Dumb post to the Stargardts Facebook group

[Tony Baechler]

Actually, you bring up an interesting point.  I don't have the problem with 
typing the dollar and number signs like you described, but I've seen a 
problem with some devices not reverse translating Braille as they should.  A 
particular instance of this comes to mind.  Back in school, I had a test 
with true or false questions.  I answered either "t" or "f" as one would 
expect.  For some reason, when it was printed out, it got turned into "that" 
and "from."  The teacher didn't know why, but of course I recognized the 
problem.  That's why there is either grade I or computer Braille which is 
what I should've used, but I didn't know it would do that.  Similarly, a 
blind person was asking me a question and the sentence ended with "en?" 
which was supposed to be "enough."  I'm not sure why the notetakers have 
difficulty in back translation, but it seems to be common.  NFBTrans didn't 
seem to have that problem.

Also like you, I'm not a regular Braille reader nowadays and I usually don't 
have the screen reader read out punctuation.  However, what I think you 
aren't realizing is that since you know Braille, you don't need to know 
where the punctuation is.  In other words, I know that a period goes at the 
end of a sentence which is a statement and a question mark goes at the end 
of a question.  I don't hear passages of text as one continuous stream of 
words with a short pause separating them sometimes, if that makes sense.  If 
I never knew Braille, I wouldn't know that.  I can tell by how you write 
that you at least learned some Braille and know enough to form a proper 
sentence.  I've seen several blind people who use no punctuation at all and 
sound uneducated in their writing style.  I'm not saying that everything 
needs to be 100% perfect, especially nowadays with email and text messages, 
but it's downright confusing when there is no separation between sentences 
and thoughts.

As a final note, I'm terrible at reading aloud and avoid it when possible. 
While I do know Braille, I'm not the fastest or best Braille reader by any 
means.  I'm afraid I've got out of practice because I rely so much more on 
speech and DAISY books nowadays.

On 4/9/2013 1:34 PM, Hart Larry wrote:
> Well, I know in advance my comments are an alternative. First, when this
> thread began, I figured it was off-topic and Kirk would probably put an end
> to it. On another hand, as American English spelling is not a consistant
> science, it would seem unlikely to just memerize thousands of spellings.
> Sure when I was younger, Braille was nearly an only way to read, but in the
> late50s I was quite interested in Baseball and the Space Program, but mostly
> it were text books which were available. I was never a good or comfortable
> Braille reader. About a only time I read outloud is at our anual Pass Over
> Seder.
> I know there are both sighted-and-blind folks who are phonatical about
> spelling-and-punctuation. I look at especially spelling-and-moreover typing
> as a way to convey ideas-and-concepts. I know it drives some crazy if I use
> a number in the middle of a word.
> Growing up with Braille also teaches bad habbits in typing. For example,
> when I would type an amount of money, I would type symbols of "dollar
> sign""number sign" followed by an amount.
> As an unconventional, I really like having dashes separating some words, I
> guess because I don't really like dead-air and so a dash would symbolicly
> keep sound alive.
> In conclusion, since many of us are not always writing executive business
> letters, we're symply conveying opinions-and-information. Sure getting a
> wrong letter in an url, well, thats important. As a strictly speech
> listener, I try when I can to hear as little punctuation as I can. I think
> when I've tried spelling checkers in Pine, they were harder to navigate.
> Thanks for listening.
> Hart