Braille is a system of raised dots for blind users to read printed material. It is based on a concept similar to Morse code. The dots are arranged in groups or cells. Each cell in braille contains six or eight dots (depending on the country of origin). The dots are arranged in two columns of three (or four) dots each. American and British braille use a six-dot system with each cell being equal to a 29 point font character in print – approximately .4 inches high and .25 inches wide. The size of the dots is standardized and cannot be changed, unlike print fonts that can easily be adjusted with the click of a mouse.

A page of paper used for braille embossing is wider than the standard print page paper. A print page is eight and a half inches wide but a braille page is eleven and a half inches wide. Standard print and braille pages are both eleven inches long. Even with the extra three inches of width on each page, the braille document will include many more pages than the original print document.

There are a couple of reasons that braille comes out so big. The braille dots themselves take up a lot of space, and the way information is formatted on the braille page will also affect this.

Although there is more room across the braille page than the print page, there is only room enough for forty cells of braille per line. So, a complete line of 65 print characters on a print page will not fit on a braille line. In braille, a page can only hold 25 lines of braille information instead of the 55 or 60 lines available on a printed page, so this will also affect the page count.

The other issue is formatting to indicate bolding, paragraphs, columns and headings. The formatting in the braille document will look different than that in the print document. To maximize the usable space, braille formatting rules eliminate unnecessary cells and blank lines. Most of the bold, italics and underlining in the print document is just “eye candy” for the sighted reader and is useless to the braille reader. Since braille doesn’t have different fonts, certain dots added in front of a word indicate italics or bold characters. That takes space. So, if it’s not necessary to convey the meaning of the information, it is not included in the braille version.

Many print documents use block paragraphs with blank lines between each paragraph. Braille uses an indented first line to show paragraph breaks, eliminating the blank line. That helps with space problems, but still isn’t enough to make much of a difference.

Columns present special problems. A simple three-column table (e.g., name, address, phone number) is much too wide for a braille page, so it needs to be rearranged to maximize use of space while still keeping its most usable features.

Major and minor headings are used to help save space. Other formatting tricks are also used to reduce length.

Braille has other features to help save space. In contracted braille, certain letter combinations are grouped together in one or two cells. For example, most braille alphabet letters have a secondary meaning if they are seen alone (e.g., b = but, t = that).

Braille is often embossed on both sides of the sheet of paper. Regardless, you will still have a big, thick braille document compared to the print document.

The average ratio for simple documents is two and a half or three to one. This means that for every print page there will be two and a half to three pages of braille. Complex documents that contain tables, outlines or mathematics can create as many as six braille pages per print page.

For more information on braille code, formatting and other points of interest, please use our glossary.

Are you:
An employer or provider of services to blind or disabled people?
A business owner with blind customers?
A friend of a blind person?
A blind person seeking a transcriber or reader?

Whoever you are… and whatever you need in terms of alternate formats, you are in the right place.

Your print document can be turned into any alternate format, from hard copy or electronic file. Documents and faxes that are not scannable are hand entered. Files from most software applications are usable.

We Pledge:
To meet your timelines.
Friendly, cost-effective service.
One stop for all formats.
Quality controlled and monitored products.
Use of state-of-the-art equipment .
To meet or exceed industry standards.
Trained and dedicated staff .
Ingenuity in meeting new challenges.

Vera Randall
President

Copyright 2001 – 2004 Braille Plus, Inc.

A person with a disability
This definition includes “… any person who (1) has a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities, (2) has a record of such an impairment, or (3) is regarded as having such an impairment.”

A qualified person with a disability
This narrows the meaning to include only a person “ … who meets the academic and technical standards requisite to admission or participation in the education program or activity.”

Students who have identified themselves, provided documentation of disability, and requested reasonable accommodations are entitled to receive approved modifications of programs, appropriate academic adjustments, or auxiliary aids that enable them to participate in and benefit from all educational programs and activities.

Section 504 protects the rights of qualified individuals who have disabilities such as the examples included in the following list.
Blindness or visual impairment
Traumatic brain or spinal cord injury
Cerebral palsy
Deafness or hearing impairment
Orthopedic or mobility impairment
Learning disability
Spinal cord injury
Other chronic conditions, such as multiple sclerosis

Students with Visual Impairments
Modifications and accommodations for students with visual impairments include:
providing services such as readers for students with blindness, visual impairments or learning disabilities
providing modifications, substitutions, or waivers of courses in major fields of study or degree requirements on a case-by-case basis (such accommodation need not be made if the institution can demonstrate that the changes requested would substantially alter essential elements of the course or program)
allowing extra time to complete exams
permitting exams to be individually proctored, read orally, dictated, or typed
using alternate ways for students to demonstrate course mastery
permitting the use of computer software programs or other assistive technological devices to assist in test taking and study skills.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act contains more specific information about compliance issues in post secondary education than the ADA.

Recent Legal Decisions – In General
According to recent court decisions, students who have provided documentation of their disability are not required to assume the responsibility for securing that accommodation. The university must provide reasonable accommodation for a student’s known disability so that the student has an equal opportunity to participate in the courses, activities, or programs. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) ruled that a university may not charge students for necessary accommodations. It also decided that the expense of accommodation is not considered to be an undue hardship for the university.

The entire financial resources of the university are considered rather than that of any single department or college when determining hardship. The name of the Section 504 coordinator must be identified in recruiting materials such as application forms and school bulletins.

Handouts
If a visually impaired student is enrolled in a class, the teacher must provide all handouts in the alternate format type requested by the student. Also, all alternate format handouts must be made available to students on the same day they are distributed to students receiving print handouts.

Reference Materials
The instructor must make course material on reserve in the library available in alternate formats for students who are blind or visually impaired.

Tests
The university may not use as sole criteria for admission or rejection a test that has been shown to be discriminatory for persons with disabilities, including those with visual impairments.

If the testing procedure puts a student with a disability at a disadvantage based on a documented disability, the form of an exam must be altered. There may be an exception, however, when the purpose of the test is to measure a particular skill. And, the university may refuse a student’s request for an accommodation if it is not specifically addressed in the student’s documentation.

Extended time is a reasonable accommodation for a student whose documentation specifically calls for it. The university is required to ensure that the student is provided additional time to complete tests and/or course work to provide an equal opportunity for that student.

Accommodations for testing such as readers, writers or the use of adaptive equipment must be provided for a student with a documented disability.

Scholarships based on standardized test scores must allow for accommodations for students with documented disabilities.

Confidentiality
Diagnostic information regarding a student’s disability is confidential. Faculty and staff need only know the accommodations that are necessary to guarantee an equal opportunity for the student.

No Choice
While instructors have academic freedom to develop coursework, presentation and testing methods, they do not have a choice about whether they will provide special aids and services for students with documented disabilities in the classroom. An individual faculty member who fails to provide an accommodation to a student with a documented disability may be held personally liable.

How to Get Alternate Formats
If you have a visual impairment and will be attending a college or university, you will want to find out how to contact the Disabled Student Services Office for that institution. The sooner documentation, planning and coordination can begin, the easier and more beneficial your educational experience can be. Some schools have the equipment and experience needed to produce handouts, references, textbooks and tests in braille, large print or audio tape. Others will contract with outside vendors. All producers of alternate formats, however, will require some advance notice to enable them to provide your books on time to keep up with your class syllabus. Other resources who may help you get accessible materials are your vocational rehabilitation counselor or your local commission for the blind.

Louis Braille was born January 4, 1809, in a small village near Paris. His father, a leather worker, often used sharp tools in his work. While playing in his father’s shop when he was three, Louis injured his eye on an awl. In spite of good care, infection set in and soon left him completely blind.

When Louis grew to school age, he was allowed to sit in the classroom to learn by listening. Louis was very bright and creative, and when he was ten, he was sent to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris. There too, most instruction was oral, but there were a few books in a kind of raised print developed by the school’s founder. Although frustrated by the large, bulky books and slow reading of the tactile characters, he did well at his studies and dreamed of a better way. At that time, the raised letters were made by pressing shaped copper wire onto paper but there was no way for blind people to write for themselves.

While a student, he began to use his creativity to invent an easy and quick way for blind people to read and write. Louis heard of a system of raised dots developed by a French army captain, Charles Barbier de la Serre. Barbier originally created a code of raised dots and dashes as a way to allow soldiers to write and read messages at night without using a light that might give away their positions. He later adapted the system and presented it to the Institution for Blind Youth, hoping that it would be officially adopted there. It was based on phonetics and consisted of groups of twelve dots arranged in two columns of six dots each.

Louis worked with Barbier’s basic ideas to develop his own simplified system that we know today as braille. He based the code on the normal alphabet and reduced the number of dots by half.

Louis Braille published the first Braille book in 1829. In 1837, he added symbols for math and music. Although Louis Braille went on to become a beloved and respected teacher, was encouraged in his research, and continued to believe in the value of his work, his system of reading and writing with raised dots was nevertheless not very widely accepted in his own time. Louis Braille died of tuberculosis on January 6, 1852.

Today, in virtually every language around the world, the code named after Louis Braille is the standard form of writing and reading used by blind people.

Sighted people take for granted the huge amount of information we get from graphics: diagrams, flowcharts, graphs, logos and pictures. The many forms of graphic communication are all around us. Translating this information from graphics to tactile form makes it accessible for the visually impaired reader. This accessibility is always welcomed and is sometimes required by law.

Tools for Tactile Graphics

There are several ways to produce graphics to be read by touch – ranging from using low-tech to high-tech devices. One low-tech method uses a tailor’s notched tracing wheel. A simplified drawing of the diagram is made on tracing paper by drawing free hand, using templates or tracing the original. Heavy Braille paper turned face down is sandwiched between a cushion mat and the tracing, also turned face down. Using medium pressure, one follows the line tracing with the notched wheel tool, leaving a trail of indented notches from the wheel. A raised design is produced and can be felt on the right side of the Braille paper. This method works well enough for a few simple shapes since the tracing paper will become ragged after about three passes over the drawing and it is difficult to maintain the steady hand required.

The “artsy-craftsy” approach used by many for scrapbooking or cardmaking also works to produce tactile graphics for demonstration or instruction. Affixed to heavy paper, almost anything with shape or contrasting texture can be used. String, fabric, dried beans, corrugated papers or sand paper can represent continents, bar graphs or animal shapes. This method can be messy, time-consuming and not permanent enough for some purposes. If some of the beans fall off, the message of the graphic may also be lost.

For a more permanent graphic using the bits-and-pieces method above, thermoforming will set the raised portions in plastic shapes. The graphic is created with items in relief and then a thermoform machine heats a plastic sheet that is placed over them. The plastic retains the shape of the raised portions and the page can be used over and over again as an illustration in a storybook, a diagram in a user’s manual or textbook. Thermoforming has the advantages of ease in duplicating exact replicas and permanence.

The high-tech computer-driven method produces tactile graphics that are detailed, exact replicas, quickly embossed, and feature 3-dimensional graphics. The embosser we use is the Tiger Advantage embosser by ViewPlus Technologies. Pictures, maps or graphs are scanned into or created in Microsoft Word, modified to show the essential features of the graphic, and then converted to the Tiger font for embossing.

Some Considerations

Before diving in to produce graphics to be read by touch, analyze the graphic. Is it necessary to convey the information it contains or is the graphic just “eye candy” or reinforcement for a text point? Could the information just as effectively be explained through a transcriber’s note? What level of detail is required? What use will be made of the document? Who will use the document? What is the age and experience level of the anticipated reader? How many documents will you need to produce? What equipment and talent do you have available? When should you turn to an outside contractor for this service?

Conclusion

Although there are several ways to produce graphic images that can be accessed by visually impaired readers, always analyze the image first for necessity, detail and usability by the reader.

Until the advent of computers and electronic embossers, braille transcribers used Perkins Braillers to transcribe print material into braille when the book was going to be used by only one reader at a time or when thermoforming was going to be used to make a few copies for limited distribution. Large run books such as novels for the Library of Congress were created by punching the dots into zinc plates for use on a clamshell press or roller press to generate large numbers of copies.

Since the advent of the computer and electronic embosser, translation software has allowed either transcribers or translators to work on a computer screen in a print mode, and then press a button to translate the document to braille. At that point, the electronic file could be sent to an embosser for rapid single or multiple copy preparation.

In both these approaches, much labor was required. The source document was a hard copy book, so each letter and symbol had to be hand entered. When scanners and OCR software became both available and fairly accurate, those using computers could be much more productive than those using a manual brailler. However, even the best scanner and OCR package left much hand entry to be done.

Educators and institutions began looking to the publishers for electronic source documents. However, the embedded printer command codes, color instructions, and layout commands in those publisher files created disastrous problems for the transcription software. Without some sort of file export process, in fact, the files were useless. Since substantial economic pressure is being brought to bear on the publishing industry of textbooks by various states, major strides have been made in file export processes and in file import protocols within the transcription software. HTML, XML, and similar mark up languages have formed the basis of common ground between the publishers and transcribers. Some braille transcription software is specifically designed to work only with publisher files.

The existence of graphics in the book will also impact how to generate the book. Tactile graphics are generated three ways:
By hand
Etched on plates
By computer

The final products are created by:
Heat
Plastic adhesion
Embossers

Since most print graphics include vast amounts of information, any electronic file available from the publisher is likely to need simplification and separation into component parts.

When the text and graphics have been transcribed, final production commences. The types of bindings, covers, labeling and packaging are as varied in the braille industry as in print publishing.

Are you:
An employer or provider of services to blind or disabled people?
A business owner with blind customers?
A friend of a blind person?
A blind person seeking a transcriber or reader?

Whoever you are… and whatever you need in terms of alternate formats, you are in the right place.

Your print document can be turned into any alternate format, from hard copy or electronic file. Documents and faxes that are not scannable are hand entered. Files from most software applications are usable.

We Pledge:
To meet your timelines.
Friendly, cost-effective service.
One stop for all formats.
Quality controlled and monitored products.
Use of state-of-the-art equipment .
To meet or exceed industry standards.
Trained and dedicated staff .
Ingenuity in meeting new challenges.

Vera Randall
President

Some of the Braille Translation Software programs can import, understand and apply the mark up language to the formatting of braille.