[bksvol-discuss] Re: Awesome - 151,663 Titles on Bookshare

  • From: "Sandi Ryan" <sjryan2@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2012 11:02:50 -0500

    Just one thought on this topic:  Since one sighted person sees something 
different from another's perception, who is to say who sees "the whole picture" 
and who doesn't?  You have a right, of course, to believe that sight is the way 
to "see" things as they are, and nothing else is as good.

Having been blind all my life, I find that too many details just clutter up my 
brain.  Do I want description?  Yes, I do.  It gives me a mental picture--valid 
or not--of what I'm reading about.  Many authors do this extremely well without 
pictures--they do it in words.  Those are the best descriptions, because they 
come directly from the author's mind.  But do I need to know about missing 
hairs, dust motes, etc.?  Only if it has value to the story.  

I've always felt a little lucky not to have to be distracted by everything 
people can see.  Nothing annoys me more than standing somewhere having a 
conversation with a sighted person, who's purportedly paying attention to our 
conversation, and to have them suddenly yell out "Hey, Judy, I need to talk to 
you!"  As a blind person, when I'm with you talking, I'm with you!  In that 
way, I think blindness is better!

Now, before you think I believe everyone should be blind, I'll tell you I do 
not.  But I do think a lot of sighted people need to stop being distracted by 
every little thing they can see and learn to focus their vision, as I must 
focus my hearing, touch, smell and taste, to "see" not the whole world, but the 
important parts!

There you have the opinion of a blind person.

Sandi

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Roger Loran Bailey 
  To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2012 10:22 AM
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Awesome - 151,663 Titles on Bookshare


  When I was losing my eyesight I had numerous eye surgeries. On occasion I 
found myself in a hospital bed with my eyes bandaged and the nurses would come 
around. This blindness stuff was rather new to me, so I asked the nurses to 
describe themselves. Some of them went into very great detail and I formed 
mental images of them. Then the bandages would come off and I could see them 
and I saw that their descriptions were very accurate. However, none of them 
looked anything at all like I had them pictured. The simple fact is that if you 
have normal eyesight and you merely glance at something you, without even 
necessarily being consciously aware of it, take in an enormous amount of subtle 
detail. These details include very subtle grades of color, texture,minute 
features, a wayward hair, a dust mote levels of lighting, sources of lighting, 
background detail and so many other things that neither I nor anyone else can 
go into them. This is all in just a single glance, not even a careful study. 
Your description may be good, but it cannot possibly cover everything. There is 
just too much, including details that even though you are looking right at them 
you are not consciously aware of and that other people seeing the same thing 
may be aware of. I once met a blind woman who insisted that describing was just 
as good as seeing because she could describe someone well enough that you could 
pick them out in a crowd. She had never seen, though, and my disagreement with 
her was based on my previous experience as a sighted person. She still insisted 
though. I am sure that those nurses had described themselves well enough that I 
could have picked them out in a crowd too, but they still did not look anything 
like I had them pictured. Descriptions often have to do and some descriptions 
do better than other descriptions, but there is no way that a description will 
reproduce the picture. 

  On 6/23/2012 2:11 AM, Cindy wrote:

    I must take issue with your comment that "no" words can cover all the 
detail in a picture that an eye can take in a single glance. It does,however, 
take a great many words. If you look at some of the early children's books for 
which I described pictures, you'll see they are very detailed--including the 
pictures on the walls, the furniture  in rooms, the clothes the people wore, 
what the people looked like, what food was fallng from the sky, and more; I was 
so used to being very detailed in my picture descriptions that I kept on when I 
described the various photos and pictures in Medals of Honor; especially when 
it was pointed out that many blind people had no idea what the medal of Honor 
was or what some of the statues and locations that I identified looked

    It occurred to me, later that it was not necessary in adult books that I 
later proofed that I had to describe the illustrations; I could just identify 
them. When I began describing images for the Poet Project, I continued being 
detailed in my descriptions; check the descriptions in the the early pages  of 
Glencoe Health book. Then I was told that the image descriptions should be 
*short* complete sentences; so I stopped describing what the person looked like 
and what he/she was wearing and the surroundings. I wish I could remember which 
history book the textile mill photo is in. That description took a great many 
words (and time) to describe.
    Cindy



      From: Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
      To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
      Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 5:20 PM
      Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Awesome - 151,663 Titles on Bookshare


      Actually, I think a picture is worth so many times a thousand words that 
the count is unimaginable. That is, no description can possibly cover all the 
detail in a picture that a single glance can take in.
      On 6/22/2012 6:05 PM, Chela Robles wrote:
      > And, you do know a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
      > 
      > -- "Passion is a great motivator. Music is a life-long learning 
experience."
      > -- Chela Robles
      > Facebook/Linked-In/E-mail/AIM/GoogleTalk: cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxx
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      > Learning Ally Blog A Lady And Her Trumpet feel free to post comments by 
filling out the form on the page at: http://tinyurl.com/84tucwv
      > I volunteer for Bookshare, to find out more and to volunteer with 
us,visit: http://www.bookshare.org/
      > Join us in celebrating our 10th Anniversary!
      > http://tinyurl.com/752cyrs
      > Need more space, come join dropbox and start with two gigs of free 
space as is this is my referral link to you: http://db.tt/XpUTe0E
      > -- 
      > On 6/22/2012 3:00 PM, Ali Al-hajamy wrote:
      >> It may sound odd, but even as a blind participant who has never had 
sight of any sort, illustrations are important to me because I read many 
fictions which use illustrations in an effort to produce a certain desired 
effect with pictures, and even just knowing what is on the page is enough to 
get me involved enough in the book to feel the effect they're trying to 
accomplish. Two examples are The Raw Shark Texts, by Steven Hall, and The 
Tunnel, by William H. Gass. In the former case, at one point, the main 
character falls out of a ship and into water, and a giant shark made entirely 
of words and information (it's complicated) begins to swim through the water 
twoards him. For maybe forty pages, the picture of the shark is printed on the 
page, and it keeps getting larger and larger. Because each page had a 
description of the shark swimming twoards the character, growing with each 
page, my experience of the book was more enhanced than if I didn't have those 
descriptions. My reaction to the rest of the book was mixed, but that was one 
trick which I thought worked very well. It was hilarious and terrifying at the 
same time.
      >> The Tunnel is a more complicated case.
      >> (SPOILERS AHEAD! It doesn't matter since I can't think of anyone here 
[or anywhere, really] who would be interested in reading that book, but just in 
case...)
      >> It is about a college professor, called William Frederick Kohler, who 
is working on his hypothesis concerning the Germans, called Guilt and Innocence 
in Hitler's Germany. he has almost completed it, save for the introduction, but 
cannot manage to write those final pages:
      >> "It was my intention, when I began, to write an introduction to my 
work on the Germans. Though its thick folders lie beside me now, I know I 
cannot. Endings, instead, possess me. all ways out.
      >> 
      >> Embarrassed, I'm compelled to smile. I was going to extend my sympathy 
to my opponents. Here, in my introduction, raised above me like an arch of 
triumph, I meant to place a wreath upon myself. But each time I turned my pen 
to the task, it turned aside to strike me.
      >> 
      >> As I look at the pages of my manuscript, or stare at the books which 
wall my study, I realize I must again attempt to put this prison of my life in 
language."
      >> 
      >> He begins to write an extended meditation about his own life instead 
of the introduction to the book he thought he had to have. Around two hundred 
pages in, he also begins to dig a tunnel out of his basement, creating his own 
physical metaphor and giving the books title duel meanings. We, the readers, 
are tunnelling into his thoughts, he is tunnelling out of the life he hates, 
with the new book he is writing about himself he is tunnelling away from the 
hypothesis he can't finish. And all the tunnels lead to a dead end. (There's a 
point to this, I swear). Gass uses numerous graphical tricks to immerse you in 
the experience. Drawings, cartoons, at one point, a page that is made to look 
like a crinkled grocery sack, ETC. I haven't read the entire book yet, but one 
that stands out at me is the very last page. Kohler has created his own 
imaginary political group, called the party of the Disappointed People, yet he 
knows that this, like everything else, would be a failure because it's the type 
of party few would want to admit they've joined. At the end of the book, he is 
in ruins. His wife is leaving him, he has nearly been buried alive by his 
tunnel, he doesn't know what the point to both his books was:
      >> "Write no more propaganda for the PdP. Achieve dignity Sport a swatch 
of Shawwhite beard bleached to remove cig stains, and trimmed square to greet 
the face of its maker. In short, to abide. In the last hamlet of feeling. I'm 
inclined to say why not? Sure. Or dump every dirty drawer onto my desk--wasn't 
that really Martha's suggestion?--till the desk's hid, as well as Tabor's 
turning chair and the floor which firmed our feet, covering the pages of my 
History as my History sheeted me; there to let my words wait, like the 
disappointed people bide, before they try life again. Meanwhile carry on 
without complaining. No arm with armband raised on high. No more booming bands, 
no searchlit skies. Or shall I, like the rivers, rise? Ah. Well. Is rising 
wise? Revolver like the Führer near an ear. Or lay my mind down by sorrow's 
side."
      >> 
      >> The final page simply contains the symbol for the PDP. I've likely 
mangled everything in my description, because I haven't read the entire book, 
I've never had to put my admiration for it into words like this, and there's 
so, so much more to it than what I've just described here, so the effect is 
always diminished if you haven't read the entire thing first, but to have gone 
through everything we have with Kohler for 651 pages, to have tunnelled with 
him, so to speak, and then to read his final declaration, followed by that 
reminder of his final failure...It's quite devistating. And I don't think I 
would have experienced the book in that manner if the images were not 
described. I don't even need an especially detailed description, though it 
helps, just something to signify what is on the page. And Bookshare staff and 
volunteers do both wonderfully.
      >> 
      >> Tl;dr (too long; didn't read) version (since I think there might be 
one person who has read this entire message):
      >> I REALLY LIKE THE DESCRIPTIONS THEY'RE VERY HELPFUL AND MAKE THE 
BOOK-READING EXPERIENCE BETTER!
      >> 
      >> On 22-Jun-12 15:40, Judy s. wrote:
      >>> I just looked at the new version of Bookshare's entry page on the 
website (http://www.bookshare.org). I love the new feature on the right hand 
side of the page that's a counter of how many books are in the collection.  As 
of today, there are 151,663 titles.  That is totally awesome.
      >>> 
      >>> As a sighted but disabled member, I'm also grateful for and thrilled 
by the number of publisher quality books that have entered the collection in 
the last 18 months with the original illustrations intact.  I haven't read a 
book where I can look at the illustrations for over 20 years.  Way to go, 
Bookshare!  I'm psyched about the POET project to get illustrations described. 
It gives me hope that eventually everyone can have access to both illustrations 
and good descriptions of the illustrations in the future.
      >>> 
      >>> Judy s.
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