[duxuser] ASCII Braille Entry?
- From: "Susan Jolly" <easjolly@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 16:04:51 -0600
Hi Duxusers:
I've enjoyed the interesting answers to my question about six-key versus
full keyboard entry of ASCII Braille. Thank you!
My main concern is the current shortage of braille transcribers and whether
there are things we can do differently in the future to make it easier for
sighted persons to learn how to become transcribers.
If you already know and prefer six-key typing that's great. The problem is
when potential braillists (or even parents who want to learn braille)
mistakenly believe that six-key typing is the only option for entering
electronic braille. It may be that the unnecessary requirement to learn this
skill is creating an unnecessary barrier.
An interesting trend is the increasing adoption by braille users of
stand-alone braille displays that cable to any standard PC as this is
somewhat the opposite of what's going on with sighted braillists. By the
way, some blind-since-birth braille users have told me that when they type
on a QWERTY keyboard, they don't necessarily think of, say, the comma key as
a comma key but as the dot-6 key. And, as Francis reminded us, braille users
discovered the value of ASCII Braille and computer braille, which is
essentially the inverse of ASCII Braille, when the first VersaBrailles
became available some 25 years ago.
Kathy's right that it is annoying that the North American ASCII Braille
equivalents for some of the most commonly-used braille contractions are
slower to type because of their location on a standard keyboard. Direct
entry speed should not, however, be a major consideration for Duxusers since
translating print to braille with DBT is so very much faster than direct
entry no matter how fast you can type using your preferred method.
However, if do you want to directly-enter a large amount of electronic
braille for some reason, there's nothing stopping you from using your own
conventions, such as capital T for dots-2346, and then changing all the
capital T's and so forth to the correct characters when you are finished.
If you were to find yourself spending a lot of time doing this, you could
likely get a local high school student to write a simple computer program
for instantaneously converting from your preferred convention to the
standard one.
Kaari's post was thought-provoking. If sighted persons are taught that the
"er" contraction is dots-12456 and then, oh by the way, you have to remember
to type a right square bracket to get those dots, that's double learning
which, not surprisingly, seems illogical. But why not simply start by
teaching sighted persons who want to be transcribers that a right square
bracket stands for "er"? (The reason for that choice is because it also
stands for the termination indicator in Nemeth.) I find "right square
bracket" a lot easier to remember than "12456" and it's certainly easier to
write with pencil and paper.
Of course, which one seems easier likely depends on which you are more
familiar with. If you learn the dots first, then you are going to focus on
them. However, if sighted persons were taught ASCII Braille first, it would
probably seem more natural than dots.
By the way, if you want to learn North American ASCII Braille for some
reason, it's useful to know that it isn't arbitrary. Many of the
associations other than the letters are based on the common Nemeth meanings
of the corresponding cells so you get a head start on learning Nemeth.
Other associations are based on a similarity in shape between the braille
cell and the ASCII print character so learning ASCII Braille can actually
help you learn these shapes or cells. The ones in this latter category
include dots-123456 (ASCII equals), dots-12356 (left paren), dots-23456
(right paren), dots-126 (less than), dots-146 (per cent), dots-1456
(question mark), dots-1256 (back slash), dots-246 (left bracket), dots-34
(forward slash), and dots-345 (greater than).
Also, remember that it's only the actual typing method that differs, not the
result. If you prefer looking at dots on your screen, you can use a braille
font with either method although a print font works especially well for
proofing Nemeth. As far as feeling the dots, they feel the same no matter
which typing method you use.
This duxuser list probably isn't the right forum for long discussions about
improvements to the training of braille transcribers but I hope that this
issue will be explored elsewhere.
Sincerely,
SusanJ
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