[blindkid] On the Future of Braille: Thoughts by Radical Braille Advocates (Bookshare)

[Dr. Denise M Robinson]

Amen to Braille!!!! This should not even be a question---would print for
the sighted ever be a question---never--neither should braille

*Dr Denise*

Denise M. Robinson, TVI, Ph.D.
CEO, TechVision, LLC
Specialist in Technology/Training/Teaching for blind/low vision
423-573-6413

Website with hundreds of informational articles & lessons on PC, Office
products, Mac, iPad/iTools and more, all done with
keystrokes: www.yourtechvision.com

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 2:45 PM, Allison Hilliker <AllisonH at benetech.org>wrote:

>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I thought some of you might like to read the below post from the Benetech
> blog. Benetech is the company that runs Bookshare.org. The article
> demonstrates Bookshare's support for Braille access and global literacy.
>
> Best,
> Allison
>
> http://benetech.blogspot.com/2013/07/on-future-of-braille-thoughts-by.html
>
> Guest Beneblog by Betsy Beaumon, VP and General Manager, Benetech's Global
> Literacy Program.
>
>
> Betsy Beaumon
> I recently had the honor to speak at the first-ever Braille Summit, hosted
> on June 19-21, 2013 by the National Library Service for the Blind and
> Physically Handicapped (NLS) and Perkins School for the Blind. With the
> goal of promoting braille literacy, this landmark meeting brought together
> braille experts from around the world to Perkins' campus in Watertown,
> Massachusetts.
>
> My biggest takeaway from the summit: the time could not be more urgent,
> and more hopeful, for the future of braille and the prospects of those who
> need it. That's why braille is an important focus for us in Benetech's
> Global Literacy Program - we know that we must keep braille relevant and
> make it more available.
>
> One of the biggest reasons is that among people who are blind, braille
> literacy has been linked with higher education levels, higher likelihood of
> employment and higher income. Accordingly, U.S. federal law supports
> braille instruction. In what is known as the "braille provision," the
> Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004 mandates that
> the teams who help write educational plans for students with disabilities
> presume that all blind and visually impaired children should be taught
> Braille unless it is determined to be inappropriate.
>
> What's alarming is that for decades the number of braille users has been
> on the decline. And today, braille is not being taught to most blind
> children. Data from the American Printing House for the Blind's annual
> registry of legally blind students shows that in 2012 only 8.8% of legally
> blind children in public and residential schools used braille as their
> primary reading medium.
>
> Many professionals argue that this decline in braille literacy has led to
> a literacy crisis in the American population of individuals who are blind.
> Community concerns have grown so strong that on June 19, the first day of
> the Braille Summit, the Department of Education Office of Special Education
> and Rehabilitative Services issued new guidance to States and public
> agencies to reaffirm the importance of braille instruction and to clarify
> the circumstances and evaluation requirements under the law.
>
> At Benetech, we agree that braille is an essential literacy tool and that
> every child who needs it has the right to be taught braille. We also know
> that braille materials must be far more available to braille readers of all
> ages in order to realize their full benefits. At the Braille Summit's
> kick-off event, keynote speaker Peter Osborne, Chief Braille Officer for
> the Royal National Institute of Blind People, U.K., argued that we must
> shift from spending on the provision of hard copy braille to the provision
> of refreshable braille and the associated digital file formats to enable
> people to read so much more.
>
> "As organizations," Osborne said, "we must liberate spending to focus on
> the promotion, learning and innovation around braille," and recognize that
> we ought to embrace today's changing economics and technology so that
> braille can be part of an equation which delivers access to information for
> all, not just to those who can afford it.
>
> We strongly support this position and believe the digital content
> revolution holds the best promise for the future of braille. The massive
> shifts in the fields of consumer technology, education, and publishing open
> the door to combating some of the major obstacles to braille availability -
> high cost and time to produce hard copy braille books, as well as
> difficulties in distributing and storing them due to their large size (for
> example, one Harry Potter book in printed braille stands about four feet
> high). We are confident that technology can continue to improve the quality
> of electronic braille such that a blind consumer can expect both immediate
> AND high quality braille on demand.
>
> As we have explained in other Beneblog and Bookshare blog posts, these are
> exciting times for everyone who has been working to meet the imperative to
> provide people with print disabilities equal access to published
> information. The increasing focus on digital content, rather than its
> printed form, and the shift to electronic distribution of ebooks pave new
> avenues for removing the barriers to accessibility. At Benetech, we want to
> ensure that in this brave new world of digital content, braille is as
> available as any other ebook format to those who want it. In this sense,
> you could say that we are radical braille advocates.
>
> With Bookshare, Benetech's online library for people with print
> disabilities, our ebook-based approach to the accessibility challenge has
> already delivered on the promise of ending the famine of accessible books
> in the United States. Now, with the new Marrakech Treaty from the World
> Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and our hundreds of direct
> publisher relationships, we are poised to help deliver on this promise
> worldwide.
>
> Today Bookshare adds around 3,000 books per month to the collection, with
> our publisher and electronic distribution partners supplying most of these
> books, at the same time as they go to electronic retailers like Amazon. We
> also continue to add books from volunteers, staff and outsourcers through
> scanning and proofing, including student requests. Our commitment to
> braille literacy means that the entire Bookshare collection of over 198,000
> titles (and counting) is available not only for use in text, audio or the
> combination, played with a wide variety of assistive technology tools, but
> also formatted for use on electronic braille displays.
>
> Granted, due to the limitations of fully automated conversion, this is not
> perfect braille, and we continuously work with experts to improve the
> quality of our Braille Ready Files (in the BRF format). Creating a perfect
> digital braille book, particularly with subjects such as math, still
> requires a great deal of human preparation and is therefore very expensive.
> Our belief is that having hundreds of thousands of solid - if not perfect -
> braille books available to read as soon as they are available to everyone
> else is far better than getting them much later or not at all. The
> convergence of standards in digital publishing and major advancements in
> braille codes - such as the recent adoption of Unified English Braille
> (UEB) format by the Braille Authority of North America - are on our side.
> This allows a much broader group of experts to keep working on the problem.
> Imagine the day when we are ready for UEB launch: the entire Bookshare
> collection will be made available in UEB with a click of a button!
>
> The road toward full access for braille readers has a number of other
> hurdles that must be overcome. One major roadblock is the affordability of
> braille reading tools. The cost of electronic braille displays remains
> prohibitively expensive for most blind people in the world. We believe that
> every reader should be able to have a braille display and we therefore
> support the efforts to bring this cost down, especially for those least
> able to afford it. We are now directly participating in the DAISY
> Consortium's Transforming Braille project, which seeks to dramatically
> lower the cost of braille cell technology, the fundamental technical
> building block of a braille display. This is important here in the U.S.,
> and critical for the inclusion and empowerment of people in developing
> countries.
>
> Another major challenge involves the graphic content in ebooks, such as
> pictures, charts, and diagrams, formulas and special symbols. Images are
> currently omitted altogether in electronic braille formats and require
> extensive human intervention to produce in an accessible, tactile form. In
> response to the need to make accessible images cheaper, better, and more
> cost effective, we created the DIAGRAM Center with funding by the U.S.
> Department of Education Office for Special Education Programs (OSEP).
> Through this R&D Center, we are working to revolutionize the availability
> of accessible images and tactile graphics by targeting standards and
> developing open source tools that help close the gap between what
> technology can do automatically and what requires expert human work.
>
>
> A 3D graphic test on paper substrate of a circuit diagram.
> Image by the National Braille Press, a DIAGRAM subcontract.
> We are addressing key questions such as: When is a tactile required? How
> can we make tactiles easier to produce, use and share? And how will
> changing technology impact tactile design, production and use? Against each
> of these questions we are targeting projects on which we collaborate with
> some of the leading experts in the field. DIAGRAM projects include
> automating a tactile graphic decision tree to target the efforts of
> experts; multiple projects around 3D printing as an inexpensive, emerging
> output format for tactile objects; our Poet tool for crowd sourcing image
> descriptions and MathML; tools to read QR codes as labels on tactile
> graphics to increase available information; and work in whole new haptic
> graphical models for fully electronic tactile experiences. We are also
> actively pursuing legal approaches to allow sharing of image descriptions
> and tactile graphics files to reduce costly re-work by underfunded schools
> and nonprofit organizations/NGO's.
>
> We are developing many of these free tools with publishers and content
> creators in mind and in consideration of the online platforms more and more
> people use to author and publish information. As the entire industry is
> changing the ways in which content is produced and as digital content
> becomes increasingly media rich, we want to ensure that all content that is
> born digital is also born accessible. Through intense collaboration, we are
> advancing open tools and standards so that accessibility is built into
> mainstream products.
>
> The future of braille, empowered by innovations in technology, is bright.
> And while the advancement of technology presents new types of challenges
> for accessibility, we at Benetech see them as tremendous opportunities for
> making content truly and universally accessible. New technology will allow
> breakthroughs that will continue moving people who have vision impairments
> toward a better tomorrow. With cooperative and coordinated efforts across
> many communities, we can achieve a future in which new technologies improve
> braille proficiency and life outcomes for braille readers.
>
> Please join us in realizing this "radical" future!
>
> Bookshare is participating at the National Federation of the Blind's
> National Convention in Orlando, Florida on July 1-6, 2013 and at the
> American Council of the Blind's 52nd Annual National Conference &
> Convention in Columbus, Ohio on July 4-12, 2013. We'd love to meet you
> there!
>
>
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>



-- 
*Dr Denise*

Denise M. Robinson, TVI, Ph.D.
CEO, TechVision, LLC
Specialist in Technology/Training/Teaching for blind/low vision
423-573-6413

Website with hundreds of informational articles & lessons on PC, Office
products, Mac, iPad/iTools and more, all done with
keystrokes: www.yourtechvision.com

"The person who says it cannot be done, shouldn't interrupt the one who is
doing it." --Chinese Proverb

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid: humans are incredibly
slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond
imagination.
--Albert Einstein

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
--Walt Disney