[NFB-Braille-Discussion] getting books brailled

Sat Nov 14 17:34:55 UTC 2020

 Not to mention the fact that many times scanned print needs to be corrected because not all of it gets scanned correctly.  OCR software has improved a lot in recent years but it's not perfect.  So one needs to know exactly what the original print says to compare with the scanned Debbie Gabe
NFB of HawaiiShare aloha- wear a mask! 
It protects the rest of us. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 14, 2020, at 7:17 AM, Steve Jacobson via NFB-Braille-Discussion <nfb-braille-discussion at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Mike,
> 
> Did you know that you can get BRF books from BookShare?  In some cases, they are doing pretty much what you are suggesting.  In other cases, they are starting with publisher files, thereby mostly avoiding the OCR step.  There are some occasional glitches in their process, but it is a good source.
> 
> What often gets lost in this kind of discussion is that texts often require some kind of formatting to come out right in braille, whether hardcopy or electronic.  You just can't predict what might be in a printed text that needs to be dealt with such as tables, footnotes or end notes.  Sometimes picture captions need to be handled as well.  Sometimes the way text flows around a picture can be problematic and require attention.
> 
> The point isn't that this can't be done, only that it often can't be done automatically without the transcriber needing to make some decisions and/or doing some editing.  
> 
> While I sometimes wonder if  those of us who read braille are too set in our ways regarding formatting, not understanding how print formatting changes over time, it is also very true that the relatively larger size of braille compared to print prevents some print formatting to be easily reproduced in braille.  For that reason, it seems unlikely to me that how we format braille will always be an issue.
> 
> Anyway, there simply is more to producing a braille textbook than is sometimes obvious.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Steve Jacobson
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NFB-Braille-Discussion <nfb-braille-discussion-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Mike Jolls via NFB-Braille-Discussion
> Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2020 10:05 AM
> To: NFB Braille Discussion List <nfb-braille-discussion at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Mike Jolls <mrspock56 at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [NFB-Braille-Discussion] getting books brailled
> 
> Josh
> 
> Thank you so much for outlining some of the costs that a transcriber, who wants to get into a private business, would be looking at if they wanted to provide hardcopy braille.  I thought it would be a substantial investment.  What prompted my question was the post from the person who said they didn't do electronic braille, but preferred hardcopy braille.   It just made me think about what is involved and why hardcopy Braille production is expensive.
> 
> I do have to agree with the original post, however, that I too like hardcopy rather than electronic braille.  I can do either, but there's just something about being able to put your hands on a full page and reading and not having to worry about hitting the "next line" button.
> 
> Still, I believe that electronic would be easier and cheaper to produce.  Consider the following (and here I'm talking only talking about pleasure books without pictures)  ...
> 
> 
>  1.  You scan all the pages in the book with the high speed scanner
>  2.  All scanned images are then OCR'd to extract the text
>  3.  The text is put in a file that can be edited by the transcriber
>  4.  The output is then written to a BRF or similar formatted file and an eBook is ready
>  5.  The output file is stored on a server so it can be delivered electronically to your phone, tablet, etc ...
> 
> This process is a bit oversimplified, but you get the idea.  In either case (braille printing or not) the transcriber would have to get involved.  So that part of the process is no different either way.  Where this process has advantages is that there is no printing, and the produced book can be stored on media so others can access it.  That would reduce the cost, but it does put the requirement on the user that they read it electronically.  Still, I thought I read something about NLS coming out with an affordable braille device somewhere in the $500 range.
> 
> One of my beefs with NLS and Braille is that they didn't have enough hardcopy or electronic braille available.  So here's a question.  If NLS did increase their availability of books with this process and stored all their braille in this format on servers we could download from, would that be an incentive for more people to use Braille?
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> From: Josh Kennedy via NFB-Braille-Discussion<mailto:nfb-braille-discussion at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2020 9:28 AM
> To: nfb-braille-discussion at nfbnet.org<mailto:nfb-braille-discussion at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Josh Kennedy<mailto:joshknnd1982 at gmail.com>
> Subject: [NFB-Braille-Discussion] getting books brailled
> 
> well let's see, in order to be a braille transcriber, it will cost you $4500 for a good professional and fast braille printer, another $50-$80 for the special braille paper, another eight or $900 for a professional braille translation software. and if you don't have a computer, it will cost you around another $450-$500 for a decent computer to run the software.
> so an average print book in hardcopy braille will probably be seven or eight volumes long. And it would probably cost around seven or $800 to mitt to turn a print book into hardcopy braille if not more. Plus not to mention the annual or ongoing maintenance of the computer braille printer. yes and the transcriber will also probably want a sound enclosure for the braille printer because it is as loud as one of those industrial factory machines. So that would probably cost another two to $300. I tested a braille printer for American printing house a couple months ago. In the manual, it recommends if you're going to be using it for a long period of time, the printer is that loud they recommend you wear earplugs.
> I thought about buying a braille printer once, but then I figured since I'm in a rural area, and I wouldn't use it all that often it wouldn't be worth it. In the end I decided to just get an electric Perkins brailler instead. The electric Perkins Brailer pretty much has the same parts and the same metal build quality as the classic Perkins Braillers however, it uses electricity to do the embossing it has a very light key press, and you don't need to press the keys very hard at all, letting you braille a whole lot faster. because of the coronavirus, they don't have any in stock Perkins does not have any in stock so I had to buy one secondhand, and then I had to pay some extra money to send it back to Perkins and have it re-conditioned and cleaned and made like a brand new Brailer. But the electric Perkins brailler should last me 60 or so years so it should last me the rest of my life. The electric Perkins brailler is quite a bit louder than a standard brailler, but again the nice thing is I can write braille a lot faster with it. and it is a whole lot affordable is much much more affordable than one of those $4500-$5000 computer braille printers. I also have a bunch of leftover tractor feed paper around here that I did use to test with the braille printer when I had it to test out a couple months ago. So all I have to do is take the paper apart, and tear off the tractor strips on the side, and then I can use it in my electric Perkins brailler as regular braille paper. And it works quite well.
> 
> 
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