[NFB-Braille-Discussion] getting books brailled

Mike Jolls mrspock56 at hotmail.com
Sat Nov 14 18:41:24 UTC 2020


Steve

I was just talking about pleasure books.  Yes textbooks would require mire attention to details.  But as you point out a pleasure book could require some intervention, although maybe not as much.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 14, 2020, at 11:37 AM, Sahar's Beaded Creations via NFB-Braille-Discussion <nfb-braille-discussion at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> 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
> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.all-about-braille.com%2F&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cae73eb79d886466821ef08d888c3d082%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637409722326261207%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=uXX4FaRp%2BoOsaZP3%2Bp9%2FzZiqD4zY2i3YZlkrqrhzY2c%3D&reserved=0
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> 
> -----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?
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from
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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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