[BlindMath] UEB vs EBAE materials

[Daniel Gillen]

Dear Corinne,

As someone who has just received certification in Literary Braille Transcribing with the Library of Congress, I can say that EBAE (English Braille American Edition) is the Braille code that was in use in the U.S. before 2016, and so is being phased out in favor of UEB. In other words, the Braille that most of us who went to school between the 1980s and early 2010s grew up reading and are familiar with. UEB (Unified English Braille) was developed by a group of representatives from over a half dozen English-speaking countries to reconcile various differences between conventions used in these countries, while at the same time accommodating math and other technical notation without needing to change to a specialized code. Of course we on the BlindMath listserv have different viewpoints, as well as follow different state- and region-specific guidelines about whether Nemeth or UEB math should be used for math notation. To answer your question about whether those who grew up reading EBAE can read UEB, the codes aren't radically different at the surface as far as literary Braille is concerned. The most common punctuation marks are unchanged except for those which enclose material (parentheses, brackets, braces), nine contractions used in EBAE are dropped in UEB, and there is a whole host of currency symbols besides $ included in this code, among other differences. So it may be quite an adjustment for some people not used to seeing opposite-facing, two-cell symbols for parentheses, or seeing that all the dot 6 and unspaced-from-next-word contractions are eliminated. In summary, as far as math is concerned, any EBAE material will use Nemeth for math notation with EBAE as the base code for text. Hopefully that helps.

Thank you,
DanielOn Sep 10, 2019 9:56 AM, Corinne Gilliam via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> Hi there, what is the difference between UEB and EBAE braille codes?  Are all users able to read the new UEB code or is it completely different than EBAE code? 
>
> Thanks, Corinne 
>
> Corinne Gilliam 
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