Braille + Hebrew?
Sep. 7th, 2014 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioDear LJ Brain Trust,
A member of our minyan has a degenerative vision problem and can no longer use even a very-large-print prayer book. (She was absent for a while and returned this week with a guide dog.) She realized that she didn't know as many of the prayers by heart as she thought she did, so I'm spending some time with her to teach her by ear and we'll scare up some recordings for her, but memorization isn't really the ideal solution. Sure, people can and do memorize the core, common prayers, but it's hard to memorize everything, and sometimes there are seasonal changes, so you really want to be able to read the prayer book.
I once saw somebody who used a Braille prayer book, but at the time I didn't ask him how that worked and he's since passed away. Braille is, as I understand it, a letter-by-letter notation system with an extra layer (called "condensed", I've heard) where common words have their own symbols instead of being spelled out. (Like American Sign Language, except I have the impression that the balance between spelled-out and condensed is different. I may be wrong about that.) But -- all of that kind of assumes a particular alphabet, right? So how would Hebrew be rendered in Braille -- do they transliterate it and then Braille-encode that, or does the reader have to learn a different Braille language to match the different alphabet, or what?
I'd like to be able to help her get a prayer book she can read. I don't think she's ready to learn a second Braille language (she's still working on the first).
And a related question: she has an iPad; are there Braille peripherals for that like (I understand) there are for desktop computers? Is "digital copy of the book + iPad + peripheral" a practical alternative to the massive paper tome? (She would use technology on Shabbat for that purpose.)
A member of our minyan has a degenerative vision problem and can no longer use even a very-large-print prayer book. (She was absent for a while and returned this week with a guide dog.) She realized that she didn't know as many of the prayers by heart as she thought she did, so I'm spending some time with her to teach her by ear and we'll scare up some recordings for her, but memorization isn't really the ideal solution. Sure, people can and do memorize the core, common prayers, but it's hard to memorize everything, and sometimes there are seasonal changes, so you really want to be able to read the prayer book.
I once saw somebody who used a Braille prayer book, but at the time I didn't ask him how that worked and he's since passed away. Braille is, as I understand it, a letter-by-letter notation system with an extra layer (called "condensed", I've heard) where common words have their own symbols instead of being spelled out. (Like American Sign Language, except I have the impression that the balance between spelled-out and condensed is different. I may be wrong about that.) But -- all of that kind of assumes a particular alphabet, right? So how would Hebrew be rendered in Braille -- do they transliterate it and then Braille-encode that, or does the reader have to learn a different Braille language to match the different alphabet, or what?
I'd like to be able to help her get a prayer book she can read. I don't think she's ready to learn a second Braille language (she's still working on the first).
And a related question: she has an iPad; are there Braille peripherals for that like (I understand) there are for desktop computers? Is "digital copy of the book + iPad + peripheral" a practical alternative to the massive paper tome? (She would use technology on Shabbat for that purpose.)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-07 10:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-07 10:13 pm (UTC)https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shabbos-clock/id302172998?mt=8
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-07 10:39 pm (UTC)And thanks for that link; I'll pass it on.
Oh, for that matter, is VoiceOver (which she mentioned using) Hebrew-compatible? Is having her iPad read to her a feasible way for her to work on memorizing the parts she wants to memorize?
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-07 11:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-09 01:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-10 02:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-10 12:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-11 03:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-07 10:41 pm (UTC)That said, while she will need to learn another code, this link:
http://www.jbilibrary.org/BrailleLibrary/
has books that have been put into Hebrew Braille. They can be embossed with a Braille printer or loaded onto the device and read with a refreshable Braille display.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-07 10:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-07 11:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-09 12:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-10 02:34 am (UTC)