[blindkid] Question: Braille Displays or Paper Braille for Increased Reading Speed?

Penny Duffy pennyduffy at gmail.com
Wed Jul 17 04:38:17 UTC 2013 

This is a really interesting question.. Kids are being introduced to
braille displays  sooner and sooner. So the question is what skill is more
important reading via braille display or reading paper braille.  In order
to read fast both require different skill sets.   There is also  advantages
and disadvantages to both. They both are braille.   I know my daughter much
prefers reading on her braille display since she can do it much faster (i
think the one line space has a lot to do with that)  With her reading tutor
today they were reading via a braille display and she was LOVING the book.
  She read via paper braille today with her TVI  and she didn't enjoy that
book as much.  If she is able to raise her reading level quicker with
braille on a braille display is that a bad thing?

I think both skill sets are very important. Isn't  the material and how
effective it is used the most important thing for the student not how they
accessed it?  Is the material superior on paper braille over braille on a
display?.  It important to remember that education is so different than it
was 20 years ago and it will be different in another 20 years.  The adult
braille readers who use braille displays may be very different then the
children who are using them now.  In today's world a sighted child can get
a print book on an ereader in seconds and with a braille displays braille
readers can do the same.  Its the practice by some teachers (some really
amazing teacher to)  to delay introduction of braille displays untill the
child is  strong braille reader  on paper but if the rest of the class is
using iPads (or other tech) is it appropriate to make that child wait and
not be able to participate fully with her class?

I rambled a bit and I will admit to having a fever so I may not have made
much sense at all :)


On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 11:43 PM, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Agreed, if page numbers are missing and the instruction is to read
> specific pages or paragraphs that are numbered, this is a problem.
> although it can also be a problem with hard-copy Braille books if the
> page numbers given are print page numbers and such numbers aren't
> contained in the Braille book.
> I also agree about open-book quizzes, but maintain that for homework
> assignments and other "practice" work prior to a test, reading the
> whole chapter is, in my experience, a more effective learning method
> than merely skimming. Full reading takes a little more time on the
> front end, but requires less studying and re-reading later. I advise
> sighted students against skimming and highlighting in favor of fully
> reading all the content presented to them. In fact, I credit my
> inability to skim as a contributing factor to my academic success.
> Regarding tactile diagrams, this may be a controversial statement, but
> I personally have found almost all tactile diagrams to be either
> superfluous or useless, and would have preferred they be either
> omitted entirely or verbally described. It is very difficult to get
> the required degree of detail into a tactile diagram that you can get
> into a print one. Again this is just my opinion, and I am genuinely
> interested to know if other blind people find tactile diagrams to be
> worth the trouble of making them. It could also be different for folks
> who have had useful sight at one point in their lives (I never did). I
> also think there are a few times when tactile diagrams are beneficial,
> for example when learning basic algebraic concepts such as slopes and
> parabolas. But for many subjects spatial knowledge just isn't very
> important for understanding the higher-order concepts. As a biology
> major, I found that knowing what a cell looks like was important for
> only a tiny fraction of the curriculum, and it was much more critical
> for me to understand the processes involved in photosynthesis, for
> example. Diagrams are highly valued by sighted learners because they
> help sighted learners organize information, but I'm not convinced they
> hold the same benefits for blind learners (particularly
> congenitally-blind ones, who from the start are used to organizing
> information nonvisually). Thoughts?
> Arielle
>
> On 7/16/13, Richard Holloway <rholloway at gopbc.org> wrote:
> > I maintain that Kendra is faster at reading books on her braillenote than
> > paper (though I would like to time this soon if she will cooperate just
> to
> > confirm this with actual data), but it should be said that the
> Braillenote
> > has proven somewhat disastrous with certain textbooks which have been
> > supplied electronically and without page numbers of any kind.
> >
> > When an assignment comes home that says to "read pages 87-93" and there
> are
> > no page numbers chapter references, or content hints, the "find command"
> is
> > entirely useless.
> >
> > Then there are the issues about having no tactile diagrams or
> illustrations
> > on a note taker. Maybe with a full page Braille display one day that
> won't
> > be an issue, but a simple text dump of a print textbook is insufficient
> to
> > produce Braille diagrams, so much of the problem is probably as much
> related
> > to the porting process from print to Braille as it is to any display
> > limitations.
> >
> > We could probably quickly produce another lengthy thread about Braille
> text
> > books. In our experience, certainly paper Braille texts work best, though
> > ideally we would have paper Braille and electronic.
> >
> > Our biggest Braille text issues last year were probably the
> no-page-number
> > issue for e-Braille-only books, and comments in paper Braille texts like
> > "diagram omitted". Diagram of what? (And why could such diagrams not be
> > produced as tactile pieces, if not well described in Braille?)
> >
> > The problem of open-book quizzes was also a frustrating one for us. It
> seems
> > to us that reading a lengthy Braille passage (perhaps a whole chapter)
> for
> > answers is somewhat different than glancing visually for a headline to
> zero
> > in on the right section of a textbook so you can read just the right
> > paragraphs. It is doable, but surely a different (and slower) testing
> > process.
> >
> > Then there is the web-based text solution that has become a new trend
> here--
> > the county supplies some texts on-line only and the site is entirely
> > inaccessible without some sighted assistance. JAWS cannot navigate these
> > books, and the text, though self-reading (it reads aloud) can't be
> started
> > reasonably by a blind user, and stops at random locations (and needs
> another
> > mouse click to restart, generally mid-paragraph, in a location that, so
> far,
> > is generally impossible to find with a screen reader).
> >
> > I'm not clear why the county would license tens of thousands of
> electronic
> > copies of various textbooks from a vendor supplying inaccessible
> products. I
> > doubt the texts are even legal to sell in the configuration supplied.
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> > On Jul 16, 2013, at 8:34 PM, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Sally,
> >>
> >> It surprises me that your son couldn't efficiently navigate back to
> >> specific parts of the text on the BrailleNote. Although there is the
> >> disadvantage of not being able to locate section headings, the
> >> BrailleNote does have the find command, which allows one to search for
> >> a specific word or phrase anywhere in the text. Did he try using the
> >> Find command (space + F)? It may also be possible to replace section
> >> headings with double paragraph breaks.
> >> I agree with you, though, that hard-copy Braille allows us to see how
> >> documents are formatted.
> >>
> >> Arielle
> >>
> >> On 7/16/13, Sarah Thomas <seacknit at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> Although I think a braille display could be a faster way to absorb
> >>> braille
> >>> if one is an efficient user, I worry about the thought that the display
> >>> could be thought of as a replacement for paper braille.  One important
> >>> difference in my mind, is learning how a page is formatted.  Also,
> >>> formatting is a means of conveying information.
> >>>
> >>> When the school district my son attended learned that print could be
> >>> converted to braille with a .doc file on the braillenote, they tried to
> >>> give
> >>> him 40 (print) page reading assignments with questions at the end that
> >>> referred to specific paragraphs in the text.  It was not possible for
> him
> >>> to
> >>> navigate the assignment on the braillenote with efficiency.  As
> >>> unfortunate
> >>> as it is, there is not one solution to the braille reading issue.
> >>>
> >>> Sally Thomas
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Jul 17, 2013, at 3:29 AM, Allison Hilliker <AllisonH at benetech.org>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Hi All,
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I had a question that came to my mind due in part to the fascinating
> >>>> Braille discussion we've had on this list lately. Do you know if
> >>>> Braille
> >>>> format has any impact on Braille reading speeds and fluency? In other
> >>>> words, is one more likely to increase their reading speed by using
> >>>> hardcopy Braille as opposed to a Braille display? Or does Braille
> >>>> reading
> >>>> speed simply increase with practice regardless of how one gets their
> >>>> Braille? Are your kids/students increasing reading speeds through
> their
> >>>> displays or do they still use hardcopy a lot when learning?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I ask because an NFB member who is also a Braille instructor once told
> >>>> me
> >>>> that It is harder to increase reading speed using a Braille display
> >>>> than
> >>>> it is using paper Braille. Does anyone know if this is true?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks,
> >>>>
> >>>> Allison
> >>>>
> >>>>
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-- 
-- 
--Penny
----------
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