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The real take away here is that only 10% of children who are visually impaired or blind learn braille. Additionally upon looking up that stat cause I figured su

The real take away here is that only 10% of children who are visually impaired or blind learn braille. Additionally upon looking up that stat cause I figured surely it must be sensationalized, 50% of blind students dropout of school and over 70% are unemployed. A lot of it seems to stem from illiteracy. What a fucking outrage. Edit: I had the the percentages backwards, 70% are unemployed and 50% drop out, not the other way around as I had written. Information taken from https://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/documents/pdf/braille_literacy_report_web.pdf https://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/documents/pdf/braille_literac...

miki123211 7y ago
Blind person here, though not living in the US. I don't know the exact stats about unemployment here, but, from my observations, they're pretty similar. Most kids do know braille, though. I think that nowadays, braille doesn't help much, as only blind people can use it anyway. Literacy isn't as important for blind people as for the sighted, as they can't use braille to communicate with the rest of society anyway. I generally consider braille not that useful, except in certain narrow contexts. Beware that this is a personal opinion, and braille versus speech is almost as hot in the blind community as static versus dynamic typing with software developers. I don't really use braille daily (except for math drawings, as I'm still in education). I consider technology to be much, much more important now. Computers have probably been the most revolutionary thing when blind people are concerned. Communicating with the sighted, reading books that haven't been specially prepared, access to services etc. Also programming is one of the most accessible jobs out there, as code is just text that can be read aloud by a program, and most tools are CLI-based or have CLI-based alternatives. I think money would be better spend on teaching people on how to use the internet effectively instead of teaching them braille. Braille is a tool whose existence blind people should be aware of, as it may be useful, but it lost its relevance. When it comes to unemployment, I don't see how braille could help here. Half of the problem is employer bias, actual obstacles that are hard/impossible to overcome or artifical obstacles (inaccessible software) also matter. I think that solving the bias problem would make the situation much better, though. One more problem I see, at least here, is education. Blind people aren't really that aware of what they can realistically do, so they get majors in art, history, literature etc, or think they can get by without good education. No one tells them where to go to have a real chance of finding a job. Sighted people also do it, but, if nothing else works out, they can get a job at Wallmart/Mcdonald's. Blind people don't have that possibility.
- mavhc 7y ago
  As a random observer I always thought that a linear text based OS would be good for blind people, basically what the CLI is but with more metadata, a tree structure so things not of interest could be skipped, eg a long list of filenames. A CLI with folding.
  - toast0 7y ago
    Many years ago, I was looking into emacspeak [1], which seems like it could work for this. (I thought it would be a cool way to interact with a wearable computer; I didn't get much farther than those thoughts) [1] http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/ http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/
    - miki123211 7y ago
      Emacspeak is something I always wanted to try, but keep putting it off for later. Emacs is a powerful tool in itself, and the way Emacspeak integrates with it is unprecedented. It's not just a screen reader getting stuff from OS APIs, it knows a lot about internals of most Emacs features so it can make the speech output as efficient as possible. It also has some cool features like sounds in stereo/3d, changing voice parameters for different text styles etc.
  - miki123211 7y ago
    Actually GUIs or websites, if done right, can be way better than anything that is text based. They include much more semantic information that a screen reader can use. For example, on websites, we have special shortcut keys to i.e. jump to next heading, table, landmark etc. We can even navigate within tables. This makes using most web/electron/chromium apps pretty easy. Most blind people prefer traditional win32 guis, but I actually don't. Problems arise when semantic information isn't provided, as in a web developer making the text whatever color is fashionable now and adding an onClick instead of using <button>. I don't see how a text-based OS would be different from that.
    - mwcampbell 7y ago
dundercoder 7y ago
I tried learning Braille. It’s incredibly difficult, and I’ve only had a handful of times in 10 years where it would have been helpful. In my opinion, screen readers are king. Also, Audible is amazing! My last job search was very enlightening. Coding tests, phone interviews all went great at several places. Step into an in person interview with a white cane though and everything changes. I understand it can make people uncomfortable, especially if I’m the first blind person someone interacts with. But, that doesn’t make it any less illegal to pass on me over someone else all else being equal. I think most hiring managers just aren’t aware of the bias they might bring in to the equation when they encounter a disability for the first few times. Incredibly frustrating though.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  The blind people that I know absolutely excel at what they do. One is a software engineer that is so focused it makes me feel scatterbrained, the other easily the best piano tuner that I've ever met.
jareds 7y ago
Often blindness is one of many disabilities a child may have. If a child is severely impaired basic skills such as the ability to dress and feed them selves are a lot more important then the ability to read braille. I’d like to see these statistics broken down in a way that considers individuals with multiple disabilities.
esoteriq 7y ago
Deafblind person here. Braille isn't a nice to have for me. It's a must-have. We Deafblind are certainly a rare species , and unfortunately, usually forgotten. I learned Braille "later" in life when my sight nosedived at age 27. Best decision I've ever made. A few thoughts about the low Braille literacy levels. First of all, most visually impaired children are not completely blind, and this is especially true with progressive eye conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa (which I have as part of Usher syndrome, which presents with hearing and viision losses). Magnification and color technology has enabled people who can't read 12-point fonts to read now. For instance, I'm close to completely blind in one eye, and have somethign like 20/300 in the other ... and I can use built-in features to zoom in/invert colors to read visually. So, "visually impaired" =/= completely blind. Also, you must use Braille every day to develop neural pathways to process it quickly. It only took me 2 weeks to learn the code. It took me much, much longer to internalize it--to the point when I can jsut put my fingers on it and get it. For people who can still see, especially if they see enough to benefit handsomely form magnification technology, it's hard to feel motivated. There are a lot of other issues that I won't get into. But what I can say is that blind people can get away without learnign Braille, sure, but they won't be able to excel at certain things. For instance, Braille is still the only thing that gives blind people a spatial appreciation for language. Language is more than words. It comes in paragraphs, has puncuation, et cetera. If a blind person wnats to truly master their language, they must learn Braille. They can get buy without it, sure, but ... they won't excel at it. On the pratical side, you need to know braille to label things. This is why I advocate for at least a functional knowledge of Braille. If you have a labeler, you can label wine bottles and cans that feel identical. This is where audio-only approach fails. There's a lot more I could say on the topic, but I'll stop here. Just putting this out there: I wish people would stop sayign that text-to-speech technology has obviated Braille. There are Deafblind people out ther, too, and Braille will always have a place for those who want to excel at writing and reading.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ChrisRR 7y ago
  This may be a stupid question, but how do you read from the computer as a deafblind person? Is there some sort of device that converts the text to braille?
unholiness 7y ago
Almost everyone who is legally blind is partially sighted. The two legally blind people I know both tell me those were most screwed over were the ones who learned to read braille in school instead of printed text. In this world, it's invaluable to simply be able to pull a sheet of paper up right up to a thick lens over your eye and slowly read it. If you only know Braille, you're helpless to solve this predicament, and Braille documents are extremely rare. For digital media, screen readers are an enormous accessibility feature, but having (impaired) vision and knowledge of english is a helpful fallback for the plethora of poorly built sites and applications that have, say, text in an image. Braille is not helpful in a world of flat screens.

miki123211 7y ago

Blind person here, though not living in the US. I don't know the exact stats about unemployment here, but, from my observations, they're pretty similar. Most kids do know braille, though. I think that nowadays, braille doesn't help much, as only blind people can use it anyway. Literacy isn't as important for blind people as for the sighted, as they can't use braille to communicate with the rest of society anyway. I generally consider braille not that useful, except in certain narrow contexts. Beware that this is a personal opinion, and braille versus speech is almost as hot in the blind community as static versus dynamic typing with software developers. I don't really use braille daily (except for math drawings, as I'm still in education). I consider technology to be much, much more important now. Computers have probably been the most revolutionary thing when blind people are concerned. Communicating with the sighted, reading books that haven't been specially prepared, access to services etc. Also programming is one of the most accessible jobs out there, as code is just text that can be read aloud by a program, and most tools are CLI-based or have CLI-based alternatives. I think money would be better spend on teaching people on how to use the internet effectively instead of teaching them braille. Braille is a tool whose existence blind people should be aware of, as it may be useful, but it lost its relevance. When it comes to unemployment, I don't see how braille could help here. Half of the problem is employer bias, actual obstacles that are hard/impossible to overcome or artifical obstacles (inaccessible software) also matter. I think that solving the bias problem would make the situation much better, though. One more problem I see, at least here, is education. Blind people aren't really that aware of what they can realistically do, so they get majors in art, history, literature etc, or think they can get by without good education. No one tells them where to go to have a real chance of finding a job. Sighted people also do it, but, if nothing else works out, they can get a job at Wallmart/Mcdonald's. Blind people don't have that possibility.

mavhc 7y ago
As a random observer I always thought that a linear text based OS would be good for blind people, basically what the CLI is but with more metadata, a tree structure so things not of interest could be skipped, eg a long list of filenames. A CLI with folding.
- toast0 7y ago
  Many years ago, I was looking into emacspeak [1], which seems like it could work for this. (I thought it would be a cool way to interact with a wearable computer; I didn't get much farther than those thoughts) [1] http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/ http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/
  - miki123211 7y ago
    Emacspeak is something I always wanted to try, but keep putting it off for later. Emacs is a powerful tool in itself, and the way Emacspeak integrates with it is unprecedented. It's not just a screen reader getting stuff from OS APIs, it knows a lot about internals of most Emacs features so it can make the speech output as efficient as possible. It also has some cool features like sounds in stereo/3d, changing voice parameters for different text styles etc.
- miki123211 7y ago
  Actually GUIs or websites, if done right, can be way better than anything that is text based. They include much more semantic information that a screen reader can use. For example, on websites, we have special shortcut keys to i.e. jump to next heading, table, landmark etc. We can even navigate within tables. This makes using most web/electron/chromium apps pretty easy. Most blind people prefer traditional win32 guis, but I actually don't. Problems arise when semantic information isn't provided, as in a web developer making the text whatever color is fashionable now and adding an onClick instead of using <button>. I don't see how a text-based OS would be different from that.
  - mwcampbell 7y ago

dundercoder 7y ago

I tried learning Braille. It’s incredibly difficult, and I’ve only had a handful of times in 10 years where it would have been helpful. In my opinion, screen readers are king. Also, Audible is amazing! My last job search was very enlightening. Coding tests, phone interviews all went great at several places. Step into an in person interview with a white cane though and everything changes. I understand it can make people uncomfortable, especially if I’m the first blind person someone interacts with. But, that doesn’t make it any less illegal to pass on me over someone else all else being equal. I think most hiring managers just aren’t aware of the bias they might bring in to the equation when they encounter a disability for the first few times. Incredibly frustrating though.

jacquesm 7y ago
The blind people that I know absolutely excel at what they do. One is a software engineer that is so focused it makes me feel scatterbrained, the other easily the best piano tuner that I've ever met.

jareds 7y ago

Often blindness is one of many disabilities a child may have. If a child is severely impaired basic skills such as the ability to dress and feed them selves are a lot more important then the ability to read braille. I’d like to see these statistics broken down in a way that considers individuals with multiple disabilities.

esoteriq 7y ago

Deafblind person here. Braille isn't a nice to have for me. It's a must-have. We Deafblind are certainly a rare species , and unfortunately, usually forgotten. I learned Braille "later" in life when my sight nosedived at age 27. Best decision I've ever made. A few thoughts about the low Braille literacy levels. First of all, most visually impaired children are not completely blind, and this is especially true with progressive eye conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa (which I have as part of Usher syndrome, which presents with hearing and viision losses). Magnification and color technology has enabled people who can't read 12-point fonts to read now. For instance, I'm close to completely blind in one eye, and have somethign like 20/300 in the other ... and I can use built-in features to zoom in/invert colors to read visually. So, "visually impaired" =/= completely blind. Also, you must use Braille every day to develop neural pathways to process it quickly. It only took me 2 weeks to learn the code. It took me much, much longer to internalize it--to the point when I can jsut put my fingers on it and get it. For people who can still see, especially if they see enough to benefit handsomely form magnification technology, it's hard to feel motivated. There are a lot of other issues that I won't get into. But what I can say is that blind people can get away without learnign Braille, sure, but they won't be able to excel at certain things. For instance, Braille is still the only thing that gives blind people a spatial appreciation for language. Language is more than words. It comes in paragraphs, has puncuation, et cetera. If a blind person wnats to truly master their language, they must learn Braille. They can get buy without it, sure, but ... they won't excel at it. On the pratical side, you need to know braille to label things. This is why I advocate for at least a functional knowledge of Braille. If you have a labeler, you can label wine bottles and cans that feel identical. This is where audio-only approach fails. There's a lot more I could say on the topic, but I'll stop here. Just putting this out there: I wish people would stop sayign that text-to-speech technology has obviated Braille. There are Deafblind people out ther, too, and Braille will always have a place for those who want to excel at writing and reading.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ChrisRR 7y ago
This may be a stupid question, but how do you read from the computer as a deafblind person? Is there some sort of device that converts the text to braille?

unholiness 7y ago

Almost everyone who is legally blind is partially sighted. The two legally blind people I know both tell me those were most screwed over were the ones who learned to read braille in school instead of printed text. In this world, it's invaluable to simply be able to pull a sheet of paper up right up to a thick lens over your eye and slowly read it. If you only know Braille, you're helpless to solve this predicament, and Braille documents are extremely rare. For digital media, screen readers are an enormous accessibility feature, but having (impaired) vision and knowledge of english is a helpful fallback for the plethora of poorly built sites and applications that have, say, text in an image. Braille is not helpful in a world of flat screens.