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For nearly a century, the National Braille Press has churned out millions of pages of Braille books and magazines a year, providing a window on the world for generations of blind people.
But as it turns 90 this year, the Boston-based printing press and other advocates of the tactile writing system are wrestling with how to address record low Braille literacy.
Roughly 13 percent of U.S. blind students were considered Braille readers in a 2016 survey by the American Printing House for the Blind, another major Braille publisher, located in Louisville, Kentucky. That number has steadily dropped from around 30 percent in 1974, the first year the organization started asking the question.
Brian Mac Donald, president of the National Braille Press, says the modern blind community needs easier and more affordable ways to access the writing system developed in the 1800s by French teacher Louis Braille.
For the National Braille Press and its 1960-era Heidelberg presses, that has meant developing and launching its own electronic Braille reader last year—the B2G .
Hope it catches on. We need somebody who can read the last copy of the Bible after the apocalypse.
(Score: 2) by Popeidol on Thursday November 02 2017, @11:52AM
You're right that text-to-speech has been amazing, and has made it much easier for people with a vision impairment to get information and communicate. No arguments there, and when you can get 95% of what they need with a shallow learning curve why would you spend years mastering a specific skill to get the final 5%?
The issue is more the side effects. The first you'll notice is spelling: If your whole life has been taking in text by audio you tend to spell fairly phonetically. Autocorrect may eventually fix this, but it's not there yet. Speech-to-text can help with that but has a host of its own issues (Try sending a sensitive email in an open-plan office). Braille also covers more than just text - There's specific annotations for maths, musical scores, and more.
I think braille is doomed to a slow death, even if good braille displays dropped from a few thousand to zero overnight. I don't believe that audio can replace its uses completely, however cost effective it is. If we're lucky it may still be a net gain for the people using it.