[BlindTlk] Braille books in old old

[Lloyd Rasmussen]

The correct name for the braille code that was used in the US from 1959 to 
2014 is English Braille, American Edition. A lot of the books that were 
produced in America in the 30s and 40s were in Grade one and a half. I don't 
remember seeing a list of which signs are missing, but note that about a 
dozen contractions were added to Grade 2 braille in 1959 to bring it more 
into conformance with the British system of that time. I use and advocate 
for Unified English Braille, but would call it Grade 1.95 since it has nine 
less contractions than E B A E.
Erica, you don't want to even think about Grade 3 braille, a system that has 
been taught sporadically but never caught on for transcribed books. It has 
about 500 contractions. Words are allowed to run together under certain 
rules. Vowels may be left out of words under certain conditions. With all 
this, it cannot be as compact as print. I used Grade 3 for my college notes, 
and was able to read them back (slowly) 50 years later. I have heard that 
Dr. tenBroek wrote his braille notes in a form of grade 3, and they are 
readable by people who know the code and are able to read between the lines 
a bit.
NLS braille-lending libraries don't want to keep a lot of braille around for 
many years, so some books become harder to obtain in hard-copy form. The 
multistate centers hold hard copy of many of these books, however. There is 
no plan to remove books from BARD if they are already there, but there is 
also no plan to re-transcribe large numbers of these books into U E B, 
either. So, as with previous braille and tactile codes, you will see 
materials in different codes for a long time.
If anyone wants to learn about Grade 3, "Key To Grade 3 Braille" by 
Rodenberg is available on BARD as BRA18432. Like some other books and like 
some of the NLS braille music collection, it is scanned with optical braille 
recognition software, then painstakingly proofread and corrected.
The McDuffy Reader was originally produced in EBAE, but is now available in 
UEB from the NFB Materials Center. It is not the same thing as the McGuffy 
Reader.
Keep those fingers flying!



Lloyd Rasmussen, Kensington, MD

-----Original Message----- 
From: Ericka via BlindTlk
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2019 8:12 PM
To: Blind Talk Mailing List
Cc: Ericka
Subject: Re: [BlindTlk] Braille books in old old


I think it makes less sense to people who have never seen print done to 
those of us who could reprint at one time in our lives. It makes sense to 
let you know whether something is in bold or not. And if you are formatting 
something to be printed and look good for the side of the world it’s 
important as well. The rest of the world centers titles a lot of times like 
on a resume for example. I do think it’s stupid that they took some signs 
away. Braille is a lot of extra pages. Someone told me once that it takes 
three braille pages to equal the information one printed page and that’s not 
including spacing such as between paragraphs etc.

I don’t think you guys realize how different print is from braille. And I 
wouldn’t expect any person who was born blind and I only read braille to 
understand. Just be nice to those of us who can.

Ericka Nelson
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