Thursday, May 12, 2005

Can You Read Braille?

I'm having an odd problem on my computer. Everything I read in italics looks weird: in MS Word or MSIE the typeface looks slightly expanded. In Netscape, my primary browser, all italicized text is coming through in braille.... italicized braille, at that. For those of you who don't know, braille on a computer screen is just as useless as any other typeface; it exists as a font for the purposes of demonstration and for printing out.

Actually, a blind person using a screen reader wouldn't even notice: the underlying text is the same as ASCII or any other text, it's just the display font that differs. Like Webdings or any other graphic font. For the computer to display braille in a readable format requires a special display with electro-mechanically moving dots, called a "refreshable braille display" though you can also use a braille notetaker with the appropriate software.

Anyway, I'll reboot and we'll see if that does it. Cosmic rays....

UPDATE: Reboot did the trick. For now. This time.....

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