braille input

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Again:

Rates of braille literacy are generally given at between 5% and
10%. You've also figured out the reason for this pretty well. Any kind of
literacy is more difficult for adults than for children. This goes for
learning a new spoken language (think of immigrants' accents while their
kids have far fewer accent issues), and it goes for any kind of reading
and writing literacy. So, since the surest way to acquire a disability is
to live long enough, it should not be surprising that braille literacy
rates are low.

This does not answer whether people will like brailling on a PDA,
however. Powerful needs will compel some level of proficiency in writing
braille -- almost more important than reading it in fact.

Recognize that a blind person has very few options for important, if
mundane, tasks such as phone numbers, doctors instructions, perscription
numbers, dates and times of appointments, etc. Serial media, such as audio
tape are pretty useless. Paper based braille isn't much better--because
you can't insert text anywhere and it's very space hungry.

Certainly people have to work to learn how to write in braille. But
people have seemed willing to learn Grafitti. And, I would wager that
most BNS users write braille far better than they read it..


				Janina Sajka, Director
				Information Systems Research & Development
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

janina at afb.net


On Sat, 11 Mar 2000 cpt.kirk at 1tree.net wrote:

> As far as target audience, I see it as being yourng professional (heading
> to be a professional) blind people. A sign maker pointed out to me why the
> overwhelming majority of blind people don't read braille. According to
> information he had, well over half of the blind people in america are over
> the age of 65. Let's face it, retired people are not likely to have the
> moitvation to learn braille. I don't know what the litteracy statistic for
> blind people under the age of about 35 are.
> 
> If one isn't willing to learn at least rudimentary braille, then I would
> doubt the person's need for a pda anyway. But once a workable PDA was
> arround, getting a normal keyboard isn't too tough.
> 
> Kirk Wood
> Cpt.Kirk at 1tree.net
> ------------------
> 
> Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).
> 
> 
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