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

[Darcirae Hooks]

My biggest beef, is the cost to get the technology to my Braille reading 9 year old. Computers for my sighted children are way more affordable than for Caiden. I don't feel this is fair. Also at what point do u take the plunge, break the bank, just to be told u r better off waiting until he is older bc technology gets outdated too quickly. 
My sighted kids don't worry bc we can update or afford a new computer but braillenote is too expensive to have that in the plan. 

Any suggestions????

Darci

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 15, 2013, at 15:26, "Dr. Denise M Robinson" <deniserob at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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