Hi ChrisWell Smith Kettleweall and Rand did a few papers on those very subjects, but Rand choose to use partially sighted and Smith Kettlewell used more functionally blind voluntteers in several of their studies. . Anyway I love your interest in human factors analysis.
One of the facts is that braille is as most people here know, is divided into codes and that would include the less used and learned Nemeth Code, so even among braille readers you have some that do now know a code for mathematics and scientific notation.which without a code you cannot write .
I think about those who do not know the braille code or who learn auditorially because of physical disabiity if the equasions make as much sense. Somehow the writing of an equasion and seeing it on paper or touching it in braille gives it a multi-dimessional aspect and would cause it to go to different hemispheres of the brain. Thus the learnng and practical aspects of say chemisty would be different if solely in audiotory form.
I asked this question once to two neuropsycholoigists and rehabiitiation medicine doctors and I got two different answers, about if persons who were blind or visually impaired processed informaton the same as persons who were fully sighted. One said the way you learned was not important, and the second one said it was important. One said that the testing results of visual spacial aspects in a visually impaired person were valid and the other said they were not valid as compared to sighted persons. One said that if you did not learn visually and use the visual center of your brain (and this could be done tactcially or with eyesight or kinisethetics) then your visual part of your brain did not learn this. The other theorist said this did not matter but upon testing results it appeared it did matter.
So what do these kind of studies and thoughts have to do with us here trying to scan books? One of the first things that is important is that for the first time the disabled person will have more of a say in the formulation of the scanning process and be able to participate in it. Before this was a sighted only for the " blind activity." Now the technology not only gives the end consumer here access to the end goal but also the means to participate in its production. Now instead of advocacy groups and committees behind closed doors we just scan and validate.
So as we here struggle with charts and quotes and diagrams, we are struggling with a philosopical concenpt that we are struggling to become more equal in our society and to help each other as disabled persons to be more educated and independant.
And here we now have choice: in our way we want to learn. Instead of someone saying you can or cannot have that in braille, large print, Or saysing you can hear it but not go look at it. Now we have the file easible and quickly downloadable to put into whatever format is best for us..
What a gift!! Ok, enough philosophy and human factors. Back to reality.Back to installing my ebay find scanners on XP. And fiquring out how to buy zoomtext with speech output, braille translator and a braille display on $626 a month.
Colleen Edwards email: scenter@xxxxxxxxxxx----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Hofstader" <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 7:09 AM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: reading technical material in braille
One aspect of the research I do on my own (which is to say that no one pays me to do it but I sometimes publish articles about the work in professional periodicals and present the odd paper at a conference) specifically regardsfinding ways to deliver information for the STEM (Science, Technology,Engineering and mathematics) in a reasonably efficient manner. There are avariety of mathematical formulae Braille systems but, when we look at the entire Earth and its population of people with vision impairments, we find that only a negligible number of PWVI have any access to Braille as it is very expensive to produce on paper and for the most part there are norefreshable Braille displays that are affordable even to people who live inthe wealthy nations. At least math has had a relatively large number of people looking at the problem. One of our primary objectives at BSO, though, is to deliver alltext books for K-12 students in an accessible format. Thus, the question ofmuch of my intellectual life: how do we, in audio only, deliver relativelycomplex formulae beyond math. How do we, for instance, find an audio methodof a basic chemistry molecular model containing one oxygen and two hydrogen's? What does a water atom sound like? There are some terrific tactile versions of the periodical table of theelements so that problem is solved but how do we represent the formula that describes adding sodium (in its solid form) to h2o and tell the student theresulting compound plus the release of energy (this is a very common experiment in high school chemistry as it is really cool that simply dropping a solid into water would cause a fire in your beaker.Even the most elementary physics equations can be complex as energy is lostor `v or any number of other things happen which sighted people use to describe the event that I do not believe has ever been attempted in audio.One solution, of course, will be the $1 Braille display when someone inventsit. Until then, we need to find a way to deliver simultaneous semantic information that makes sense to the student without breaking out of the boundaries of the human attention model, short term memory and basic learning theory. I always love to hear ideas on these topics as they have grown from an interest into a quasi-obsession. cdh Chris Hofstader CUNY, BSO, ATG, Odds and Ends email: cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Blog: http://www.blindconfidential.blogspot.com Skype: BlindChristian phone: 727-896-6393 -----Original Message----- From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of E. Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2008 11:08 AM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bksvol-discuss] reading technical material in braille You can read the books in braille now. Just download the daisy and then ask the bookshare unpack tool to unpack the html extension. Some braille notetakers can read html files. If yours cannot then you can open the html in another application and then do a save as and save the file as a rtf. Your notetaker will read rtf files. At 11:01 AM 8/23/2008, you wrote:I hope that some day, they can make these books available in BRF format. When reading technical things, I do better with braille. One of the things I always wonder about these books is where to start. In other words, there may be several books on a subject, but which one should be read first? To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subjectline.__________ NOD32 3382 (20080823) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.comTo unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxput the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list ofavailable commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. __________ NOD32 3366 (20080819) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxput the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
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