In my last post i thought that it would be interesting to know how blind people define a book. For people who can see it would be easy for us to be able to look at a book and describe it. I have taken particular interest in a blind persons definition as i feel that they would define them through the feel and function rather than the form and content.
I thought that it was interesting that many articles talked about what a break through eBooks have been for the blind, as I know that myself and others are not quite convinced that eBooks should be classified as a book. I discovered from one article that under 1% of books are published in braille and even smaller proportion of them being children's books.The author of the article states that:
'I have all the sensory hankerings of the book-lover – the smell of the paper; the satisfying crack of opening a new book; the pleasingly rounded feel of the spine – with none of the satisfaction of reading them.'
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/17/peter-white-books-braille-ereaders)
Blind people now have access to many resources that allow them to read or hear any book that they want. These technologies include; talking books, scanners that turn regular books to braille or synthetic speech and eBoooks. These technologies have made it possible for the reader to decide what they want to read rather than the person who decides which books are published in braille.
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