Spanish, Talking Software and Braille

One of my high school students just began Spanish this year. Anyone who has taught Spanish Braille knows it is VERY different from English Braille. When I asked her if she knew that her JAWS could talk Spanish also, she said "NO" but in an amazed REALLY sort of hope. She is only familiar with English speaking JAWS and had no idea of other possibilities that talking software can do for her.

We began with adding a new Spanish voice profile. Next, we went to Word and started typing Spanish words and having her talking software repeat the word back so she could start working on her pronunciation. Then we practiced going back and forth from her regular voice to Spanish voice as I could see she would get stuck with the Spanish and not know how to get back again. Repetition always seems to be the key.

Tomorrow she gets to learn how to insert all those wonderful special Spanish characters into Word using special commands so JAWS will speak the Spanish words correctly. THEN she gets to learn how to read those characters in Braille. Life is always so exciting as we let our vision grow out of who we are and what we are capable of doing.