Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Sarah J. Blake" <sarah AT growingstrong.org>]

I have already sent this to Jim privately but am reposting it here for 
others who may benefit from any portion of the discussion.

I will qualify my response to this by saying that I am an M.Div. student
graduating in August with professional distinction in Hebrew; and I am
blind. This is extremely important in what I am about to say.

I would strongly plead that any software solution be accessible to readers
with disabilities. Part of my work with biblical languages has involved
developing tools for blind students to read Hebrew and Greek using a leading
screen reader and braille display. There are some kinks in this solution
with Hebrew; but it can be done as long as the software is accessible from
the other end. If I had a dime for the number of times I have heard from a
blind seminary student who had no textbook for Hebrew in braille, I would be
paying my student loans off. The Hebrew textbooks have not been transcribed
into braille--i learned on a very bad braille transcription of Lambdin which
did not include shevas or dagheshes, which meant that later I re-learned
forms that i really did memorize. Fortunately, I am a good inductive
learner.

I am speaking up for a tiny minority of students. However, if you all could
hear the voices of people who talk to me about wishing they could learn
Hebrew but not having the tools to do it, it might become apparent why I do
this.

Jim, if you develop a tool like this, I would be willing to test its
accessibility for you--in my previous life I was a technical writer and
usability consultant. It seems to me that its likely use would be with
online courses. I may be doing some teaching of courses for lay leaders at
some point, and I would certainly be interested in seeing whether something
like this could work, assuming it was accessible to me as the teacher!

Sarah J. Blake
Personal email: sjblake AT growingstrong.org
http://www.growingstrong.org 


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