[Athen] Beware of incoherent students

[Deborah Armstrong]

I was helping another college prepare some Braille for a student and reminded them of an experience I've often had.

The student requests all class handouts and textbook in Braille.

But student has a Braille note-taker. It automatically translates Braille for her.

There is no need therefor for me to translate anything or to get a service to do it for us ... unless
It is Braille music, math, scientific material or complex formatting with charts.

If it is a novel, a nonfiction book which is straight text, then there's no reason for me to go through the time-consuming process to produce Braille if the student's device can do it already.

This is also true if the student has Windows a Mac or iOS. If a Braille display is attached, it can already do the translation.

So it's important to question the student before you start doing all that hard and possibly unnecessary work.

Another situation occurs when the student requests "a book in audio" But they may already be competent users of Read And Write, Kurzweil, Natural Reader, Capti or some other reading system. I've even had a VoiceDream Reader user ask for a book in audio. Most of my students who request "audio" really want a PDF to load in to K3000, so be sure you know what the student is really requesting!

--Debee

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