Folks,
I’ve been talking about the Braille2000 program for awhile, and while this is a post on Braille2000, I’m going to take a different light on it and talk about how I’ve been able to do the assignments pre the talking edition.
Some caveats:
- I started with jaws 2018 and upgraded to 2019 during this process.
- NVDA was tested upon request, but found that it was not efficient at all. Someone asked me through linked in, and I tested.
- During a prior interview which is found through this blog post and soon will be available through the Braille Transcription as a blind person web site, narator is not even an option.
With this information out of the way, lets dive in to the first twelve lessons
Assignment 1
Assignment 1 I did a lot later, after I had learned enough of Braille2000 and could do the work independently. I did the 6-key in 3-1 default paragraph style. This particular assignment is not to be turned in to the instructor, but depending on your instructor, and whether you’re taking the assignment set via corespondence or not.
The Rest of the assignments
You’ll find varying ranges of difficulties when it comes to the first twelve. Assignments 2-4 can be done strictly with Jaws with the understanding that you need to learn how to set your paragraph marks.
Here are some tips:
- Don’t use your arrow keys for up and down if you’re on the last line and Jaws says page fill or end of file. I made this mistake, and got some very interesting results when I sent it off to Bob for him to peruse.
- Adjusting paragraph styles need only be done once, enter results in new paragraph style, while the paragraph style is for the current selection. Changing the current paragraph can be changed to all of file when tabbing around if the entire file is messed up. To do this, go to adjust, paragraph and make your selections by tabbing to the radio buttons and shift+tabbing to the current paragraph button and press space if you want that. There’s also another button to change this to all of file.
- As the assignments get harder, Jaws alone will not be able to get the job done. While I’ve had braille outs of my work, the talking edition would’ve saved me when I was reading things and it made sense to me, and listening to it under exact while checking the braille of the assignment would’ve helped. This is because inlater lessons, it was important for emphasis and the like taught later, but the talking edition is wired to tell you symbols like grade 1 word, symbol, passage, and terminators. It also speaks capitalization in the same manner whether its word, letter, or passage.
One of the things that I really like in Braille2000 is the keyboard aspect of the program. When keyboard mode is on, and you’re in 6-key mode, Braille2000 will give you exact keystrokes of what you’re pressing, so you may determine right then and there if thats correct. Braille2000 can also give you a print line reading of the work with a couple of keystrokes either through menus, or the control+q, quick commands.
The control+q, quick commands have become very valuable in later lessons, especially during assignment 16 when prompting from a mentor continued to tell me of an issue I couldn’t find! I read the braille, read the braille of the assignment, and it wasn’t clicking until I heard it through speech while reading the braille of the assignment.
While that was a later lesson, my reports indicate that I was not doing a great job, and I was accused of not even proofreading my work. With multiple braille outs, and giving up on the note taker, I vowed to get the book in braille so I can read the formatting and what was expected.
This really became apparent after I pretty much tried to do it with the knowledge of what I had, and doubted myself even though the work was in uncontracted braille. I was making too many mistakes, taking spaces out where they were to be because I’d read it on an 18-cell braille display. I learned real quick after several lessons that this wasn’t going to work. I even was asked if I was using the notetaker, which I said no.
As the contractions started to be taught, Jaws read the symbols as ASCII symbols.
You can download a copy of the ASCII braille chart directly from the jaredrimer.info site, through our document repository through the above links. Its best to right click or shift+f10 on these files and select save target as or save link as and save it to the PC that way. Pressing enter or left clicking may yield different results. You’ll definitely need it if you aren’t using the talking edition.
At one point, I was going through the braille in braille view, and took out a capital sign which was needed because I heard the word comma! This was my own error, and I felt pretty stupid for doing that, but I was going by what it said, and this could’ve been before braille outs, but then again, maybe not. I later learned the code, because B2K’s talking edition wasn’t really developed until I started 13 and percent codes could be used.
I probably could have cheated and typed everything out as I read it, told the program to write it in uncontracted mode, and be done, but forcing myself to learn 6-key entry would be better, and in fact, automatic translation is not all that perfect and 6-key is the only way to fix these things.
While I wrote about percent codes, a future blog post will talk about the importation process, and how I’m able now to check my work based on how I understand things. Braille copies are good, but fixing the errors can only be done in 6-key mode.
To read my reports to date throughout the course, you may access the transcribers section of the braille transcription as a blind person web site. There are audio demos and discussion of each possible lesson, although I didn’t demo some of them because you could see how more complex it was.
What about 12?
Assignment 12 was probably the most interesting assignment that I have ever come across. I found it very challenging without the talking edition, and it was even harder because I understood it one way, and the instructor wanted it another way.
Below, I’m going to put in quotes what I wrote as the beginning of the assignment 12 notations, so you have an understanding how rough this was. This comes directly from the assignment 12 web page.
In this assignment, there are quite a few definitions that are discussed which are prominent for this assignment.
- Grade 2 Braille
- Grade 1 Braille
- Standing Alone
Other terms may include letter-sequence, symbol-sequence, and terminator.
…
This assignment took me two tries. It seems like this is the common theme, two tries as of late. On March 18, 2019: I got my first report. I really thought I had understood this assignment to the best of my ability, and boy, was I wrong.
- There are 8 grade 1 symbol indicator errors in the very first sentence. How could that be when in EBAE, a-j k-o and p-z all had letter signs also know as grade one symbols? I’m not giving you the answer, but it is correct in my file now.
- In the same number, they indicate there is a terminator error.
- In a different number, there were reported 3 grade 1 symbol errors. I really didn’t understand this as I thought.
- More capitalization errors. Like I didn’t have enough trouble already, 5 of them in this particular unnumbered problem.
- In the same sentence which is unnumbered, they expect a terminator. Back to the drawing board.
- A grade 1 symbol indicator is also missing from the same number. Can I just quit?
- Malformation is back! More text is to form on a line. I totally didn’t understand this assignment.
- An erroneous error and more grade 1 symbol errors in a sentence.
- More grade 1 errors in another sentence and throughout as well as a malformed line.
As you can see, I was trying really hard to understand this, and I even had my braille and probably several copies. One of the things I really didn’t understand was the sentence that had something similar to the following sentence.
I wanted to alphabetize my files on my computer a-f, g-i, j-o, p-s, and t-z. The problem was that I got a-f, g-i, j-o, and p-s, but my t-z files were gone!
Yes, I’m exaggerating. The computer can do all of this, and I’m probably not making sense now, but if you had to braille this sentence there is a logical way to do it.
- Put the grade 1 indicater after f, as a doesn’t need it.
- g-i put grade one synmbol only on g as I didn’t need it
- j-o, p-s, and t-z all grade one symbols next to the beginning of each letter.
This is the way I did it. I was knocked off for 8 groupsign errors? This is how braille is written, not some random way, and I read it correctly with my braille. How could I imagine that they wanted it to be in passage grade 1 and I’ve never really read passage grade 1 fully until that lesson.
There were other errors, and the instructor still tried to trash me on having not proofed my work. I tell you what, you didn’t see me with the braille copies, and stacking them up where I could check each one of them to make sure I got everything correct, now did you?
The talking edition can’t help with all this, but it can help with making sure that you have your grade 1’s where you expect them by voicing to you while you read the braille and confirm you did it the way you understood it to be. It will read passage, word, symbol, and terminator information for grade 1 material when using the appropriate symbols.
Thats the power of Braille2000 now! Want to get your copy? Visit Braille2000 or jaredrimer.info to learn more, get demos, write ups, and more. We look forward in serving you!