2014-11-12-Value of Braille in the Educational Toolbox
Seminars@Hadley
The Value of Braille in the
Educational Toolbox
Presented by
Greg Stilson – HumanWare
Moderated by
Larry Muffett
November 12, 2014
Host
You’re listening to Seminars@Hadley. This seminar is “The Value of Braille in the Educational Toolbox,” presented by Greg Stilson; moderated by Larry Muffett.
Larry Muffett
Welcome to Seminars@Hadley. My name is Larry Muffett. I’m a member of Hadley’s Seminars Team and I also work in Curricular Affairs. Today’s seminar topic is “The Value of Braille in the Educational Toolbox.”
Our presenter today is Greg Stilson. Greg has been with HumanWare since 2006. During his time he’s held positions on the Technical Support and Sales Teams. He’s currently the Project Manager for HumanWare’s Braille product line and works out of the state of Wisconsin.
Greg, since he’s been blind since birth, has used many of HumanWare’s products during his educational career and currently uses them as a blind professional – so he’s not just a salesperson, he’s also a product user. Today Greg will be sharing some insights with you on using Braille devices both in and out of the classroom.
So let me welcome Greg and we’ll get underway. Good morning, Greg!
Greg Stilson
Good morning. Thanks, Larry, for the introduction. So as Larry said I’ve been with HumanWare for about eight years now, and what I’m going to be talking to you about today is related to Braille both within education and out of it.
I reference the educational toolbox but I’m sure that a lot of our attendees here are users of assistive technology products and things like that, and I am 100% living proof that I have yet to find a product that’s one-size-fits-all approach. So I think when we talk about the educational toolbox we all use some type of toolbox of technology.
And I always tell people that I do not discriminate against technology. I will try any and all pieces of technology as I think technology has allowed me as a blind professional to do a lot more than I ever would have been able to do without technology. I joke with my wife that my job would be extremely different if I was born thirty years before when I was born.
So today I want to kind of break the presentation up into a few parts. So first off I want to talk a little bit about what the educational toolbox is or what this technology toolbox is. I want to talk about the value of Braille and where Braille falls into this educational toolbox. I want to talk about using Braille with traditional assistive technology and then I want to talk about using it with mainstream devices today.
So let’s start with what is the toolbox that we’re discussing here. So as a blind student I remember back when I was going through different classes and things like that, I would never use just one device that would get me through every class. And as a blind professional I can tell you I do not use just one device to get me through every daily task that I do.
The educational toolbox is sort of a mixture of components and tools that allow students and professionals or blind individuals to really do their daily tasks depending on what they are. And so you think about it from an educational standpoint – students are going from class to class. They’re working in their English class and their history class and their math class, you know, geography, all those kinds of things.
And I remember specifically in my educational toolbox there were things like a Perkins Brailler, a slate and stylus, Braille graph paper for math, a tactile compass, things like that – Braille maps, so tactile graphics. These are all pieces that sort of fit together to provide a blind student the ability to gain an understanding of what the curriculum that their sighted peers are learning.
I always say that there’s a difference between accessibility and efficiency and that the educational toolbox provides an efficient way for a blind student or professional or whoever to get the information as quickly and as efficiently as possible. So there may be alternative ways that one device can do these things but it may not be the most efficient and it may not be the way that allows you to compete with your sighted peers in a job environment, in a hiring situation, any of that.
So that’s sort of an overview of the educational toolbox. Where Braille fits into this, and I am living proof – so a little bit of history on myself. I was born with a lot more vision than I have today, and thanks to some very, some would say ‘stubborn’ parents and others may say ‘stubborn PVIs’ I was taught Braille in a situation where nobody really wanted to teach me Braille. I had enough vision that I could use the CCTV and the teachers in the school wanted to sort of just put me under a CCTV and away I went.
And when I was about 11 or 12 years old I had a severe drop in vision to the point where I mean I was able to hit a baseball and I was able to see quite well up until that point. I had a severe drop in vision and at that point I really saw the value of learning Braille at such a young age. And as you can tell, I have a significant amount of passion for Braille today because in my opinion Braille is what makes a blind person literate.
When you look at what is available today there are tons of tools out there that allow somebody to gain access to content, and what I mean by that is being able to hear the content and understand what the content is that’s being read to you.
However, I always say that there’s a huge difference between reading and listening, and that is that when you’re reading something you’re absorbing not only context – you’re absorbing punctuation, you’re absorbing spelling, you’re absorbing all different types of format indicators, formatting, any of that type of thing. You’re seeing the document as the author originally meant it to be seen.
When you’re listening to content you’re not hearing any of the spelling, unless you’re one of those people who reads it letter-by-letter through a document. I don’t think I know anybody who will do that. You’re not hearing punctuation; you’re not hearing whether something is centered or aligned a certain way which may have effects on that document. Maybe something is bold at the end, you miss that because it’s not read out to you.
Now, there are screen readers that have settings or the ability to read every single punctuation mark that goes through but I know very few people who actually utilize that kind of thing. I know a few people in universities who need to listen to something very quickly and do have punctuation turned on if they’re proofreading, but in general I very rarely see that.
So Braille in the educational toolbox is a significant piece to a student becoming literate, and it’s in that that HumanWare has really… And today I’m not going to be coming to you as a HumanWare employee – what I’m going to be talking about today is general categories of technology, whether it be HumanWare’s or any other device. Obviously we hope you choose HumanWare’s because we believe that our devices provide the best user experience but in general what I’m talking to you about today is just general topics of devices.
And in general a Braille device provides you sort of the best of both worlds. A student gets that multimodal feedback where if they’re hearing a screen reader read something or a text-to-speech voice read something and they’re seeing it on the display, they’re getting double the feedback, double the reassurance that what they’re reading or writing is correctly written in Braille. And they’re getting a good sort of basis for the content that they’re kind of absorbing.
And that’s really where Braille fits in, in that if a student is able to read this kind of content early on in Braille and gain an understanding, I think we’ll all agree that it’s probably easier to learn Braille at a young age than when you’re a bit older. I think it’s sort of the equivalent to learning a foreign language at a younger age – you’re able to absorb it much faster because kids are such sponges at that point.
I used to work in a rehabilitation center working with older students, people who may have just lost their vision so it definitely is something that I’m sure many of you have done if you lost your vision later – or maybe you just didn’t learn Braille early on. It is something that’s being done today and it something that I know Hadley puts on as Braille instructional courses and things like that. So just because you didn’t learn it at a young age doesn’t mean that it’s not going to provide value to you. I definitely am a firm believer in that.
So that’s my spiel on Braille in general. In this presentation what I want to talk about today is sort of the different categories of Braille devices. So today, when you think of traditional Braille devices the most common one is a Braille note taker. And HumanWare has developed the Braille Note which has sort of been the staple in this category for the past fifteen years or so.
In 2000 we developed the Braille Note Classic which was really the first Windows-based electronic Braille device, and was really at the time a revolutionary product because Windows devices were not really used with Braille first off; and JAWS screen reader at the time was really the only access, JAWS in Windows I believe was the only access to a Windows device.
The difficulty was that everything was graphical; everything was Start menus, windows, icons, things like that that really were not the most accessible at the time. And the Braille Note took that Windows interface and turned it into a nonvisual, easy-to-understand user interface so that students and professionals could quickly take notes oftentimes faster than their sighted peers – take notes, read books, do tasks with their Braille device, and as I said, do it a little bit faster than their sighted peers.
As time has progressed we’ve seen this Braille note taker category change. At the time in 2000 the most common task was being able to take notes on the device and being able to make sure you could quickly get your files written and print them out, etc., etc. Now, in today’s age you’re looking at one device that can do multiple things. So on the original Braille Note we had the word processor, we had a calendar, a contacts list and a couple others – I think a calculator – at the time.
Now you look at the main menu on the Braille Note and you have anything from internet browser to email client to GPS to a chat client, a book reader. You’re using a device for a heck of a lot more than you ever did back in 2000 and that’s just been the nature of the expansion of technology.
So Braille note takers, when you think of a Braille note taker I want you to think of a Braille device with intelligence inside of it. So it’s essentially almost like a Braille-oriented computer or PDA kind of device. The cool thing with these Braille note takers, and today with the Braille Note Apex you’re able to do this as well, is multitask. You’re able to use these Braille note taker devices with mainstream technology.
So the Braille Note, for example, has the ability to go into a Braille terminal mode which basically takes this intelligent device and turns it into what I would call, I don’t mean to be mean to them but it’s like a dumb terminal essentially. The Braille Note is now receiving information from something else. So in most cases when you’re using the Braille Note on an everyday basis you’re using it for taking notes, reading books, etc., etc. – things that require its own intelligence. With this Braille terminal mode, being able to multitask, now you can switch and use other devices that are driving the Braille Note.
So before I continue with how that works I want to switch to the other category of Braille displays or Braille devices which is what I just said, the electronic Braille display. In the traditional electronic Braille display, one example is HumanWare’s Brailliant Braille display, the electronic Braille display is one of those devices that has no internal intelligence. It’s going to be driven by something else all the time. So essentially without something else driving it the electronic Braille display doesn’t have a whole lot of functionality on its own.
And these Braille displays and the Braille note takers in general have multiple ways of connecting to devices, whether that be USB or Bluetooth. And really when you think of the differences in connectivity, today Bluetooth is really taking off. It’s the most popular way of connecting to devices. Bluetooth, I’m a firm believer and I always tell students and professionals that Bluetooth is not a perfect science. It is absolutely not.
I know that it’s being used in cars today to connect to phones and things like that. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ll get into my brother’s car and his phone all of a sudden starts ringing and it’s not ringing through the car speakers. Well, that’s because the pairing process didn’t connect up, he has to go through and repair it with the car stereo. The same thing with my Bluetooth headset on my phone – I’ll have to go through and repair it or remove it and then add it again.
So with Bluetooth you’re dealing with sort of an imperfect system if I want to say it that way, a system that needs a little bit more tweaking. When it works it works really, really well – no wires, it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. However, when it doesn’t work there’s a bit of frustration there and you need a little bit of troubleshooting to make that work.
So USB, as old fashioned as it is and whatever else, it is really your tried and true method. And that’s really where I want to focus today is the two uses of Braille devices with mainstream tools. So with mainstream tools we’re talking about devices like PCs. So I know that Apple and IOS devices have been really, especially with Apple launching the iPhone 6 and the new iPads, etc., etc., they’ve really been in the news quite a bit.