Re: [Worship] learning lyrics of choruses: clarification

["Sarah J. Blake" <grayce@iquest.net>]

Hi, Bruce & all.

What just floors me is that putting something in braille is thought of as
a translation.  It's English.  It's no different than enlarging the print,
which is perfectly within the bounds of the license.  It's not another
language.

Actually, I've got some ideas on this one that I'm thinking through after
spending the day mulling over this problem.  It is very tedious to try to
coordinate being fed the words and have a true worship experience.  I'm
speaking from personal experience on this one.  Someone at a church tried
to do this for me a few months ago.  He had the very best of intentions,
had known me since I was a child, and I know he was impressed with the
fact that I couldn't participate.  I've had a child put my hand on a
hymnbook and tell me, "Sing!"  She only understood that I used my hands to
read.  But my point is that I know that my inability to participate is
obvious to people, some of whom assume I am simply refusing to
participate.

There are two ways I can think of to handle this problem.  The way of most
equality/accessibility would be to have large print or braille copies
available so the person who needed them could follow right along.  The
next best thing would be to have recordings in which the lyrics could be
clearly heard and understood or floppy disks with the lyrics.  If the
floppies were used, the best format would be a plain text file.  There are
quite a few of us who are still using older systems due to the tremendous
cost of entirely new software necessary for accessig Windows compared to
low incomes.

The cost (both in terms of money and human resources) of getting material
into braille is not cheap.  This is where my idea comes in.  I'm thinking
that it would be a good thing to have a network of transcribers in various
geographic areas who specialized in providing services to churches.  If
the network was set up as a non-profit organization and effective
fund-raising could be done, the services could be offered free to churches
with this need.  I believe also that the copyright law has provisions for
non-profit organizations in regard to transcribing materials into braille.
This is something I'll have to check on.


Sarah J. Blake: http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/9641

Editor: "The Student Advocate"
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