The Technical Braille Center

The Technical Braille Center

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The Technical Braille Center

by John J. Boyer

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From the Editor: For individual Braille users perhaps the

most exciting part of the recent advent of relatively low-cost

Braille translation software and Braille embossers has been the

ready access we now have to literary Braille. If the text is in a

computer file or can be put into a file, obtaining a clear

Braille version is now pretty straightforward.

The same cannot be said for musical notation or scientific

or mathematic texts. If one needs access to graphs or technical

drawings, the same sort of roadblocks appear. A new resource is

now available to those facing such problems. Computers Helping

People, Inc. (CHPI) is a small company in Madison, Wisconsin,

dedicated to solving such problems with care, speed, and

efficiency. John Boyer started the company; this is what he says

about it:

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The Technical Braille Center produces books in Braille,

large print, and special electronic forms for scientists,

engineers, and mathematicians who are blind, dyslexic, or

paralyzed. It also provides books for students preparing for

careers in the technical professions, who urgently need the

equivalent of the printed materials their peers use. We also

produce Braille music.

We emphasize fast turnaround times--constantly improving our

technology to reduce costs--and human preparers knowledgeable in

mathematics, science, and music.

Our center capitalizes on new technology for the translation

of mathematics into various media. It is run by the person who

developed the technology (a deaf-blind computer scientist). It

taps into the skills and idealism of the students and staff of

Madison's many institutions of higher education. It is part of a

private, nonprofit corporation. Since it is not a unit of any

government agency or educational institution, it can offer its

services to everyone. It began operation in the spring of 1997

and has now produced several textbooks.

The books are prepared by a small group of specially trained

editors who are themselves familiar with mathematical and musical

notation and are trained in the production of tactile graphics,

which enable blind readers to study graphs, charts, and diagrams.

The software used to translate books works well when

transcribing plain text, but it often produces errors and

inconsistencies when the pages have unusual formats containing

diagrams, graphs, or equations. This limitation is what makes

Brailling technical texts so difficult. The content must be

painstakingly edited by those familiar with the mathematical and

musical notation used. This editing process accounts for 90

percent of the time (and cost) required to produce the finished

product. The pages are produced using an interpoint Braille

embosser.

For each text the activities are as follows:

1) Agencies and individuals place orders by contacting CHPI

by mail, fax, e-mail, phone, or dropping by the East Johnson

Street office. Small jobs can be paid for at the conclusion of

the work. For jobs over several hundred dollars we require that

the person making the order sign a transcription contract and pay

half the estimated price in advance. The estimate is made by

counting the number of print pages to be transcribed, determining

the number of Braille pages that will result from each print page

and counting the number of graphics which must be produced in

tactile form. This process is complex, particularly since our

costs change as we develop the technology. For these reasons we

generally ask the customer to send us the book so that we can

make an accurate estimate.

2) The books must be electronically scanned, which puts the

entire text into a word-processing file. In music translation

some musical notation is too complex to be scanned using the

procedure described above. In these cases a skilled musician

plays the piece directly into the computer using a MIDI keyboard,

which works much like a piano.

3) The text parts of the file are carefully edited and

formatted. Musical parts are edited with software that shows the

music in the usual graphical form on the screen. Verbal and

numeric information on graphics is edited and placed in

appropriate positions on the page.

4) The file is run through the translation program and

turned into actual Braille. The program was developed by CHPI in

partnership with Braille Planet, Inc. (formerly Raised-Dot

Computing, Inc.), another Madison nonprofit.

5) The Braille text is proofread by a skilled Braille

reader, final corrections are made to the inkprint version, and

it is then printed in Braille a final time.

6) The graphical parts of figures are hand-drawn because the

Braille embosser cannot produce graphics of sufficient quality.

The original paper copies of figures are kept so that they can be

used to produce additional copies of the book. The figures are

transferred to plastic sheets which are bound with the paper

sheets containing the text and music.

7) The completed Braille volumes are shipped to the

customer. The first few volumes can be shipped as soon as they

are completed without waiting for the whole book to be finished.

8) After a book is shipped, we keep the files on our

computers so that we can provide copies to other people who need

them. We also place information on them in the LOUIS database at

the American Printing House for the Blind. You can find out what

we have available by looking at our own book list.

Contact John J. Boyer, Executive Director, Computers to Help

People, Inc., 825 East Johnson Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53703,

phone: (608) 257-5917, fax: (608) 257-3480, or e-mail:

<[8][email protected]>.

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