[NFBJ] Yiddish braille

[Andre Zelvin]

I was just in a webinar offered to Blind people about using AI. We were discussing it’s language learning assistance abilities. People may talk about the negatives of AI, but as an access tool, it can be amazing. So, it occurred to me to ask it about Yiddish. and then the textbook in question. btw it’s a $54 textbook. But the question is, in it’s pdf format would it be accessible using a braille display or embosser? I’m using chat gpt. It took a look at sample pages on the web site and they seemed to be useable, but what we came up with is that it’s capabele of re-formatting the pages to produce what we’d need. I asked it to sum up what we talked about and this is what it said:

ChatGPT can recognize the Yiddish text in the sample pages of In eynem, the Yiddish Book Center’s Yiddish textbook. If I provide pages from the book, ChatGPT can reorganize them into a simple, linear format for a blind reader, keeping the Yiddish as Yiddish text that can potentially be read on a braille display. It can also describe pictures and convert visual exercises into verbal ones, while preserving the order and purpose of the lesson. It can then help with pronunciation, translation, vocabulary, and grammar as I work through the book.

On Sep 15, 2026, at 1:06 PM, Daveed Mandell via NFBJ <nfbj at nfbnet.org> wrote:

A gentleman here in Berkeley is offering to teach Yiddish. He wants to know at what level people would like to learn, how much experience people have already had with the language. He would like people to acquire a textbook from the Yiddish Book Center called In Eynem. To my knowledge, and I might be wrong, JBI Library does not provide any braille books in Yiddish. Again, a big problem!



Moving to another issue, someone recommended a Sefardi songbook for me. The book is filled with amazing songs and many Piyutim. Many of the songs are in various languages, not just Hebrew. Other languages include Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Farsi. I am sure that JBI Library has not transcribed this book in braille.


Recently, I was going to attend a Jewish renewal service. Somebody asked me if I could get a Jewish renewal Siddur in braille. No, there is no such thing at the moment.


Are there other organizations that provide such material in other countries?
If a blind Jew in France wants to obtain a braille Siddur, is there an organization in France that provides them? I don't think so. I just heard that the Russian Jewish Federation has produced a Braille Siddur. That's really fantastic! But what about other countries?



I'm wondering how a blind rabbi accesses all this material. One of the things I'm looking at is the application called Sefaria, but we blind Jews still deserve many more books. At this point, I don't have a solution, maybe a lot of us putting our heads together can come up with some ideas.

Daveed

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