Today’s guest lectures were super interesting. Starting with Lauren, Touch this Page is a really interesting exhibition. I saw a glimpse of it at Dibner although I didn’t have time to really go and spend some time looking at it. Lauren brought up a lot of new technologies that I did not know about such as Boston Linetype. I really only thought that Braille was the only raised type. It’s interesting to think about how there are different typefaces for the blind community. I feel like there should be more and more typefaces for people. It’s interesting that Boston Linetype could only be read whereas Braille could be typed and read. To me, it seems like Braille is more universally designed because it is much more accessible to create and read.
I feel like haptic technologies are less privileged because they are somewhat easier to create, they take less technology. Whereas with audiovisual technologies I feel as if they cost more money to access. It also makes me wonder, are audiovisual technologies more accessible? To me, it seems as if there is a learning curve to figuring out how to use it as well as the fact that it cost more money. This evokes SSIs like economic status and education levels. Are there inequalities in the Braille community as well? It brings up the thought of how Braille is easier to read and those in the blind community can read it super quickly, but with Boston Linetype it takes longer for people to read as there is a learning curve to get used to how it read it.
For Julia’s lecture, I thought it was interesting that Braille books are only 5% of print resources available in the world. I would have thought that there would be a lot more because the community is pretty large. This was also the first time I have ever heard of BARD (Braille Audio Reading Download). I think that it is pretty smart that they made the app mirror the actual hardware to reduce the learning curve. It is also amazing that they have 330,000 books and reading materials to download in the app.