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How do you 'comprehend' Braille? (self.Blind)
submitted by bababui567
I'm not sure if this is the right word; so when a seeing person reads they don't read letter by letter but it's more of a pattern recognition.
You can scramble the letters between the first and last one and the brain automatically makes sense of it.
Does something similar happen with Braille? Can you 'feel' a whole word? I imagine it must be quite difficult for longer words because you might not be able to 'see' the complete word all at once.
You can scramble the letters between the first and last one and the brain automatically makes sense of it.
Does something similar happen with Braille? Can you 'feel' a whole word? I imagine it must be quite difficult for longer words because you might not be able to 'see' the complete word all at once.
zersiax 13 points 2y ago
Braille reading tends to be more serial, so character by character. That is one reason why most countries have a contracted braille table which essentially assigns characters to often seen letter clusters in order to save space and speed up reading. So ...reading character by character, but there are people that achieve a sufficiently high speed of reading that it may appear they are reading words all at once. The phenomenon where the middle of a word is scrambled and the brain still recognizes it, I think, isn't feasible in braille, though.
Disclaimer: I have been a braille reader for the last 24 years but research on this is somewhat scarse, so this is mostly based on my own experiences as well as conversations I've had with others on the subject.
Disclaimer: I have been a braille reader for the last 24 years but research on this is somewhat scarse, so this is mostly based on my own experiences as well as conversations I've had with others on the subject.
retrolental_morose 6 points 2y ago
I second this. I can mentally "chunk", but only left-to-right.
bradley22 3 points 2y ago
I’ve been reading braille on and off for 27 years and agree, it’s impossible to take the middle of a word and guess it.
bababui567 [OP] 1 points 2y ago
Since the contracted Braille differs from language to language, how does it work if you have texts with different languages in them?
For example, in German 'sch' has its own sign, because it is used very often, but in English not so much. I reckon that an English text with some German words uses the English contractions and the other way round. But if you speak both languages, using both contractions would make reading much faster.
Do Braille displays or screen readers somehow account for that?
So if a blind person learns to read in a new language, they also have to learn the related contractions, right?
I learned that some languages with non Latin letters use transliterations, e.g. Greek and Russian but others like Japanese use different signs altogether.
And how do mathematical formulas work? Open and closed braces seem to have the same sign, but are there ways to write integrals? Or the sign for a sum, which is a sigma?
For me it looks like reading in a different language is much harder for blind people than it is for seeing people.
Thank you all very much for your answers and experiences, they are much appreciated. I hope I didn't ask too many questions that are already answered elsewhere.
For example, in German 'sch' has its own sign, because it is used very often, but in English not so much. I reckon that an English text with some German words uses the English contractions and the other way round. But if you speak both languages, using both contractions would make reading much faster.
Do Braille displays or screen readers somehow account for that?
So if a blind person learns to read in a new language, they also have to learn the related contractions, right?
I learned that some languages with non Latin letters use transliterations, e.g. Greek and Russian but others like Japanese use different signs altogether.
And how do mathematical formulas work? Open and closed braces seem to have the same sign, but are there ways to write integrals? Or the sign for a sum, which is a sigma?
For me it looks like reading in a different language is much harder for blind people than it is for seeing people.
Thank you all very much for your answers and experiences, they are much appreciated. I hope I didn't ask too many questions that are already answered elsewhere.
zersiax 1 points 2y ago
- Since the contracted Braille differs from language to language, how does it work if you have texts with different languages in them?
That is actually a bit of a tricky situation. Every language has it's own braille table, which at the grade 1 (uncontracted) level, are usually incredibly similar, apart from punctuation signs. The letters are generally the same, and the various diacritic marks letters can have are usually reasonably easy to learn or distinguish between. In a screenreader, you can cycle between these braille tables usually with a hotkey or by changing a setting, but I don't actually know if any screenreader will show the correct braille table based on the detected language. In some cases you might not want that anyway, in particular for grade 2 ( contracted) braille, because you're right, contractions often differ between languages and therefore might very well be incomprehensible if you don't have that table mastered and, indeed, there might not be a contracted table for a language at all. My native language, Dutch, tried grade 2 in the 80s, decided nobody was going to use it and did away with it. As a result, my grade 2 is actually very poor.
- For example, in German 'sch' has its own sign, because it is used very often, but in English not so much. I reckon that an English text with some German words uses the English contractions and the other way round. But if you speak both languages, using both contractions would make reading much faster.
You'd be right, but it is very possible that that sign for sch means something entirely different in the English contracted braille table, which would make it more confusing because you'd have to do more context-switching.
- Do Braille displays or screen readers somehow account for that?
Kinda :) Like I said you can switch braille tables to the language you expect to see most of, and then muddle through for the rest. There are efforts to let you mix and mash two different braille tables together, I know of at least one screenreader addon that is working on that, but that is not super common. Which bugs me immensely as a language learner, actually :)
- So if a blind person learns to read in a new language, they also have to learn the related contractions, right?
Not necessarily. Every language has its own uncontracted braille table as well, and I would actually always recommend against immediately learning that language's contractions. In my experience, doing so ruins the chance to get a good grasp on a language's spelling rules, and particularly in non-phonetic languages like English this can be incredibly harmful, mayking it sow peeple start spelling like this becaws it stil sownds rite with a screanreeder.
- I learned that some languages with non Latin letters use transliterations, e.g. Greek and Russian but others like Japanese use different signs altogether.
I don't have a huge amount of experience with the greek and russian braille tables but I have glimpsed them. The uncontracted braille characters of the letters will be a transliteration , e.g., learning the russian cirylics in braille will be rather easy as all letters that have a latin equivalent will look very similar, if not the same, as that latin counterpart, perhaps with one dot added to denote either the latin or cyrilic version. I've seen this table maybe once, so I don't remember which is which I'm afraid.
Japanese ...now there's an interesting one. Japanese has opted for letting the screenreader (or braille transcriber) decide what reading of a kanji fits, which then gets transliterated to kana, which have braille signs that look EXACTLY like normal letters, but aren't, because they are really using an abugida-like construction to decide how letters are formed. 花 would therefore get transliterated to はな which in braille looks like "uk". Given kanji are in a sense already contractions I don't think japanese uses grade 2, not in the screenreader implementations I have seen in any case.
- And how do mathematical formulas work? Open and closed braces seem to have the same sign, but are there ways to write integrals? Or the sign for a sum, which is a sigma?
There's various ways to solve mathematics for screenreader users, have a look at MathML and the Nemeth braille code if you're interested :)
-For me it looks like reading in a different language is much harder for blind people than it is for seeing people.
It can be, but doesn't have to be. In Japanese, we only have to learn hiragana. Katakana are denoted by a context-switching sign, and kanji get translated for us, so we don't have to learn how to write those, although at times the interpreter does break so knowing the various readings for a kanji helps a lot. As for other languages, if you stick to uncontracted braille working with different alphabets can at times actually be significantly easier :)
That is actually a bit of a tricky situation. Every language has it's own braille table, which at the grade 1 (uncontracted) level, are usually incredibly similar, apart from punctuation signs. The letters are generally the same, and the various diacritic marks letters can have are usually reasonably easy to learn or distinguish between. In a screenreader, you can cycle between these braille tables usually with a hotkey or by changing a setting, but I don't actually know if any screenreader will show the correct braille table based on the detected language. In some cases you might not want that anyway, in particular for grade 2 ( contracted) braille, because you're right, contractions often differ between languages and therefore might very well be incomprehensible if you don't have that table mastered and, indeed, there might not be a contracted table for a language at all. My native language, Dutch, tried grade 2 in the 80s, decided nobody was going to use it and did away with it. As a result, my grade 2 is actually very poor.
- For example, in German 'sch' has its own sign, because it is used very often, but in English not so much. I reckon that an English text with some German words uses the English contractions and the other way round. But if you speak both languages, using both contractions would make reading much faster.
You'd be right, but it is very possible that that sign for sch means something entirely different in the English contracted braille table, which would make it more confusing because you'd have to do more context-switching.
- Do Braille displays or screen readers somehow account for that?
Kinda :) Like I said you can switch braille tables to the language you expect to see most of, and then muddle through for the rest. There are efforts to let you mix and mash two different braille tables together, I know of at least one screenreader addon that is working on that, but that is not super common. Which bugs me immensely as a language learner, actually :)
- So if a blind person learns to read in a new language, they also have to learn the related contractions, right?
Not necessarily. Every language has its own uncontracted braille table as well, and I would actually always recommend against immediately learning that language's contractions. In my experience, doing so ruins the chance to get a good grasp on a language's spelling rules, and particularly in non-phonetic languages like English this can be incredibly harmful, mayking it sow peeple start spelling like this becaws it stil sownds rite with a screanreeder.
- I learned that some languages with non Latin letters use transliterations, e.g. Greek and Russian but others like Japanese use different signs altogether.
I don't have a huge amount of experience with the greek and russian braille tables but I have glimpsed them. The uncontracted braille characters of the letters will be a transliteration , e.g., learning the russian cirylics in braille will be rather easy as all letters that have a latin equivalent will look very similar, if not the same, as that latin counterpart, perhaps with one dot added to denote either the latin or cyrilic version. I've seen this table maybe once, so I don't remember which is which I'm afraid.
Japanese ...now there's an interesting one. Japanese has opted for letting the screenreader (or braille transcriber) decide what reading of a kanji fits, which then gets transliterated to kana, which have braille signs that look EXACTLY like normal letters, but aren't, because they are really using an abugida-like construction to decide how letters are formed. 花 would therefore get transliterated to はな which in braille looks like "uk". Given kanji are in a sense already contractions I don't think japanese uses grade 2, not in the screenreader implementations I have seen in any case.
- And how do mathematical formulas work? Open and closed braces seem to have the same sign, but are there ways to write integrals? Or the sign for a sum, which is a sigma?
There's various ways to solve mathematics for screenreader users, have a look at MathML and the Nemeth braille code if you're interested :)
-For me it looks like reading in a different language is much harder for blind people than it is for seeing people.
It can be, but doesn't have to be. In Japanese, we only have to learn hiragana. Katakana are denoted by a context-switching sign, and kanji get translated for us, so we don't have to learn how to write those, although at times the interpreter does break so knowing the various readings for a kanji helps a lot. As for other languages, if you stick to uncontracted braille working with different alphabets can at times actually be significantly easier :)
JackEsq 1 points 2y ago
Sighted parent but I’ve done some research on this. Any foreign language would still use the native language Braille system. Not as efficient but probably harder to learn a new Braille system but you might learn an entirely new code for foreign language.
Math uses Nemeth Braille code.
Music is another Braille system.
Math uses Nemeth Braille code.
Music is another Braille system.
AchooCashew 7 points 2y ago
When I progressed to reading words and sentences, I did begin to 'sense' the word rather than reading it cell by cell (similar to how a child might sound out words at first before they can read them with one glance). It was a wonderful moment.
I still consider myself a 'novice' Braille reader, but I know enough for restaurant menus when they're available (they never have been, haha, but I ask!) and to benefit from public Braille signage.
I still consider myself a 'novice' Braille reader, but I know enough for restaurant menus when they're available (they never have been, haha, but I ask!) and to benefit from public Braille signage.
bababui567 [OP] 2 points 2y ago
You talk about 'sensing' the word; is it more like autocomplete, where you read the first letters and your brain fills in the rest or do you feel the whole word with more than one finger and you just 'know' what it means?
AchooCashew 1 points 2y ago
I’ll try to describe it as literally as possible. While reading, running my fingers over the dots, without pausing to read each individual letter my brain goes “that feels like the word _____”. So my brain is taking the input from all the letters and giving me a complete word- like when you (presumably) read this with your eyes, you can see a word and just ‘know’ it.
Motya105 1 points 2y ago
U/Zersiax is correct re: Russian Braille. Russian Braille has no contractions, so everything is written out letter-by-letter, with some letters, such as ы Getting their own symbol. Example: the symbol in Braille for ы in Russian also means “The” in English contracted braille, and is an A whole note in music Braille. Japanese Braille, as Zersiax said is interesting, since you need to remember more meanings than a sighted person would need to for each Kanji, (Example: Ichi, (1) and Hito (person) look the same in Japanese braille, so you need to use context to determine which one you need in a sentence.) Hope this helps!
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