Re: [orca-list] the low cost canute braille display

["B. Henry" <burt1iband gmail com>]

Good points/usage cases. Also the comprehention of data organization and formatting is different when one has 
a physical display as opposed to having to 
imagine relative position of words and symbols. For math this difference can be night and day. Looking at 
computer code being able to touch indention 
would save time and make for a much smoother mental work flow I think.
It certainly seems like a no brainer to combine general purpose braille computer display functionality with 
any stand alone braille e-book reader, and 
having stand alone e-book reading capability is actually pretty cool also for some of the situations you 
bring up. That being said, being connected to a 
device with a visual display would have been nice when I read outloud to my daughter so that she could have 
followed along looking at pictures and later 
print words.
We used as many print braille books as we could find, mostly kids books from the National Braille Press. My 
main complaint was that there were not more 
titles available...lol, but also it would have been nice to have more Spanish language content. A braille 
e-book reading device would probably have 
helped with both issues.
Of course none of this is a adequit substitution for hard copy braille or print braille when it comes to 
those bedtime reading sessions, camping trips, 
etc., but compared with nothing...         
I have seen how blind young people  struggle here with their more advanced math courses in highschool and 
college. It takes long enough for most non 
math wizz students to do their homework and prepare for exams, but when you add the time required to punch 
out hardcopy braille versions of much of 
a tesxtbook with 
a slate and stylus there's not much time left for sleep, much less work or a social life.  
Braille literacy is very important for a few different reasons, and I'm very much in favour of anything that 
helps bring braille, both paper and 
electronic, in to the lives of more people. 
 
-- 
     B.H.
   Registerd Linux User 521886


  Alex Midence wrote:
Fri, Jul 03, 2015 at 04:05:56PM -0500

> Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch for just an eBook reader but, totally doable
> if it's a refreshable braille display that you can apply for general reading
> purposes i.e. screenreader output.  All things considered, the idea that
> there is a refrehsable braille device of any kind out there for such a low
> price and multiline to boot is wonderful to me.  I have always been a
> proponent of braille literacy and I find it immensely alarming how many
> blind people can't read it because they don't find it practical to use in
> the home or outside of academia because of bulky hardcopy or inaccessibly
> expensive devices. Audio speech output is no substitute for direct
> interaction with the text, imho.  Yeah, you can speed things up such that
> you inhale data at 750 wpm but, what are you gonna do when your kid wants
> you to read him a bedtime story or your church wants you to read from the
> Bible or you want to be a guest reader at your favorite book club.
>
> Alex M
>
>
>
> On 6/24/2015 5:36 PM, B. Henry wrote:
> > Well, there's enough processing power in the latest raspberryPI to make it refresh fast enough if the code 
> > is right, and it's fos, so someone should
> > make it right if it is not.
> > I think this has a lot of potential, and now that the word is out hopefuly mor  ppl will start 
> > contributing to the project.
> > I've never had any e-braille device, but this is coming pretty close to being something I'd find a way to 
> > afford assuming the code gets written so that
> > I can use it with screenreader output, i.e. not just as a ebook reader.