So, before the Monarch, if I took minutes of meetings I always recorded them. Sometimes with a digital recorder, sometimes with the automatic recording built in to zoom if I had permission to record. And later, I’d go back and write the minutes while listening to the recording.
But with the Monarch, though I habitually continued to record, I found that I never needed to go back to listen to the recording.
There are several advantages the Monarch has for taking notes with anything happening in real-time than I everr experienced using a single-line Braille display and/or a computer.
The obvious advantage is the multi-line nature. Even if you are using a screen reader, you’re looking at a single line at a time with your arrow keys, whether you move line by line, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph or word by word. If you are using speech you have to multi-task between listening to the meeting and listening to your speech reading.
The biggist issue I had taking notes is that I got distracted trying to find my place. Though all this also applies to taking notes in a course lecture, since I mostly take minutes of meetings now, that’s what I focus on here with this explanation.
In a lecture or a meeting, speakers don’t always talk in the same order that your written commentary will follow. Perhaps the treasurer’s report is interrupted by someone asking about the holiday party and someone else wanting to know why the group withdrew $700 last month. The discussion might then shift in to a discussion of the supplies needed for the party and the group’s office supply needs , and then the treasurer will eventually resume giving a report.
But when you take minutes, you need to put all the amounts for the treasurer’s report in one table, even though the discussion jumped around. That’s impossible for me to do with speech and/or just a single line of Braille because I’m of course reading only that single line. When the discussion swerves away from what is currently on the agenda, I have to create a new paragraph to document it, then return to the place where I was documenting the agenda item that was in progress before the membership got distracted.
With the monarch, using either editor, it’s very easy to hop back to the previous item to add more detail.
I cannot emphasize enough how freeing it is to not need to return to a recording of a long meeting to create my minutes!
When I was a child I used a slate and stylus to take notes in class. I ended up with very messy notes, because unlike a sighted kid I couldn’t easily jump around on a page inserting details under headings where they belonged. If the teacher when off on a tangent, I could only take notes serially, and later they were difficult to review.
Now, a student can hop forwards or backwards to insert information where it belongs.
I hope teachers will show students now how the monarch can make note-taking work more like it does for sighted students.
One enhancement that would make KeyWord and KeyBRF even more flexible for taking notes in real-time are some shortcuts to jump back to the previous and forward to the next element, such as heading, blank line or paragraph. What I do is enter the word Agenda followed by the agenda item. If I have that info before the meeting I enter all the agenda items with several blank lines after each item. Then I search for Agenda, so that I can quickly jump to the next or previous agenda item, and that helps with faster forward and backward navigation. Of course I could also do this same trick with any word processor using a single-line display, but having multiple lines in front of me while I jump around makes it easier to keep up with taking notes in real time.
If a student obtains the lecture slides ahead of class they can do the same thing: convert the slides to a PDF containing the text of the slides, open the text in an editor, add a blank line or two between each slide, and ask the teacher to please announce when they switch to a new slide. At the college where I work as an alternate media specialist, I can easily convert slides for my students to assist with taking notes within the text of those slides, something I do frequently. And asking the teacher for the slides ahead of class is a very reasonable accommodation. We encourage our professors to post their slides online for all students in their courses so students can preview the lecture ahead of class to ensure success.
When slides contain charts and graphics,I wonder if one day we will have AI able to convert those to tactile graphics on the fly. Since AI can create pictures and images of things as silly as cats riding tricycles, it seems to me it could be taught to create tactile graphics. And if the Monarch connected with that model, it could automatically turn a visual diagram in to a tactile graphic.
Right now we can get reasonable descriptions of many of the visual elements available on slides using either JAWS PictureSmart, one of the numerous AI addons for NVDA, or Copilot’s ability to look at a screen the user chooses to share with it. A student can add those descriptions to their notes if they grab them before or after class using a computer, but perhaps one day, the Monarch will be able to insert those descriptions on its own.
Though I am quite comfortable using Microsoft Word on my computer, and I still use it to clean up formatting, fix spelling and make my documents consistent and professional, I find the editors in the Monarch make it much easier to write stuff, especially if I’m trying to keep up documenting something that is happening as I type.