[NFB-Braille-Discussion] getting books brailled

Sat Nov 14 17:35:15 UTC 2020

When I started my transcribing business last year, I was astonished by the
amount of editing required. You can't just translate a file in Duxbury and
expect it to work. Proofreading is a huge part of it. At my previous job,
people would send me documents to print that were due that day, and I had to
tell them that I would not be able to format the documents properly. Then,
when I started doing this for a living, I realized how much it takes. There
is also the question of, if someone sends a document that has a spelling
error, do you fix it, or do you transcribe the document as is? Some would
say, you should transcribe them as is. I know when I got agendas to braille,
I would let the person who sent me the agendas know about the things I felt
needed fixing. Today, I was transcribing a document that had the word
"squeak" spelled as "squeek." I corrected it. A lot of times, when people
find spelling errors in documents, they might think the transcriber made
them and not the original sender, smile. 

Warm Regards,
Sahar Husseini
All About Braille
Braille Done Right
www.all-about-braille.com
Home of Simply Braille, 
The book that teaches you how to read and write braille the right way,
And the home of braille transcriptions
To order the book Simply Braille, or for a braille transcription quote,
please email 
aboutbraille at gmail.com
You can also call (402) 742-4361

-----Original Message-----
From: NFB-Braille-Discussion <nfb-braille-discussion-bounces at nfbnet.org> On
Behalf Of Steve Jacobson via NFB-Braille-Discussion
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2020 11:16 AM
To: NFB Braille Discussion List <nfb-braille-discussion at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Steve Jacobson <steve.jacobson at outlook.com>
Subject: Re: [NFB-Braille-Discussion] getting books brailled

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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