Category: book Nook
Do you Zoners prefer an audio book to a Braille book? How widespread do you think Braille reading is amongst the average blind populace? Why do you prefer one format or the other?
I like audio books, well if the reader is good and keeps it interesting. I hate it when the book is supposed to be good and the reader is boring. Luckly that really hasn't happened to much in the books I've read. Also like when they have a guy for the male characters and a girl reading the female character parts like in the Wheel of Time books. I think my favorite reader is Jim Dale, who read the Harry Potter books.
I used to read Braille, but it was mainly for school stuff. I find it boring, makes me tired, and takes the fun out of the book. Just my opinion... I know people who prefer Braille and I'm not saying its bad to read books that way; its just not for me.
I prefer Braille. I like being able to actually READ a book instead of listening to one, mainly because I seem to get bored listening to an audio book.
audio. i try not to use braille... i don't like it
Braille. I do listen to audio books sometimes, but braille doesn't put me to sleep like an audio book does.
when I was in school, I read braille all the time. if I had a free period, you'd often find me in the stacks at the library looking for yet another book. I practicely lived and breathed braille. Of course I still love reading, but now I mainly listen to audio books. I wonder if I've just gotten lazy in my old age, lol, or if it's just audio takes up less room. I can put an audio book on my mp3 player most times, and it's much more compact to take on trips. But I still get my magazines in braille.
Jen
Well, here's my take on this. I prefer braille when I can get it, but many books aren't being produced that way anymore for the simple reason of space and reson 2 because of a lot of kids comming up through the school system aren't really being taught braille anymore. Everything is now available on audio and computer so a lot of the teachers have stopped doing the full braille courses anymore. Personally, through high school and college, I needed my math books in braille as hearing them made no sense! As for audio, it depends on the book, the reader, and where it comes from. Many of the audios for sale are fairly high quality and in those I prefer the unabridged ones on MP3 disk or regular CD's. Most of the readers for the NLS collection have done well, but I do prefer men reading the books, whether commercial or NLS, over the women. Audio books work great on long trips as they are compact and lighter to carry and they also work great if someone is on dialysis since they are small and easy to bring and most of the time there's a needle sticking out of your arm so you can't move it to read braille. I'm so glad I'm done with that and have a transplant now! There is also computer books, many of which you can't find commercially or from NLS, but you can download from various sites. With these some use the Sappy TTS microsoft speech and others use your own screen reader, and sometimes that can get boring. I find the best audios are the ones that are dramatized with various people playing the parts and sound effects and all.
How often do Audio books have "various people playing the parts and sound effects and all"? I've never encountered one of these but I rarely get Audio books so maybe my experience is limited.
I prefer braille for my school textbooks if that is at all possible. I would also like to hear a book being draumatized. The only thing I don't like for the people who say all audio, is what happens if your player or your computer goes down? Then what are you going to do?
I definitely prefer Braille. I just can't concentrate on a book when it's in audio, and then I end up missing half the plot. I can see how it's gonna make sense to have college textbooks in audio, so I guess I'll have to try to focus on them, but it's really hard for me.
The other thing you guys fail to mention about Braille is that just because you read Braille doesn't mean you have to fill up an entire room with the books. With things like Web Braille and Book Share, and provided you have a note taker, reading Braille can be just as compact as audio. I seriously go almost nowhere without my Braille Note, and never use the speech on it.
However I do like audio books when they're dramatized, they seem to hold my interest a bit more. They're hard to find though. BBC did a really good job with the Chronicles of Narnia books, but that's the only example I can think of off the top of my head.
I find it sad that not many children are being taught how to use Braille anymore. I don't mind using either format because each has its good and bad things about it.
Gawd! Who wants Braille books weighing well over a tonne when you can slip an audio book in your pocket, your purse or handbag or even behind your left ear on your bitesize Zenstone MP3 player? lol. Audio books every time for me, thank you.
Jen.
Agreeing with post 11, disagreeing with post 12.
I was just recently talking to a friend, who was a braille teacher, and she brought up a good point that if a blind person who can't see well enough to read print doesn't learn braille, than basically they're illiterate. Functional illiterate, but still illiterate.
usually audio. I can do braille but if I read braille it's on my note taker. Audio or synthetic speech set at the rate i like sutes me more. I do believe that being able to read and write braille is a nicesity though.
I think what many of us are saying is that it is situational. Certain subjects like math suffer in an auditory rendering. When I was in grad school, I used to use a Perkins and braille some of my statistical tables. I nearly flunked out of the class, but I would certainly have bombed had a used audio only. As someone who recommends adaptive technology at work, I'm hapy to say that the vast majority of people commming up these days prefer a braille notetaker. Having said that, I'm becomming more of an auditory learner, but still get my magazines in hard-copy braille.
Lou
Count me as one of the literate ones then, lol. I was learning braille when I was a toddler, and note to post 12, you seem to've got off somewhat lightly, not having to screw all the muscles in your shoulders and back lugging huge ringbinders or those cheap cardboard ringbinder things chock full of Braille paper around in your schoolbag for 7 plus years when you're in School. Yikes! Give me audio every time. Braille is just so over huge. I wish they'd just invent a machine which would punch out raised print, like a Brailler, so even blind children would be able to read it. That's something which still really, pisses me off, gets to me today, because both Schools I went to, relied so heavily on Braille for everything, that learning print was only necessary so you could get the hang of signing official papers, documents and the like. I never have, to this day. A squiggly paw print thing represents my signature. It doesn't even look like my initials, because, what they should've done in Primary and Secondary School for us here, and never did, was teach us how to hold a pen and read, write and most importantly, form something ledgible in print, so the rest of the world can read it. They gave us a chart with upper case and lower case print letters when I first started in Secondary School and I have it still, though I am very reliant on it still, however, I'm still unable to write in print because Braille ruled, so far as my elders and betters were concerned, so those of you, giving Braille your full support, just remember, it won't do you any good in the long run. If the rest of the world communicates in print, we should really get down to inventing the wherewithall to do the same ourselves.
Jen.
We can communicate in print! Computers with printers, e-mail, text messaging, etc.
And as far as the raised print thing goes, they tried it and it didn't work! Hence, the reason braille was invented.
I learned to use a device many years ago called the Optacon. It was a camera that one moved over the printed letter, and transmitted the immage of what it saw onto vibrating pins that reproduced the shape of the letter. If it saw a print o, you felt a circle, for example. Although braille is bulky, I think it is still more efficient. Granted, I never saw anything that compared the fastest optacon reader to the fastest braille reader, but although I found the optacon invaluable, I still think it more efficient and reliable than I could imagine raised print being.
Lou
I prefer Braille all the way for reading, writing and anything I'm meant to get information out of, but audio is OK for just listening to for the complete fun of it.
I'd love to read more braille but my display broke.
I read a ton from bookshare via IE and jaws - god does it get boring listening to Jaws read for an extended period of time. I have known braille since first grade but didn't use it after high school. I have now been working to brush up my reading speed again. I do like audio books too - especially on long car trips.
Braille definately has its uses. For comprehending books on technical matters, you might want to read braille. However, if you just want to read, pleasure reading that is, audio is my favorite. Unless the reader sounds liek a computer. Computerized readers take away from the ambiance of the book.
yeah "ambiance" nice word choice to describe that. :)
/Even so, Braille was still invented by a child, 12-year-old Schoolboy Louis Braille, hence why it's called Braille. He, as a child, thought raised print didn't work which is why he invented his own writing, Braille. Raised print could well work for us if only we could have the chance to persevere with it again, which would hopefully, mean that this totally pointless form of comms would eventually die out and more and more people would have the ability to read, write and understand print for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post.
Jen.
Jen.
braille for me. I get more out of books that way. as for why I prefer it, it's just easier and more efficient.
Well i would prefer audio books. See i am a large print reader but if I can't find a book in a large print format i usually use the victor reader. I know braille but I am not use to reading it.
I read braille even for pleasure all through High School. But I find I don't remember things very well that way. So I'm an audio person. And I totally agree with Hedwig. I hated carrying around those bulky books and ring binders with all that braille paper in them. And I absolutely can't stand the Perkins brailler. My shins were always sore, not to mention anyone else I might accidentally bump into while walking down the hall, from carrying the damn thing. It didn't matter if I carried it key side away from me or not. About the only time I'll use braille nowadays is if I'm taking a math class in college.
I might have said this before, but with notetakers on the market, braille is considerably more portable, and one has the potential to search for text strings in the books, making it more flexible than it was at the time of its invention. As someone who used and valued the Optacon many years ago, raised print definite had and has a place, but speaking for myself, I don't think I could develop the fluency with print that I have with braille. As for the weight of Perkins I have to agree. I will say though, that after cracking shins with it on busses, I got a seat on many trips long before they had signs asking people to give up the front seats for an elderly or handicapped person. Besides, if you ever needed to anchor a boat, or hold books down in the wind, the Perkins was your friend.
Lou
I just thought they were in the way more often than not. I never even use mine to be honest. I just don't like braille.
Hi all, wow, lots of replies to this post.
Here is my two cents worth, Braille always, however, as someone else said, when I was a kid I always read Braille. heck you couldn't find me without a book in my hand.
But when I got older and lived on my own, Braille became not only too bulky, but also as someone else said, you can't find the books you want any more. or not many of them. So though I love Braille you can now usually find me with my handy victor and books and music riding on a bus.
h and as for print, the person who said they learned how to kind of write, I am with you there, all I can do is a doctors signature. they taught me my numbers too but its been so long ago I forgot.
lelia
I was the same way. When I was younger I almost always had a braille book with me. In fact my brother and sister actually tried several times to get my mom to ban me from reading after it got dark when we took long trips in the car, because they thought it wasn't fair that I could keep reading and they couldn't. Two words for you. Reading light! Duh! Of course their resentment might also have been due in part to the bulkiness of braille, which is a major reason I don't like it anymore.That and my fingers actually get tired after a while.
Oh, I remember reading so much when I was a kid that my fingers would get little callusses. it was weird.
I also wanted to chime in on the perkins deal, I too remember carrying that heavy thing down the school halls and having hurt shins from others bumping in to me.
Lelia
It depends on what I'm able to get my hands on first. braille keeps me awake so I prefer that when I'm studdying even if I have the audio.
when I' reading for fun it has to be a very special book if I am to get it in braille. so I guess the audio has to get the whote.
But anyway, Learn braille...
I'm just the opposite. I fall asleep far more easily while reading braille. Used to get me in trouble in High School on a regular basis.
I like Braille or digital format for school books because I can't concentrate or get much out of audio; I won't remember most of what I hear and just not knowing where things are on the book to be able to find things quickly. With Braille or digital, i can easily skim thru the book myself since I rarely tend to read the pages in order anyway, plus I am actively involved in reading the book by moving my fingers over the Braille or pressing keys on the computer to move around the digital ones. Also, with digital, I can copy the book to an editable file and then cut out everything I don't need to read, and it just makes it less overwhelming to look for/thru what I need to study.
For casual reading, I mostly like digital format also, but if I can get some of those books in Braille, that's cool too. To me, it's different reading Braille from a Braille display than reading it on paper though. I guess it's that when reading Braille, i like to flip thru the actual pages and everything, and i guess it's also that the Braille displays are so short that you have to keep pressing the advance buttons to read the next few words and that just gets tiring to me (but maybe that's just because mine is an 18-cell display). So, I end up liking to read my books in either hardcopy Braille or with the computer. Also, for the casual reading, I don't mind some books in audio, if the reader makes it interesting and is very expressive when she/he reads.
Braille is handy and all not saying It's not so. I don't mind it. I do prefer the math books in braille, but otherwise, it's audio for me.
In audio, no matter how you read it by Jaws or by a narator professional or not, you cover more in less time. You can't read very fast in braille and for me, I am extra slow.
That's another reason I don't like braille. I'm just too slow at it. That's probably why I always used to fall asleep while reading it. Granted that does happen for me with audio sometimes but nowhere near as much as it did with braille. I agree with those who've said they'd use braille for math but that's about it.
ey now that reminds me, one day I was reading my science book and got tired, so I put my chin on my hand for a minute or so I thought. Well, my teacher walks up to me and says "hey lelia, I didn't know you could read with your chin? Talk about getting busted sleeping/ grin
Lelia
Oh dear... Never got caught sleeping but I've read at snail pace enough times. In environmental science they gave us about 30 to 40 minutes, I only got four pages done and I am not exactly done with the fourth page.
I am a one-handed braille reader. I lay on the floor and read. When our cat was a kitten, I didn't know he was watching my hand. Well, I was tired, and knew I was reading slower and slower. I woke up to find this mass of teeth and claws on my ghand. He thought it was playtime.
Lou
My cat would probably do that as well. But as I said earlier in this topic I clearly remember hearing my brother and sister complaining to my parents because I could read in the dark but they couldn't. It made long car trips a nightmare I can tell you. My sibs kept trying to get my parents to ban me from reading after it got dark to make it fair.
These days I read more audio books, but I still always have a braille book that I'm reading as well. When I was younger I read mostly braille and remember how much I enjoyed it. I think it's deplorable that braille is not being taught as widely as it used to be, and agree with an earlier post that if one is relying only on audio, never having learned braille that a person is illiterate, not having seen how words are spelled and written in hard copy.
I'm not trying to devalue braille here since there was a time when that was pretty much the only way I read. I just don't happen to like it much anymore is all.
I actually use audio for reading books for pleasure but if I am learning something or reading to be able to do something I use braille. I also have everything in my house brailled instead of those dots I see others using.
I think building up speed for reading Braille is something that has to be practiced, because I can definitely read as fast as any sighted person reads print. I just can't imagine relying on audio, and I think that's what helped me become a good speller as well. I don't know how true this really is, but it seems like the people I know who use audio most of the time have no concept of grammar and their spelling is pretty bad. I'm not trying to sound stuck up, but I think blind kids should definitely be started out with Braille, so they learn the same way sighted kids do, and then have a better chance of learning to spell and use grammar on a normal level when they get older.
i prefer audio cause my fingers get tired with braille