More About Braille Remote Learning
More About Braille Remote Learning
The Braille Monitor
_June 1997
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[PHOTO/CAPTION: Curtis Chong]
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About Braille Remote Learning
From the Editor: In the March,
1997, issue we reprinted an exchange of correspondence which had first appeared
in the Winter, 1997, edition of Computer Science Update, a publication of the
National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science, an NFB division. It was
between Curtis Chong, division president, and Robert Gotwals, a computational
scientist with a strong commitment to Braille literacy and an interest in determining
whether or not it is possible to teach Braille on the Internet. The intended
audience was to be students working to become teachers of blind children and
those intending to qualify as transcribers.
The problem was that blind people can and do obtain certification in both these
fields, and from what anyone could tell there would be no way for a blind person
to access the Web pages where the course materials were to be located. It was
necessary to use a graphical Web browser, and so far there is no way for a person
using speech access or a refreshable Braille display to use such a browser.
Poor Mr. Gotwals must have thought that the very hounds of Hell were after him
when the e-mail messages of complaint began. Curtis tried to put the entire
matter into perspective for him and to suggest that it would be advisable to
warn people up front that the intended audience, at the moment, at least, was
sighted Braille students. He assured Mr. Gotwals that the experiment he was
conducting was important and everyone wished him well because we certainly do
need competent Braille teachers who are excited about the code.
As often happens in such exchanges, misunderstandings occurred, which one hopes
have now been resolved. Mr. Gotwals and his colleagues are to be commended for
their commitment to teaching Braille and for their intensive efforts to make
their Website as accessible as possible. In an attempt to make the current situation
as clear as possible, we print here an exchange of correspondence between Robert
Gotwals and Curtis Chong that took place between April 21 and 23. Here it is:
April 21, 1997
From: Bob Gotwals <[email protected]>
Subject: March Braille Monitor
Saw your article in the March, '97, Braille Monitor. I'm a little disappointed
that nowhere was it stated that the course is and has been accessible since
day one. When you and I were having our conversations, the materials were in
development, and we expected to not be able to have them readily accessible
in time for the initial testing of the materials.
We were able to get them ready, in spite of the fact that we did so at our own
expense. Your comment "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"
is therefore in error. Have you looked at the pages?
If you wish to chat about this, I can be reached at e-mail or at (919) 490-1626.
We are both interested in increasing the awareness and literacy levels of Braillists,
especially folks capable of providing that skill. Are you helping or hurting
that goal? Want my opinion?
Robert R. Gotwals, Jr.
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.
Computational Science Educator
Durham, North Carolina
(919) 286-1911 (V/TDD) Fax 286-7876
The next day Curtis Chong replied
to this memo. When Mr. Gotwals received Curtis's letter, he made comments throughout
the text. Here is Curtis's letter with the Gotwals interpolations printed in
italics:
April 22, 1997
From: Curtis Chong <[email protected]>
To: Bob Gotwals <[email protected]
Subject: March Braille monitor
Hello Bob:
I am sorry that you were disappointed by what appeared in the March edition
of the Braille Monitor regarding Braille Remote Learning. The information
I had when the article was written was that the course would not initially be
usable by somebody who could not see pictures of Braille output on the screen.
As far as I am aware, this is still correct. If you have information to the
contrary and if you have made additional efforts to make the course accessible
to the blind over the Internet, please do provide me with that information.
If I was wrong, I will certainly work to see that a correction is printed in
the Monitor.
I appreciate that there is often a delay in getting stuff published, and I am
sure the Monitor is no different. Three months in the print world is
actually quite fast. In the electronic publishing world, three months is an
eternity.
The course is accessible, and has been since day one. We expended considerable
resources to ensure that the course was accessible to all users. We had to take
that time away from other Braille development work, but we were glad we were
able to make the materials available. As I had mentioned before, we had proposed
that the accessibility work be done after the materials had been developed,
the bugs had been worked out, and the courses were ready for production. Having
to do it sooner rather than later did make our task more difficult, but we are
grateful for the visually-impaired folks who are actively participating; they
are providing substantial assistance to our efforts.
I hope you realize that I can only work with the facts I have in hand. I still
do not have any information that would indicate that Braille Remote Learning
is a tool that is usable directly by blind persons on the Internet. This does
not detract from the value of the course as a learning tool for Braille transcribers.
God knows we need more of them.
I would have hoped that you or someone from the Monitor might have
checked. Again, my guess is that the scenario of events was that you submitted
your article in December after our e-mail exchanges, then did not see the article
again until it hit the streets. I was mostly disappointed that no one bothered
to ask. It's not like I'm hard to locate. The pages are also easily accessible,
and any page that uses graphics says "Text Version" at the very top
of each page. We've checked pages using Lynx and have run a number of pages
through some of the few accessibility checkers, such as Bobby.
I think that with the facts I had, my presentation in the Monitor
was fair and balanced. I understand and respect that you may not see things
that way. I have not said, nor do I intend to say, to anyone that Braille Remote
Learning is a project without value. It most certainly has value. However, as
I said in my article, I do not know whether a blind person can really learn
Braille if auditory output is the only means by which information is provided.
Other material needs to be available, e.g., hard-copy Braille samples, refreshable
Braille, etc.
That's part of the experiment. We're doing this work partly because we are scientists
and partly because we're trying to provide a service. We won't know if this
delivery system will meet a variety of Braille literacy needs until we do the
experiment. The course actually was never intended to teach Braille to visually-impaired
folks, but if we can figure out how to make that happen, we'll do so. We don't
do anything in terms of reading readiness, i.e., tactile discrim exercises,
etc. We've toyed with providing Duxbury files that folks can download, but there
has not been lots of demand for the ones we have made available.
I had thought that we had ended our correspondence on a fairly positive note.
I am sure you thought so as well. I regret that what appeared in the Monitor
did not meet with your approval. However, without additional information, my
comments still stand.
Me too. I didn't even know about the article until I got several pieces of
e-mail from folks not even involved in the program who saw it and weren't too
happy. Some of the comments I received were not happy with the NFB. I chatted
with Allison Scheuermann at the NFB and conveyed my impressions. The article
did suggest at the beginning that the conversations were friendly, but there
was still sort of a negative overtone to the article. We can't do the experiment
of investigating online Braille instruction without students, including visually
impaired ones. Anything that discourages that community from participating takes
the opportunity out of our hands.
I don't want to suggest that the journalism was irresponsible, but perhaps it
could have been a little tighter.
I like to think we're both on the same side, and both want the same thing. I
certainly don't mind criticism. That's how things get better. However, I have
little patience with criticism that is unwarranted. My students know that I've
been at the receiving end of lots of comments, and we've worked hard to fix
what they have suggested. All in all, however, we think things are going pretty
well.
Regards,
Curtis Chong, President
NFB in Computer Science
and to you! Thanks for your reply.
PS. I'd encourage you to submit this conversation as well. Ask Barbara not to
wait three months, however, to publish it! She also might want to solicit the
opinions of the 80 or so folks currently participating in the program. E-mail
to Braille-shodor.org will reach all participants, program staff, and observers.
Robert R. Gotwals, Jr.
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.
Computational Science Educator
The following day another exchange of correspondence took place. Again
Curtis wrote a letter, which Mr. Gotwals returned with comments interspersed
throughout it. Here is the letter with Mr. Gotwals's comments italicized:
April 23, 1997
From: Curtis Chong <[email protected]>
To: Bob Gotwals <[email protected]>
Subject: March Braille Monitor
Hello Bob:
I have been giving considerable thought to our exchange of correspondence over
the last two days, and I must tell you that I am trying very hard not to come
away from that exchanged feeling annoyed and more than a bit put out with the
way in which you have chosen to deal with me. In all of my communications with
you, I have tried to engender good will.
Moreover, I have encouraged members of the National Federation of the Blind
to support your efforts instead of dogmatically insisting that Braille Remote
Learning be 100 percent accessible at the outset.
I actually think (or perhaps thought) that we were on the same page. As
you have no evidence that our stuff is accessible, I have no evidence that you've
been encouraging support, but I'll take you at your word!
Do you remember the bashing you took when you first announced the project? Many
people criticized the work you were doing because participants were required
to use a graphical web browser. One of the things you said in defense of your
work was this:
This Braille ed program is, by the way, part of a larger VI masters 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.
Yep. And as initially designed, it was pretty much inaccessible. We did
a re-design (to some degree) and spent much more time up front looking at making
it accessible than we had planned at that stage of the project.
Under the terms of the grant, we were not funded nor committed to accessibility
that early on, but I felt, especially after conversations with you and others,
that it was important to do things earlier rather than later. But what if technologically
it had been difficult to do so, and the insistence had continued? What would
have been our options? Were we willing to risk a lawsuit under ADA or some other
statute to continue to do the work? I seriously doubt that my board of directors
or executive director would have supported our continuance of this work if that
had been the case. You as a computer scientist understand that the technology
doesn't always maintain pace with desires, dreams, wishes, and best intentions.
As it is, our technical solution is adequate, but that's probably all I can
say for it. Fortunately, other people are looking hard at the accessibility
issue of Internet resources, and we hope to be the beneficiaries of their labors.
We're not charged with that end of the technology.
I interpreted this to mean that during the initial phases of the project your
attention would be focused
primarily on making the program work as opposed to making it fully accessible
to blind Internet users. After all, I reasoned, the program was aimed primarily
at transcribers and teachers. Hence, when I wrote to you, I was trying to clarify
our position that accessibility by the blind to your project was, for us, a
secondary concern. In short, I was trying to mitigate some of the criticism
you were receiving.
That was the original intent of the program. I didn't get the sense that
it was your position that accessibility was a secondary concern...I'll certainly
go back and re-read correspondence, but I'm not sure that position came through...
If you recall, one of the recommendations I made was this: "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."
Your response to this recommendation was a simple "Done." You raised
no objection to the statement that "Braille Online is not now accessible
to the blind."
And, again, we changed that position. When you and I were conversing in
December, that was a true statement. When the course was opened in January,
it was not. Christmas holiday wasn't!
Since that time I have received no word from you--no e-mail, no phone call,
nothing. Moreover, none of my colleagues in the National Federation of the Blind
reported reading anything from you on any Internet mailing list about any change
in emphasis for the project. Based on all of the information I had in my possession,
there was no reason for either me or the editor of the Braille Monitor
to do any
further checking. Exactly what should we have done differently? I would have
thought that you, knowing that I lead a national organization of blind people
dealing with computer access issues, would have taken the trouble to let me
know that a significant effort had been made to make your course accessible
to blind people. Certainly, if you had written to me, I would have done everything
possible to change the article which ultimately appeared in the Monitor.
Guess we're both at fault. For my part, if I had known our e-mail correspondence
was being published, I would have taken the steps to ensure that authors/editors
were aware of changes. I had no idea that the article had been published (guess
I gotta start reading the Monitor, huh?) until my mailbox exploded. For
your part (or that of the editor), I guess I would have liked to have had someone
contact me letting me know the stuff was going in, and/or have looked at the
pages.
I take exception to your implied criticism of me and the National Federation
of the Blind for the way in which we portrayed your program in the Braille
Monitor. You say that the journalism could have been tightened up a bit.
Frankly, I don't see how. As far as we were concerned, all of our information
was current.
As above. Again, three months is a long time in the Internet business, as
I suspect you know as a computer science professional. On both of our parts
two minutes worth of work would have completely removed all of this time (and
bad feelings!) that we're spending on this conversation.
I hope that you will not misunderstand what I am saying here. I have no quarrel
with the work you are doing. I am very glad that you and your colleagues have
taken the time and effort to work on accessibility concerns. You should be commended
for this effort. Because I believe that the work you are doing is important
to the blind community, I would like to know more about what you have done to
make it possible for blind users of the Internet to participate fully in your
program. Those of us who are proficient Braille users are keenly interested
to know how Braille (which is essentially a tactual experience) can be taught
using speech output. I would also like to know the specific actions you took
to ensure accessibility to the project during the early stages.
Thanks for those words, and again I think (or hope) we're on the same page
of Braille! We don't know if it will work either; that's what we're trying to
find out! If it works, we'll extend and publish. If it doesn't, we'll publish
why not. Again, we're hoping that the work of others to improve the accessibility
of Web pages will have an impact on what we're doing. If not, we'll forge our
own path as best we can!
Please be assured that all of this correspondence is being forwarded to Barbara
Pierce, Editor of the Braille Monitor. Moreover, if you supply me with
more specific information about how the program is accessible to the blind today,
I will send that along as well.
Appreciate that extra effort. Simply, any page that has any kind of graphics
on it (examples, sentences, exercises, etc.) has a text version that is the
first link on the page. Other images have the appropriate "alt" tags
embedded. We're encouraging as many visually impaired students as we can, as
much as we're encouraging any participation--we've advertised to two or three
listservs and have plenty of participants.
That's not to say we don't want more, but beginning this summer we'll complete
some evaluation work and then promote the course more aggressively.
In closing, I would like to say that you and I should communicate with each
other more often and under better circumstances. I think that both of us can
do a lot to improve our relationship. I will always endeavor to ensure that
the information I send to the Braille Monitor about your work is complete
and accurate. I don't have a lot of time to read the hundreds of messages per
day generated by the many blindness-related mailing lists. So please understand
that anything you distribute to those lists will probably not be seen by me
unless somebody happens to forward a particular item to me. Therefore, I trust
that you will continue to keep me informed about the work you are doing by writing
to me personally.
Will do. Likewise, it's hard to keep up with the listservs.
Yours sincerely,
Likewise!
Robert R. Gotwals, Jr.
Computational Science Educator
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.
Editor's postscript: In an e-mail exchange of my own with Mr. Gotwals
in early May, I told him that I intended to publish his comments and Curtis's
responses. I also explained that, when articles are reprinted in the Braille
Monitor from affiliate or division publications, I do not as a rule conduct
further research or interviews. In his response to me he did not add anything
more to what he had already said to Curtis. We both ended with complimentary
statements about the efforts the other was making to improve matters for blind
people. We can all hope that both parties are successful.
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