[Tactile-Talk] My Introduction And Remarks From 2024 Science Division Talk

[Jason J.G. White]

On 27/8/24 18:47, Daveed Mandell via Tactile-Talk wrote:
> I also think it's time to push for heavily subsidized braille products
> in this country and throughout the world. They are not luxuries. How
> many of us can truly buy a Monarch?

I agree with the general point. At least there's already U.S. government 
funding available for students that will offset the cost. I don't know 
what happens to the device once the student has completed secondary 
school and, we hope, moves on to university though.

According to an interview that I heard, APH and HumanWare are looking 
for public funding sources in other countries as well.

I've recently had a chance to work with a Monarch for several hours, 
thanks to an opportunity provided by former colleagues. I'll say it 
publicly: I was impressed with the Braille, the tactile graphics, and 
the maturity of the included software for a pre-release product. There 
wasn't time to try anything especially creative, but we did experiment 
with the tactile graphics library, the graphing calculator, the chess 
game (without much success), the word processor, and so forth.

I had prior experience with the Graphiti (also at the prototype stage), 
which of course made manipulating tactile graphics on the Monarch even 
easier. This is exactly the device I wish I had in secondary school 
calculus and physics courses. In the early 1990s when I was completing 
secondary school, it was all about raised line drawing kits and 
stereocopy machines for producing tactile graphics. Graphics-capable 
embossers weren't readily available at the time, at least in Australia, 
which is where I am from.

The Monarch should also be excellent for reading a lot of text, which I 
regularly need to do. 10 lines of 32 cells are better than a single-line 
Braille display, in my opinion.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/tactile-talk_nfbnet.org/attachments/20240827/b4e80980/attachment.htm>