Braille on Line
Braille on Line
From the Electronic Mail Basket:
Teaching Braille Online
by Curtis Chong
From the Editor: A couple of months ago now, Curtis
Chong, President of the National Federation of the Blind in
Computer Science, sent me an exchange of comments--can one
refer to such exchanges as letters when they were never
intended to appear on paper? I found the information
interesting and, on the whole, reassuring. It is clear that
Federationists are patrolling the Internet and that people
of good will from various places are working to increase the
number of people who know and like Braille. It is also
comforting to see a constructive dialog begin among folks
who started a conversation in distrust and unhappiness. Here
is the exchange that was first printed in the Winter, 1996,
edition of Computer Science Update, the publication of the
NFB's computer science division:
On December 12, 1996, an announcement was sent out over
the Internet about a new on-line Braille course. The
announcement was made jointly by the School of Education at
the North Carolina Central University (Durham, North
Carolina), the Governor Morehead School for the Blind, and
the Shodor Education Foundation, Inc. In a nutshell the
announcement promoted something called "BRL: Braille through
Remote Learning," a program funded in part by the U.S.
Department of Education. Here is part of the announcement:
This program provides teachers, parents,
social workers, and current/future Braille
transcribers with a series of three integrated,
online courses in Braille and Braille
transcribing. The program is designed to offer the
Braille student the RIGHT INSTRUCTION (almost all
aspects of Braille) at the RIGHT TIME (self-paced)
in the RIGHT PLACE (home or workplace). By
combining electronic technologies, quality
materials, and expert instructors, the program has
as its goal the provision of a complete Braille
instructional program to all types of consumers
nationwide who have an interest in some or all
aspects of Braille codes.
Blind people who read the announcement took exception
to the course requirement for a graphical web browser. They
expressed the opinion that this requirement would render the
course inaccessible to the blind. I understand that Bob
Gotwals, the contact person for the course, received many
impassioned notes by electronic mail on this subject. Here
is an example of one note, which was posted to the EASI
mailing list:
From Jim Rebman [an active member of the NFB of Colorado]:
I would like to point out that the technical
requirements and course materials, as you describe them,
preclude blind people who depend on speech synthesis and
screen reader technology from participating in this course.
The requirement for a graphical browser and the use of Java
scripts and graphical images (which I assume are not
described) are all integral, yet inaccessible parts of your
course.
As you are probably aware, blind people can be parents,
teachers, social workers, and Braille transcriptionists. By
making your course materials inaccessible, you are
effectively discriminating against the blind population. I
am certain that this was not intentional but nonetheless,
that is the result and, as somebody who frequents this list,
I would think you would be more aware of these issues. I
would also like to remind you that there are laws that
protect disabled people from such things.
Respectfully,
Jim Rebman [email protected]
P.S. Do you plan to do anything about this situation?
I myself wrote to Bob Gotwals in my capacity as
President of the NFB in Computer Science, asking for
clarification. Here is what I said:
December 17, 1996
Mr. Bob Gotwals
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.
Durham, North Carolina
Dear Mr. Gotwals:
My name is Curtis Chong, and I am the president of the
National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science
(NFBCS). This organization of blind computer professionals
and lay persons works hard to ensure that blind people have
equal access to computer systems and applications.
I read with interest your December 17 announcement
about the Braille-Through-Remote-Learning program. Your
announcement says in part:
This program provides teachers, parents,
social workers, and current/future Braille
transcribers with a series of three integrated,
online courses in Braille and Braille
transcribing...the program has as its goal the
provision of a complete Braille instructional
program to all types of consumers nationwide who
have an interest in some or all aspects of Braille
codes.
In the section which discusses the technical
capabilities program participants must have, you mention
that a graphical web browser is required. Graphical web
browsers imply that some, if not all, of the information
that will be presented to the student is non-textual--that
is, purely visual. This leads me to ask if your program is
intended for persons who happen to be blind or visually
impaired? The requirement for a graphical web browser
implies that it is not. As I am sure you are well aware, it
is not uncommon for blind people to be social workers,
parents, teachers, and Braille transcribers. If, as stated
in your announcement, the program is intended to provide
Braille instruction to "all types of consumers nationwide,"
how will you make it possible for blind people to
participate in it on an equal basis with the sighted? I
would appreciate some clarification from you on this point.
Yours sincerely,
Curtis Chong
President
National Federation of the Blind
in Computer Science
Mr. Gotwals responded to me and to many others as
follows:
December 18, 1996
From: Bob Gotwals [email protected]
Subject: Interest in On-line Braille Course
To: Multiple recipients of list EASI [email protected]
We are very aware of the fact that the current design
of the Braille online folks makes it difficult for blind
individuals to participate easily. This is a three-year
program. . . . Years one and two are concerned with
developing and pilot testing the curriculum and
experimenting with the use of current and emerging
technologies to try to think of new ways of presenting
Braille education. If you read the grant proposal
(http://www.shodor.org/Braille/grant/braillegrant.html), you
will notice that we intend, once the courses are
pilot-tested, to ensure that all of the materials are 100
percent accessible. We had asked the granting agency for
funding to do this earlier, but this portion of the request
was not funded. What was funded was the money to develop the
materials and to investigate the use of advanced
technologies, such as JAVA and VRML, in the teaching of
Braille.
What we are counting on is that the improvements in Web
browsers for blind folks by others who are being funded by
the Federal government (and other agencies) will make our
additional task of ensuring accessibility that much easier.
Yes, there are a number of things that we can do early on,
such as make liberal and clever use of ALT tags for images.
We're not sure yet how we're going to handle the heavy use
that we make of screen snapshots, but we're working on it.
We think we'll be able to go a long way towards 100 percent
accessibility from the early stages.
What are our options? If there is the demand that the
course be 100 percent accessible from Day One, our option
might be: we can't do that at this stage of the game, either
for the amount of money awarded us by the granting agency
and/or because of technical limitations. In other words, we
don't even try; give the money back. If folks are willing to
give us the time we need to develop the course, work on the
technological advancements, get bugs out, and wait/work with
others who are looking to improve browsers, then perhaps
everyone wins.
I've worked in the VI field as a Braillist/teacher for
almost thirty-five years. My master's degree is in education
of the hearing-impaired from the National Technical
Institute for the Deaf. I taught at Gallaudet and am fluent
in sign language. I am well aware of all the issues
concerning accessibility, and we thought a lot about this
issue early on (that is why we asked for the additional
funding to make it happen!).
This Braille education program is, by the way, part of
a larger VI master's degree program that is being developed
at North Carolina Central University. The idea is to make a
large part of that program accessible over the Net, and the
Braille course is the first test of that concept. We sure
would like a chance to make it work....again, if there is a
demand that the effort be made to ensure 100 percent
accessibility in the experimental phase, we can pretty much
ensure that the experiment will fail.
Tell us what to do. The Foundation that I work for is a
group of computational scientists and educators--we do
chemistry and physics on high-performance computers. We want
to do this work because we think it's important, because we
think we have something to offer, and because we care deeply
about the community. Our original budget proposal was half
of what we were awarded--the U.S. Department of Education
felt so strongly that this work was important that they
asked us to look at new technologies as well as design the
series of courses. As computational scientists we think we
can take some of the techniques that we use on a daily basis
to do science to the problem of helping folks understand
Braille better. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to figure
that out, then deal with the problems of accessibility.
Looking forward to a reasoned and reasonable discussion
of these issues.
I wrote back to Mr. Gotwals, and he responded to me
fairly quickly. He chose to intersperse his responses within
the original text of my letter, which is a common practice
these days when communicating by electronic mail. Here is my
letter with his responses, which appear in italics:
December 19, 1996
From: Bob Gotwals [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Braille Online
Mr. Chong,
Thank you for your very kind and supportive note. Some
replies are imbedded in your note. I've taken the liberty of
copying the EASI group on this note.
__________
December 18, 1996
Mr. Bob Gotwals
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.
Durham, North Carolina
Dear Mr. Gotwals:
I have received your post to the EASI mailing list
dated December 18, 1996; and I thank you for your candor on
this subject. You acknowledge in a straightforward and no-
nonsense manner that the current design of the Braille-
Online program makes it difficult for blind people to
benefit from the course material. I wish that you had made
this clear in your original announcement so as to mitigate
some of the criticisms you have doubtless received.
We couldn't agree more and have modified our online
announcement to so reflect this. Future mailings will
absolutely include the appropriate statement. What a
wonderful and useful suggestion. In hindsight this one
should have been a no-brainer. We consider ourselves to be
intelligent folks, but common sense doesn't always prevail!
Regardless of whether or not Braille Online will be
useful to blind computer users, the fact remains that the
blind community will be better served if more people become
proficient in reading and writing Braille. We, the blind,
need teachers of blind children who believe in Braille and
who are competent, both in its use and in its teaching. We
need more skilled Braille transcribers in order to increase
the number of Braille books that we can read. Above all, we
need more people who believe in the value of Braille so that
all blind children will be schooled in this vital tool of
literacy. We cannot know today whether any on-line method of
teaching Braille (such as Braille Online) will help to
achieve these goals, but this should not stop people from
trying to develop new and innovative ways of teaching
Braille.
As I may have mentioned, my foundation is not in the
business of working for or with the blind or deaf
communities. We're doing this work because of my personal
interest in Braille and sign language. I've been doing
Braille since I was seven, and it's been a love affair that
has gone on now for thirty-five years. The opportunity to
try to incorporate the work I do as a scientist and
technologist with my first academic love was just too good
to be true. I'm disappointed that we weren't more careful
about the wording, especially regarding accessibility. If
there is a Braille fan club, I'm pushing to be at the front
of the line!
I am not personally convinced that blind people can
learn Braille using audio output alone or, for that matter,
any form of on-line, computerized instruction. Braille is,
after all, a tactual, hands-on means of reading and writing.
Without hard copy Braille material or a refreshable Braille
display (which most of us can't afford to begin with), how
can we realistically expect someone who is blind to learn
Braille?
Concur. We're not sure where technology will take us,
so all we can do is keep our fingers crossed that the
technology will move us past the audio. We had proposed
trying to incorporate a refreshable Braille display
capability to the course (with the assumption that prices
will go down), but the funding agency didn't or couldn't
include that.
Carrying this thinking a bit further, I hope that your
instructional program will enable sighted participants
actually to feel the Braille they are learning.
Instructional programs in which Braille is presented only
visually (e.g., printed dots on the screen or page) fail to
reinforce the notion that Braille is first and foremost
something handled by touch!
Most of the folks locally here who helped us test the
intro course this past semester prepared their assignments
on Perkins Braillers. Most of them are current VI teachers,
so have lots of access to Braille materials in their school
(most of our guinea pigs were Governor Morehead faculty). In
short, I couldn't agree more. Even as a sighted reader, I
use my fingers.
If I were to make some specific recommendations, they
would be as follows:
1. I think it is important that your promotional
materials clarify that Braille Online is not now accessible
to the blind. You might even take this notion a step further
and clarify that the target audience for the program
consists of sighted people who will be teaching or producing
Braille.
Done.
2. I would not hold out much hope that web browsers
will make the graphical world more accessible to the blind.
Although web browsers can and should be made more compatible
with screen-reading systems used by the blind, accessibility
to the Worldwide Web is more readily achieved if web page
designers take the time and trouble to ensure that the
design of their web pages meets basic accessibility
guidelines too numerous to list here.
We have some of those guidelines and will adhere to
them to the maximum extent possible. We'll also be depending
on the community to tell us when we fail. Within
technological feasibility, we'll fix it. I don't share your
feelings about web browsers, however. Perhaps I'm the
eternal technology optimist! After all, didn't Bill Gates
say (not too long ago either), "640K of RAM memory is all
anyone will ever need"?
3. If you haven't considered doing it, provide a way
for course participants to deal with hard copy Braille.
Based upon what I have read so far, it appears that course
participants will be producing Braille with either a Perkins
Braille Writer or a slate and stylus. This is eminently
desirable. I wonder how you envision having them turn in
their Braille assignments?
Folks who did hard copy Braille mailed them to me.
Worked fine. Depending on student load, we'll have local
teachers here help with grading and evaluation. I did have
some folks use a piece of software that emulates a Perkins
Brailler. They also had a chance to use a real Perkins
Brailler. They were impressed with the similarities in the
two. We'll continue to investigate that phenomenon.
4. I think that some research needs to be conducted
specifically to determine how on-line computerized
instruction courses--specifically, courses to teach
Braille--can benefit people who are blind. My initial notion
is that no benefit can be truly realized unless the course
presents information both audibly (using synthesized speech)
and tactually (using a refreshable Braille display) at
strategic points. You may have a different concept in mind.
If so, I would like to discuss it.
Would love to have that discussion. Again, the current
design depends heavily on photographs (screen snapshots) of
the monitor. On the monitor is the Perkins-emulator program
that I use, which uses a special Braille font. The only way
we can think of now to replace those snapshots is with large
audio files. Unless the recipient has a high speed line,
this may be problematic.
I want to thank you for taking the time to discuss this
important issue with everyone. I hope that you will not feel
personally offended by some of the comments you may have
received. All of us want more blind people reading and
writing more Braille, and all of us want more and better
Braille instruction and transcription services to be
available to the blind community. Where we may differ is in
our respective approaches.
I have to admit that the criticism has been difficult.
We should have foreseen it better, and I'm mad at myself for
that. At the same time, I've been a Braillist and a
professional sign interpreter for a long time. A significant
part of my life has been devoted to this work, so it has not
been easy. We're still excited about the work, however, and
are determined to do it right. I concur that we both want
more and better Braille instruction, and that is clearly the
goal. I'm not sure our approaches are that far apart....but
hopefully we've started down the path of making those
differences disappear.
Yours sincerely,
Curtis Chong
President
National Federation of the Blind
in Computer Science
Many thanks again for your thoughtful, insightful, and
instructive letter. Best wishes for a blessed and restful
holiday season. After perhaps a rocky start, I'm looking
forward to a long, professional (electronic) relationship
with you and with other EASI participants.
Robert R. Gotwals, Jr.
Computational Science Educator
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.
WWW: http://storm.shodor.org/~gotwals/gotwals.html
(919) 286-1911
So, there you have it. I don't know how good Braille
Remote Learning will turn out to be. I can't even say if it
will help to increase the number of people who will know
Braille well enough to be of help to us. What I do know is
that in its present form Braille Remote Learning is not
accessible to the blind--nor is it meant to be. Can blind
people benefit from Braille instruction received on-line
through the Internet? If the only means of receiving
information we have available to us is synthetic speech,
then I would say "No." If we have both synthetic speech and
refreshable Braille available to us and if different
information is communicated through each channel, then my
answer is, "Maybe."
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