[BlindMath] Scanning braille for sight reading

[Rasmussen, Lloyd]

I am trying to understand how you got into this situation. 
Are you trying to speed up the process by not having to mail paper braille to the instructor?
Do they often use Perky Duck, a free braille editor from Duxbury Systems that only runs under Windows? (The DXP file from that program can be displayed by the instructor as "simBraille" a braille screen font). 
People reading braille visually usually have to illuminate it at an angle, so that the dots will cast shadows.
Because NLS holds a large collection of braille music which needs to be digitized, we use some specialized scanning equipment and software to do optical braille recognition. It works fairly well, but the results must still be proofread by a knowledgeable braille proofreader.

Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Staff Engineer
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20542   202-707-0535
http://www.loc.gov/nls/
The preceding opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Library of Congress, NLS.


-----Original Message-----
From: BlindMath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of John G. Heim via BlindMath
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2017 8:12 AM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Cc: John G. Heim
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Scanning braille for sight reading

My instructor is sighted. She can sight-read the braille if the dots 
come up clearly enough in the scanned document. I guess I wouldn't be 
taking the course if I could see but if I could, all I'd have to do is 
to keep tweaking the scanner settings until it worked. I think the first 
thing I am going to do is increase the DPI. There is a lot of info out 
there that says 300 DPI is best for OCR and my own experiments have 
confirmed that.  But a higher DPI might be better just to get braille 
dots to show up on a scanner.



On 07/26/2017 04:43 AM, George Bell wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> Scanning embossed braille is not an easy task.  Indeed there was once a
> program called "OBR" (Optical Braille Recognition).  But even that required
> that specific makes and models of scanner be used, which allowed control of
> lighting during the scan.
>
> You instructor should know this.
>
> Do I get the impression you are using a Perkins type braille writer as
> opposed to say 6 key entry into PC braille software such as Duxbury?
>
> George
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindMath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of John G
> Heim via BlindMath
> Sent: 25 July 2017 15:02
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
> Cc: John G Heim
> Subject: [BlindMath] Scanning braille for sight reading
>
> I'm taking a braille class through Hadley School for the Blind. I am trying
> to submit my homework assignments as scanned images of braille pages for the
> instructor to sight-read. The instructor asked me to scan them as photos but
> I don't know what that means. Does anybody have experience scanning in
> braille and can tell me the best format, mode, and dpi settings? I sent my
> instructor tif line-art at 300 dpi which works well for OCR but that didn't
> work for sight-reading braille.
>
>
> --
> --
> John G. Heim; jheim at math.wisc.edu; sip://jheim@sip.linphone.org
>
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