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

Wed Jul 17 12:08:34 UTC 2013

This is a tough thread because so many components are involved. First I
prefer my Braille note because of portability and the quick ability to take
almost any document and read it right away. For example my church sends me
the bulletin and extra music that isn't in the hymnal via email usually the
Friday before when producing a hard copy would be tricky with my schedule
and there for I have immediate text ready to have what everyone else has at
my finger tips. 

However all if I could have hard copy braille easily for everything I would.
One can't read ahead with one hand to keep a fluent thought going on the
Braille note, but can on paper. So I feel like maybe I could read faster on
a braille display I can read with more expression and know what is coming on
paper more easily. When the choir director says verse 3, I can quickly move
my hands down, or the teacher says let's move to page 32 I can very quickly
do this. With the Braille note I have to worry about whether it was even
labeled or not. It is also harder to know just how long a passage is. So I
love both, but if I could I'd have it all on paper. The sure size and ease
has me using the Braille note more.

Bran

-----Original Message-----
From: blindkid [mailto:blindkid-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Arielle
Silverman
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 11:44 PM
To: Blind Kid Mailing List, (for parents of blind children)
Subject: Re: [blindkid] Question: Braille Displays or Paper Braille for
Increased Reading Speed?

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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