to find that the cassette had stopped playing.
That was really disastrous innce I finally got the recorder I 
didn't have at the start of the term.

Anita

> ----- Original Message -----
>From: "Donna Hill" <penatwork at epix.net
>To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org
>Date sent: Sat, 9 Feb 2013 13:04:03 -0500
>Subject: Re: [stylist] To ponder- taken to another level

>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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