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As a blind individual the iPhone with epub has been a great improvement for me when it comes to reading. I can now get new books as soon as there released inste

by jareds 14y ago

As a blind individual the iPhone with epub has been a great improvement for me when it comes to reading. I can now get new books as soon as there released instead of waiting for them to be available in audio format, or looking for pirated versions on torrent sites. The problem I have with this article is that Braille was not mentioned once. I started reading Braille books when I was young which gave me basic literacy. I no longer read Braille unless I’m coding but in spite of that reading Braille books when I was young gave me the basic foundation to understand grammar well enough to type this post. I don’t know what blind people will miss out on if they use text to speech their entire lives without having to actually interpret text word by word but I’m guessing it is quite a bit.

jcr 14y ago
Though I have reasonably good vision under some conditions, I deal with one of the mild variations of ocular albinism. I can see pretty good but I can't handle some things very well like bright lights, flickering, or some areas of the spectrum, such as older florescent lights. Most of the web where black text is put on a white background is painful for me to read, but luckily I know how to configure my browser to override the default display colors. Over the years, I've set up many computer systems for people with various types of vision limitations, including text-to-speech, special magnification, color pallets within visual range, alternate fonts, and Braille display systems. Sadly, I can't read Braille by touch, and when I check systems to make sure they're working right, I do it visually. Text-to-speech is helpful, but there are many textual clues which are never vocalized. For example, on a UNIX mailing list one user was having trouble understanding some of the emails due to the fact that the convention for indicating a manual page is to put the name of the manual page followed by a left parenthesis, then the number of the manual section, followed by a right parenthesis. His screen reader just sort of skipped over the parenthesis, so he never realized he was being directed to the text based manuals. The major problem with Braille displays is their cost. Most of them are heavily protected by patents, insanely expensive, and extremely limited. Braille is tough to do well on most modern computer systems. Most modern graphical user interfaces are just not designed to give an alternate way of interacting with the system. I've always wondered if it would be feasible to create a pin display? The idea would be basically replacing the pixels of visual displays with pins to create a tactile display. Graphical elements, even pictures, could be represented with raised or lowered pins. The text could be translated to Braille, or rendered as raised pins in a touch-readable font. It would not solve the issue of Braille illiteracy exactly, but from my ignorant view as a sighted person, I believe it could help in a lot of ways, including literacy.

by jareds 14y ago

jcr 14y ago

Though I have reasonably good vision under some conditions, I deal with one of the mild variations of ocular albinism. I can see pretty good but I can't handle some things very well like bright lights, flickering, or some areas of the spectrum, such as older florescent lights. Most of the web where black text is put on a white background is painful for me to read, but luckily I know how to configure my browser to override the default display colors. Over the years, I've set up many computer systems for people with various types of vision limitations, including text-to-speech, special magnification, color pallets within visual range, alternate fonts, and Braille display systems. Sadly, I can't read Braille by touch, and when I check systems to make sure they're working right, I do it visually. Text-to-speech is helpful, but there are many textual clues which are never vocalized. For example, on a UNIX mailing list one user was having trouble understanding some of the emails due to the fact that the convention for indicating a manual page is to put the name of the manual page followed by a left parenthesis, then the number of the manual section, followed by a right parenthesis. His screen reader just sort of skipped over the parenthesis, so he never realized he was being directed to the text based manuals. The major problem with Braille displays is their cost. Most of them are heavily protected by patents, insanely expensive, and extremely limited. Braille is tough to do well on most modern computer systems. Most modern graphical user interfaces are just not designed to give an alternate way of interacting with the system. I've always wondered if it would be feasible to create a pin display? The idea would be basically replacing the pixels of visual displays with pins to create a tactile display. Graphical elements, even pictures, could be represented with raised or lowered pins. The text could be translated to Braille, or rendered as raised pins in a touch-readable font. It would not solve the issue of Braille illiteracy exactly, but from my ignorant view as a sighted person, I believe it could help in a lot of ways, including literacy.