11/30/2022 0 Comments Braille notetaker with speech output![]() While reading for entertainment and even when referring to books as references, speech output has proved more than sufficient and ever so convenient. #Braille notetaker with speech output how to#In everyday life, now that I know how to read, I haven't felt the need to constantly use Braille. However, we have now been liberated from the cost, bulk and weight of Braille by the advent of synthetic speech and more widespread accessibility to mainstream Ebooks and computing. I'm part of a generation who has learned Braille naturally as part of my school experience while there was really no other credible alternative. Until audio and Ebooks recently hit their stride, I've been quite restricted in my reading choices compared to a person who had eye sight. The paperback book you can buy for under $10 would cost hundreds to produce in Braille. This has drastically restricted what is made available for blind people to read. Braille embossers designed for mass production are even more expensive. It was a Purkin's Braille writer which weighed around fifteen pounds and cost at least fifteen hundred dollars. I walked around grade school with a solid metal contraption somewhat like a typewriter. There's also the cost of producing Braille to consider. For the first time in my memory, I was brought up against the reality of what a profound and massive difference having eye sight could actually make in one's life. You couldn't quite stick it casually inside a pocket, but it was light and easily carried in hand. Eventually, on a pure whim, I asked to feel a dictionary carried by one of my sighted classmates. For years, I thought the title was someone's idea of a joke. Each volume was thicker than a phone book and the whole dictionary completely filled a long shelf stretching across a wall. It was comprised of seven thick volumes despite the pages being double-sided. In early grade school, the class of blind students I was in made use of a copy of the "American Vest Pocket Dictionary". I doubt any of them suspected that the Braille volumes which added most of the weight to that pack were mere fractions of the text books and novels they could easily carry whole under an arm or in a pocket. If they were too close behind me while I turned a corner in the hallways of my school, they were liable to get crushed up against a wall. People thought that it either had fifty things in it or else it weighed fifty pounds. The army surplus backpack I carried through the halls earned me the nickname of Fifty. I never really appreciated what a gift to organized thought that learning to read Braille was while receiving my own education. ![]()
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