Audiobooks. Are they worth it?

When we are young, we all start listening from our family a homemade version of audiobooks. We get into the story, we imagine in detail  everything that happens. 

Then we learn how to read. But, what happens when books are heavy, big and not too numerous? many  people lose the entusiasm. There come the audiobooks with human voices, with sintetic voices, and the specialized  apps and projects for blind perssons. Now, after a big expansion of technological resources I can choose, so I frequently read with my favorite  sintetic voice  at the speed that I prefer. I trie to share this audiobooks with peopple around me. They can see, but is also a good way to read wile cleaning the house or going to work. I started listening recorded short stories with human voices at the computation class in a school for the blind, once or twice a week. Then I got a flash memory and I could take the stories with me, for the first time with a sintetic voice. I got recorder devices that I used for reading, and now I can read wit my phone. In some situations I prefer reading in braille, like comedi books, or in books that have famous frases or short sentences to think about. Audiobooks are really useful for novels and long stories. I like reading  mistery, suspence, fantasy and  Writers  from  the nineteenth century such  as  Conan Doyle, Dumas or Poe. With the sintetic voice  I understand everything I read, and I read many books a year!

Before and now

Before and now

Hi! This is the tihrth entry of this blog. After reading theprevious two,   you may be thinking about this question.  Is it posible to conjugate braille with modern  technologie? How could it be done? In this post I will talk about my experience with braille devices. 

Braibook.

Braibook is a spanish innovator  device that looks like a mouse, -it may be a little bit  bigger- wich consist in a braille cell of  eight movile points. Computariced  braille is composed of eight points, but we usually find it with six points. Depending of the order that the device recives, some points are showed and some points are hided, and that showed points mean an only letter or sign. In the device there is also a joistick to move via de documents or the configuration menue. The braibook is light and compact, has different options and counts with a voice    that  reads  aloud if you use headphones,  but it can only repressent one sign at the same time. This  makes reading a slow experience, even after the adaptation period.

Braille me.

Braille me is not the first   braille display on the market. It consists in a determinated number of refreshable  cells  wich show diferent  letters  at the same time. Braille me has twenty refreshable cells, so we can read twenty letters  before needing to refresh the device. It also has a writing option, with six keys representing the six points used to write in braille. Depending of what keys you use, the corresponding points  will apear inmediately in the cells.  The braille me was created by innovision, an enterprice from India. It is one  of the cheapest braille displays at this moment, and it has a good quality and functioning. In braille, the reading proces is not as fast as conventional  reading, but  both  types of reading  represents a similar  experience. That is way I  prefer reading, for example, comedy books in braille and not by audiobooks. It's worth it! 

Screen readers. how they made it posible.

Hello. My name is Natalia. I was born during the    period  where computers were  being   most and most popular. I had the oportunity to press their keys with specifical   programs thad  readed for me, for example, the name of the letters. I never thought about using the mouse, but the keyboard was not enough   for me.  I learned  some ways to use the old cellphones,  learning one by one the  functions  of keys and never being shure if I was   doing something  wrong.  After the apearance of the new touch screens, blind persons were in disadvantaje. It was  just  incompatible to touch with our fingers in places thtat we didn't see. Now, every day, I know it is posible. There are big developments in technologie that let me use  my computer correctly and with a keyboard only. Also,  I utilice my  phone  in the same way as a sighted person. When the screen readed is on I can write, read and use almost every app. When I am on the starting screen,  for example, I make left or right  movements to listen to the name of every app. When I find the one that I whant, I just press two times on the screen and it oppens. It is not the only comand, and it could be hart to get used, but I really apreciate that we, blind perssons, are ussing exactly the same devices that a sighted persson usses every day. It means, for example, that I can  instantaneously help my mom or that everyone in my family can teach my a technological skill. 

How braille has changed my life

Hello,  wellcome to  this article  from  my blog. My name is Natalia, I am   twenty two years old and I study at the PUCPR, in Brazil.  I was born with a visual  disability  that makes me  almost totally blind. I can only make a diference between  very  dark and very  lighted places.    I  am using  the computer for writing tis article but, when I was young, i learn  propperly how to read and write   in Braille, wich is the topic of this post.  

Braille is a  writing code  that  has elped peopple around the world to comunicate and to be free. Also,   it has been  adapted to de new technologies. It is made of different convination of  six  points  that, in certain positions, mean diferent letters  from our latin alfabet. When a   tipewriter is not available,  these are the special  objects that we need to   write in  braille: A slate is a metal or plastic guide that opens with a hinge on one end. A slate can come in different shapes and sizes. A stylus is a small tool about 3 inches long, with a metal point at one end and a wooden knob or plastic handle at the other end. There is also braille for  languages that use diferent tipes of alfabet, such as Chinesse or Arabic. 

Braille is not a new languaje, it is just a  different  way of repressenting letters.

Braille is a dot sistem that can be touched and readed for the blind persons. It was oficially created by Louis Braille,  from France, in 1825. He was blind since he was a child, and he only  learned how the leters work with heavy and inpractical models of the letters. 

Louis Braille was born on january  of 1809, and death in 1852.

He was blind because of an accident since he was three years old, so  he  couldn’t read a book, for example. He discovered and  improved  a sistem that was used for the soldiers in war to read mesajes in the darknes, just touching the letters. Louis Braille allowed blind peopple to read books, write letters, know the name of their medicines and the numbers o fan elevator. He has also allowed to read  and  write music, and i’ts still present in our technological world.