[Blindmath] Used Braille College Text Books

Tue Jun 19 22:52:35 UTC 2012

Okay, this discussion has finally gotten my temperature up a bit.  I can
tell you that $50,000 to make a braille science book is not unusual.  I have
heard of books that cost quite a bit more.  Why?  There are two reasons that
braille books are expensive.  One is that, for whatever reason, it is
commonly assumed that a braille reader must have a book that meets all BANA
standards perfectly.  If you have ever read those standards you will
understand that they can be met only if a great deal of human effort is
devoted to preparing and proofing the text.  That costs a lot of money for
any text and considerably more if the text has math, chemistry, etc.  

The second reason that braille science books are expensive is that only an
expert (ie expensive) human being can transform the figures into acceptable
tactile diagrams.  Which is why science books cost so very much more than
non-science books.  

A company that turns out really good braille books has to charge a great
deal of money - often $50,000 to $100,000 to translate a science bookd to
braille.  Universities and non-profit agencies have the advantage of
talented, low-cost student labor and/or volunteers to reduce costs
considerably.

The reason my temperature is going up is that if we took full advantage of
modern technology, the cost of braille could be hundreds of dollars instead
of tens of thousands of dollars.  Of course they would not be quite as
perfect as BANA would wish, but they would be plenty good enough for any
competent braille reader to read them.  Why isn't "good enough" not good
enough?  I find it incomprehensible.

Let me tell you how to make an inexpensive good-enough braille science book.

1. Transform the book to MS Word format.  It is usually easy to transform
the regular text even if the book has to be scanned from paper copy and
optically recognized.  Math may be recognized by Infty Reader if the book is
not too "cute".  Otherwise a human being must re-enter math.  Entering the
math may be the most costly part of the whole transformation process, but
still it shouldn't cost more than a few hundred, or in the worst case some
thousand dollars or so to do this.  
2. If the math is simple, you can translate the document with Duxbury or
with the ViewPlus Tiger Formatter.  Duxbury doesn't do too well on complex
math, but the Formatter works well.  It uses liblouis as its translator, and
Nemeth by liblouis is excellent.
3. Emboss it.  Now you have the text and math, and I can tell you that it is
plenty good enough.  There are always some translation bugs, but as time
goes on those get fewer and fewer.  For example, Susan Jolly recently
pointed out to me that there is some incorrect spacing in liblouis Nemeth
translation of trig.  Even so I could read it, and I'm not a good braille
reader.
4. Use IVEO Creator Pro to input figures that need to be translated.
Relatively little editing is needed for most physics, math, chemistry,
computer science, electrical engineering figures.  Geology, biology, and
other such figures may need a bit more editing.  When embossed and read by
Iveo audio-touch, all labels are read aloud, making many figures accessible
with no additional effort.  A human being should add annotations for any
objects that are not obvious to the touch.  Few figures should take more
than 15 minutes of time by a person who understands the subject matter.

If you follow my recipe, a $100,000 advanced physics book may cost several
thousand dollars to produce.  The student may notice some not-quite-correct
formatting, but the braille translation should be near perfect.  And she
would need to use a computer and IVEO Viewer to read the figures.  Isn't
this "good enough"?

John Gardner

If one just puts a Word file into the Tiger Formatter, presses the button,
and lets it translate, all text and math is translated "well enough".  Not
perfect for two reasons.  One is that there still may be small bugs in the
liblouis translator, for example, some spacing in the Nemeth braille is not
quite right presently - something that Susan Jolly pointed out to me
recently.  Fools me, because I don't know the braille rules perfectly so I
didn't realize that the spacing was not quite what it should be.  Even
though I am a poor braille reader I could read it.

-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Jordyn Castor
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 2:46 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Used Braille College Text Books

Hi all,
I just want to throw this out there.
I took Calc I last semester and my Resource Center for Person's With
Disibilities produced the book for me. I was told it cost around $6000. 
The book was also high quality, with high quality graphics.
They are also producing my Calc II and physics books for next year.
It's crazy a company would charge 50-70,000 for a textbook.
Jordyn
On 6/19/2012 12:15 PM, Susan Mooney wrote:
> The university needs to talk to other people.  Yes, there are budget 
> crappy transcribers out there.  The overwhelming majority of us are 
> professionals, however.  Braille Plus (www.brailleplus.net) is a 
> fabulous outfit which prides itself not only on accuracy and fast turn 
> arounds but they are a joy to work with and for.  Again, most 
> instructors are not going to use the entire text so it may be worth 
> getting only the portion of the books needed.  I can't imagine trying 
> to do physics and chem and math without braille.  I have transcribed 
> many level college texts w/o doing the entire book. It doesn't matter 
> if your son is the first or the 121st blind student.  The university needs
to get its butt in gear.
>
> SM
>
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 12:08 PM, Tammy Berg<tdberg72 at yahoo.com>  wrote:
>
>> Thank you everyone for your feedback and responses. After talking 
>> with the disability services department more, I was provided with the 
>> following information regarding where they received their pricing for 
>> the books being transcribed to Braille. My son will be the first 
>> blind student to attend their univesity so it's going to be a learning
experience for all of us.
>> They are offering audio books, readers, and scribes; however, we were 
>> really hoping to get the books in Braille so he can be more 
>> independent and have the material at his fingertips. We will continue 
>> to push for the Braille books.
>>
>> "The estimates were done by Arizona State University's Disability
>> Services Office that does the work in-house for their students.   Others
>> confirm that they deliver the
>> highest quality produced at a reasonable cost.
>> I have a list of other agencies that do Braille texts, but have been 
>> warned that not all are equal in quality or production time.  Most 
>> conversion agencies require one year in advance to convert texts to 
>> Braille.
>>   College level science and math pose another challenge:  it is 
>> important that the agency employs converters that know the subject 
>> matter well enough to accurately convert it.
>> The ASU estimates (sans two) for Fall 2012 semester were as follows:
>> --Basics of Engineering Economy  = $18,000 (could be a "hybrid" for 
>> $8000)
>> --Chemistry: The Molecular Nature of Matter = $55,000  (not cheaper 
>> as a hybrid due to more labor involved in making the text/images to 
>> audio with screen-reader) --University Physics = $72,000 (could be a 
>> "hybrid" for $38,000 if student is accustomed to listening to math) 
>> --Calculus = $71,000 (could be a "hybrid" for $40,000 if student is 
>> accustomed to listening to math)"
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>   From: Tammy Berg<tdberg72 at yahoo.com>
>> To: "blindmath at nfbnet.org"<blindmath at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2012 1:50 PM
>> Subject: [Blindmath] Used Braille College Text Books
>>
>> My son will be attending a private university in the fall and we have 
>> just been notified that they will not be able to provide his texts 
>> books in Braille due to the cost of $50,000-$60,000 per text that 
>> they were quoted for having them converted to Braille. Are there any 
>> resources for used Braille math and science college text books.
>> The texts that he will be using in the fall are:
>> Calculus, 6th Edition
>> James Stewart
>> ISBN-13978-0495011668
>> Publiser: Brooks Cole
>> Chemistry
>> The Molecular View of Nature, 6th Edition Jespersen, Brady, Hyslop
>> Publisher:  Wiley University Physics
>> by Young&  Freedman 13th edition 2012
>> Publishers: Addison&  Wesley
>> Thank You - Tammy
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>
>

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