[duxuser] Re: Article on Braille transcription
- From: "Susan Jolly" <easjolly@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 13:49:56 -0600
I've appreciated the responses to the article in the Boston Globe and I
would especially like to applaud Catherine's post underlining some of the
aspects essential to quality braille.
In my mind, many of the problems we encounter today are inherent in our odd
paradigm where editing and production are done simultaneously by the same
braillist.
Editing is a high-level skill requiring considerable judgment or what Sharon
called "brain matter". Catherine pointed out that a braille editor needs to
"understand what portions of a document a Braille reader finds useful and
which portions only provide clutter, confusion, and unnecessary pages." Ann
earlier mentioned the difficulties of transcribing complicated tables.
Anyone on this list can come up with numerous other examples.
However, we also need to acknowledge that, unlike editing, expertise in the
use of word-processing or other software is no longer either a rare or a
high-level skill. Even children in kindergarten are now taught the basics
of computer use. By sixth grade our local students, who begin using word
processors in second grade, are expected to "use technology tools for
individual and collaborative writing, communication, and publishing
activities" and to be able to "determine which software application is most
appropriate to solve a problem."
Thirty or so years ago, before the widespread use of electronic publishing
in print, it was accepted practice that editing and typesetting of print
documents required different kinds of expertise and that these two
activities would typically be carried out by different persons. As an
example, the following is from the Style Manual of the American Institute of
Physics first published in 1951. "The transformation of a scientific paper
from a manuscript into a published article involves old and complicated
techniques." Once a paper has been approved for publication, "it leaves the
hands of people who understand its content, but may not know how to print
it, and goes into the hands of people who may not know what the article
means but can prepare it for publication."
With braille production we are in the odd situation where it seems that a
trained braillist often has no way of leveraging his or her considerable
high-level braille editing skills other than by spending the majority of
time dealing with what should be straightforward low-level technical matters
analogous to typesetting. We cannot expect braille transcribing to be viewed
as a true profession under these circumstances. After all, we don't expect
a secretary -- who uses commercial software to transcribe information
dictated by a doctor, lawyer, author, or other professional -- to get the
same recognition as the creator of that information.
Properly designed software can leverage human expertise. Spellcheckers which
present a list of alternatives are a simple example. Perhaps Duxbury Systems
and the users on this list can come up with ways that the next version of
DBT can better leverage the valuable expertise of highly-skilled braillists.
SusanJ
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