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Hi everyone. Welcome back to at your fingertips Braille, then and now.
Glad to have you along here with me today I'm going to be finishing.
Up my review of the book the War of the Dots, and I also.
Want to discuss a really important topic of braille screen input, the differences between iOS and Android, and the value it can provide anyone who is reviewing or learning braille.
So in our July episode, I focused.
On the independence that Braille gives us.
And really wanted to tell you about.
This account of the war of the.
Dots and the excellent historical information that it gives us.
So I wanted to finish my review by reading a few quotes that really encapsulizes sort of the end of this.
Account, and it's hopefully been resolved by the Braille Authority of North America in.
All its wonderfully hard work in establishing.
A unified english braille code for the.
English speaking world, which in 1932, as.
Of this first quote, I'm going to read you. That could not have been imagined.
So in 1932, this is a quote here, public opinion had shifted to such an extent that a committee of three was appointed, commissioned both by the American association of Instructors of the Blind and the American association of Workers for the Blind to go to England with plenary powers to agree upon a unified braille code. On July 19, 1932, the agreement, sometimes referred to as the Treaty of London, was signed by the representatives of the blind of Great Britain and of the United States. A key to the slightly modified code was drawn up in London before the committee adjourned. The burden of the job was borne principally by Louis W. Rodenberg of the American Committee and Miss da Payne on.
Behalf of the British, and they talked about changes.
There were not many as far as.
The british braille was concerned.
The religious signs were dropped, except for.
In usage was permitted in religious books. And they were talking about not breaking syllables by divisions with contractions, which, as we know some of us may know, the Braille authority of North America has.
Kind of adopted contractions that do cross lines and do break syllables, which is.
Still odd to me. The fact that professor can be, uh.
Written with an of sign is kind.
Of weird, but that's okay. Be that as it may, it's hard to believe that it wouldn't be, say, until 1950, that there was more agreement.
And it wouldn't be until 2014.
I believe it was when the UEB was adopted. So that was what happened in 1932. So if we move along, we have more information here. There's been more debate about whether contractions make bad spellers.
And I remember when I was growing.
Up, I had trouble remembering how to spell the word, which, for instance, it was a wh sign, but was it.
Wh I c h or w I c h?
I didn't remember. So I remember needing to review that. And we can make sure our kids are good spellers by ensuring that they have the contraction as it is, and.
The spelling, which even my adult students.
I always make sure they have that.
So here's another little quote here. It says, upon the unsubstantiated dictum that the use of contraction makes bad spellers, and upon the contention that grade two contains so many contractions and abbreviations that is too difficult for the primary pupil to learn. The authorities of the american printing house were very slow to publish lower grade.
Books in any code more contracted than grade one and a half.
So grade one and a half didn't.
Have quite all of the contractions. Gradually, however, many grade two was extended.
Downward until, since 1950, few books except for children of the first grade are.
Published in grade one and a half.
This slow adoption of standard english braille grade two has probably resulted resulted in a generation of poor braille readers, because the method of teaching reading has forced children to familiarize themselves with three successive groups of word forms. First, the word form presented to the.
Finger by grade one, full spelling used in the lower primate grades.
Second, the word form of grade one and a half used in books below junior high school. And third, the word forms of grade two, in which books were to be used by most adults.
And so that is a little paragraph about different ways of presenting the same word.
I don't know that it would be that confusing.
It seems like there's a lot of hoopla made there.
If we know how it's spelled, however.
We write it, it's still reinforcing the word itself. But I agree completely that the young people should absolutely learn to spell and that contractions should be used, but making.
Sure that there's plenty of foundation that reinforces the spelling.
I don't teach young kids, but if I did, I would definitely make sure.
They know how to spell.
And if I go off on a tangent here, I know that dictating to all of our devices has resulted in.
Some poor spellers I've observed in the.
Young people I've seen. When we think about the fact that.
Since we got Siri and people started.
Dictating, it's a problem because people just don't. Don't spell anymore properly. So lest I go down a big.
Rabbit hole there, I'll stop with that.
But the more ways we can present.
The actual word and its spelling is really important.
So, that being said, the printing house finally adopted a standard that we're going to use grade two or contracted braille.
One thing that I do with some of the books that I create for.
My adults is if it's a short little print braille book and there's enough room on the page, I will put a sticky label with the uncontracted version.
On one page or top of the.
Page, and the contracted version of the.
Braille on the bottom of the page.
So that no matter how the person.
Finds themselves, whether they're familiarizing themselves and reviewing the Alphabet, or whether they're reading.
Contracted braille, they can read the book. And this is important because then I can use the books for each student. So the book really kind of finishes.
Here, back to the war of the dots.
The book kind of finishes with a.
Bit of history on the monetary sort of struggles between wanting to keep money in this country and wanting to trade.
Books, but not wanting to contribute to Britain. And I won't go there because I have some very favorite british people that are, in particular, podcasters and others. And so I will not dive into that whole history.
But there was some contention about money.
Spending and appropriations and different things, and.
Wanting to share books between the countries.
And now, of course, we have the.
Marrakesh Treaty, which allows us to share books.
So we've had a huge, long history of development in this whole sharing of braille, sharing of our codes, making a unified code. So this last quote here kind of addresses this whole looking forward to the code being unified.
And this last quote says, perhaps this will not take place until someone puts behind this idea something of the drive which brought about the adoption of the uniform type for the british speaking world. Doubtless sooner or later, someone will take this matter up aggressively and put an end to the duplication of books published in Braille in the United States and Great Britain.
I don't know that we've taken care of that, but certainly we can share the books that we have and we.
Can also appreciate the different sets of literature that each country has. And so I am hopeful that we will continue sharing our resources.
So, in all, I really enjoyed the book.
It was great.
It was unfortunate to read about all the contention, but I am very happy to know that we've made huge strides.
Took many, many, many years, but we've.
Made huge strides in developing the unified.
English braille code, which means more than.
A few annoyances with punctuation and type.
Form indicators and all that that my students run into. It's really a more global, global appreciation.
Of developing a code for the whole english speaking world that anyone can read.
So, moving on to our next topic, which is braille. Now, I was thinking about how to.
Learn braille in different ways and for the learner that wants to use their.
Idevice or the Android device. I was thinking about the apps out there, and it's a little unfortunate that a lot of the apps are not.
Very user friendly by blind people. You'd kind of think that maybe that would be the case, but they're really not. So I thought, well, there might be a few out there, but what is a good way to learn Braille?
And of course, I mentioned the Hadley Hadley helps.
Now, it has been the Hadley Institute for the Blind and hadleyhelps.org, and they have excellent braille courses.
But if you wanted to practice your braille and you don't have access to a perk Braille writer, what you could do is turn on braille screen input.
And what that does is you can.
Use your phone either what they call in tabletop mode where it's laying flat.
On the table in, I believe it's landscape mode for that point, and your fingers are on the screen like a Perkins brailler.
Or you can hold your phone with.
The screen away from you and support the phone with your palms and write.
The braille on the screen that way.
And so I thought I would review.
The differences between iOS and Android.
So I'd like to start with my review of Braille screen input by going.
To my Android device. Now, Android has gotten a bad rap lately about its support talkback, of its support of braille displays and the HID braille displays in particular. But it has a very robust set of gestures and support for braille screen input. And I'm running the latest version of Talkback 14.
So here is how I'm going to get to the talkback settings.
Talkback menu actions in list okay, so.
Here we have actions talkback settings, and.
Here are the talkback settings Talkback settings.
Navigate up button out of list and.
In here there is braille customize menus.
Nine automatic descriptions for I braille heading eleven and 17 automatic descriptions for braille. Braille keyboard twelve or 17 that's what we want. Braille keyboard talkback navigate up button out of list Preferred Braille Grade we have.
Our preferred braille grade which you can.
Set layout, adapt to how you hold the device.
Six of eight and there is the layout, whether it's tabletop or screen away mode. But within these settings, you also are going to have a little part at.
The top is how to use the.
Braille keyboard and you can review all the gestures, the language.
You can set the language and of course I have mine set to UEB.
And preferred typing language. Preferred braille is contracted. The layout I have is the screen away mode.
There's also a setting called include all pressed dots.
And the challenge with that is if.
You accidentally touch the screen with a.
Finger and you didn't mean to, then that dot is added to the next screen press. You can also reverse the dots and so forth.
So those are some of the settings. So what happens here is we're going.
To go up here to prefer typing.
Language languages unit review all gestures two.
Of eight can review all gestures.
Braille keyboard gestures navigate up button out Braille keyboard gestures basic controls add spaces delete hide the keyboard and more. One of five enlist five items.
So there's a few items in this list that are big broad categories.
Cursor movement, move by character, word or line two or five text selection and editing select copy, cut paste three or five spell check find misspelled words, check suggestions and confirm changes.
Four or five okay, so there's actually.
No fifth item, which is kind of weird. We just get a little thunk there. So I would like to kind of.
Go over some of these gestures. It's very robust. As you can see, there's cut copy paste. I don't believe the iOS has that. I could be standing corrected here.
But if you're using the braille keyboard.
And you want to dismiss it, it's a swipe up with three fingers.
And then if you want to add.
A space, it's swipe right. Delete is swipe left. Those two gestures are the same.
If you are multi platform user, it.
Might be a tall order to learn both of these at the same time because the gestures are somewhat different. If you want to create a new line, you're going to swipe right with two fingers.
And if we want to delete a word we're going to swipe left with two fingers and move the cursor up. It's going to be swiping up. Move cursor down is swipe down.
Hide the keyboard is a swipe down with two fingers.
That's a good one. If you want to go back to the regular on screen QWERTY style keyboard.
If you want to switch to the.
Next keyboard, swiping down with three fingers will allow you to choose a keyboard. If you want to swipe up with.
Two fingers, you'll be submitting text. There are other options too, and that.
Would be a swipe up with.
That would be three fingers. You can also switch granularities.
You can move by character, word, etcetera.
So to enter this mode, you would swipe left or right with three fingers.
And then if you wanted to move to the next or previous item, you could swipe up or down.
And here's where it gets tricky.
If you want to move to the.
Previous or next character, you're going to.
Hold six and then swipe up or down anywhere.
If you're going to move to the previous word, you're going to hold down dot five and swipe up or down.
And if you want to move to.
The previous or next line, you're going to hold down four and swipe up or down. There's a way to move to the beginning or to the end of the text. There's also text selection and editing. So I don't note that we have this on iOS, so I wanted to go over this.
So you would use the above movement.
Commands where you were moving by character.
Word or line and, but you would.
Swipe up or down with two fingers instead. So there's a bit of memorization going.
On here, but for a dedicated braille screen input user, this would be second.
Nature if you used it a lot. You can also select all the text.
By holding dot four and swiping left with three fingers.
Copy is hold four and swipe down with three fingers. And cut is hold down four on.
The screen and swipe up with three fingers.
Paste is hold four and swipe right with three fingers.
So just a bit of memorization here. And there's also a way to find the misspelled words and hear those options.
And also confirm your spelling suggestion.
You can undo the spelling suggestion and so forth.
And so those are some of the.
Android commands with.
All the various swipes.
And gestures and things. And again, the way you get to that is by the talkback settings and then the braille keyboard and then within.
That there are the various categories.
So we'll get out of the talkback settings here.
Text selection and editing.
We'll get back here five navigate up.
Button talk back review all gestures, two of eight enlist eight items and then.
If you back out of that you'll be back home. So to talk about the iOS, there are various commands, as I said, that are the same. So swiping right with one finger is going to insert a space.
Swiping left with one finger is going to delete a character, move to a new line. You're going to swipe right with two fingers, cycle through spelling suggestions. Is a swipe up or down with one finger, enter a new line or send a message as a swipe up with three fingers.
And if you want to switch between.
Six dot which you or contracted, so.
Six being no contractions, you would swipe right with three fingers. So if you have a word like.
Have, you type an h on the screen and you want to immediately translate that.
That means you want to make it.
The word have without inserting a space. So translate immediately.
That's what that is. So typing a letter that is a.
Contraction or a sign that is a.
Contraction, not wanting to insert a space, you, if you have contractions enabled, you.
Would swipe down with two fingers. If you want to switch to a.
New keyboard, it's a swipe up with.
Two fingers, which is different than the Android. And if you want to exit braille screen input, you're going to do a two finger scrub or you're going to adjust the rotor, that little twisty, turny motion that you make with your fingers, you want to adjust that to another.
Setting and that dumps you out of the braille screen input.
Also you can recalibrate the dots. So if you're using an iPhone, if.
You want to place your fingers on.
The screen and show the screen what.
Your, your finger placement is so that it can recalibrate.
On the iPhone, you're going to place the right hand dots first and then.
You'Re going to place the left hand dots.
So four, five, six and the lift.
And then one, two, three is my.
Understanding with the iPad you're going to press all of them at the same time.
And of course there's a way to.
Change all the settings. In braille screen input. You're going to go to settings, accessibility, voiceover braille braille screen input so you can choose six dot or contracted braille.
As the default or you can reverse the dot positions. I've never done that. I'm not sure quite why folks feel more comfortable with that. And you can put it in eight.
Braille so you can find all this information for iOS at support apple.com. and I just did a search for Braille. So braille screen input is a great way to practice your braille. It will verbalize the letters as you type them. Of course you don't get the tactile information and reinforcement, but you do get the input practice, which I think is really very important as well, so that when you get to a Perkins brailler or a little note taker or ereader, you're able to input your braille, which.
Is something that I need to work.
On with my students.
I am much better at teaching them to read and need to remember to.
Always give them lots of transcribing or writing opportunities. Hope you've enjoyed this little presentation on braille screen input from an Android or iOS perspective.
Have a really great rest of your week and we'll catch you next.