[Trainer-Talk] Translating brail to text

Tue Sep 14 00:39:51 UTC 2021

In addition to David's thorough response, let me say first that back
translation is much trickier than forward translation. Second, another
possible resource, a free one at that, is APH SendToBraille.
https://tech.aph.org/lt/ I've used the forward translation options for this
service a lot with mostly good success; the only time I tried back
translating, the results weren't satisfactory.

Encouraging and thought-provoking reading
https://bahaiteachings.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Trainer-Talk <trainer-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of David
Goldfield via Trainer-Talk
Sent: Monday, September 13, 2021 7:31 PM
To: List for teachers and trainers of adaptive technology
<trainer-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: David Goldfield <david.goldfield at outlook.com>; tress2005 at gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Trainer-Talk] Translating brail to text

Hello. First, as a long-time subscriber to this list as well as someone who
has been working in the assistive technology field for quite some time I'd
like to encourage you, tress2005, to join this list directly. This will give
you access to the other interesting conversations that happen on this list
as well as giving you a forum to ask other trainers and savvy tech users
your own questions. You can get subscription info
here<https://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/trainer-talk_nfbnet.org> along
with the group archives.

Duxbury<https://duxburysystems.com/> has always been the gold standard when
it comes to Braille translation. They've been in the Braille translation
business since the 1970s so they do know their business. The cost for their
software is $695.00.

Braille Blaster<https://www.brailleblaster.org/> is a free translation
program from the American Printing House for the Blind but I don't believe
it offers back translation from Braille to text.

A free program that I've occasionally and successfully used was WinBT.
However, it's now very difficult to locate online and has not been developed
in years and does not offer UEB support. I've never tested its back
translation with UEB files. It was a wonderful program. It was initially
called NFBTrans and I think it was originally a DOS application. Wintrans
was a Windows version of that program and WinBT was designed for more modern
operating systems. If you do a lot of Internet searching you may well find
it. I do wish that the NFB would keep an archive of the software available
even though it lacks support for UEB. I've stumbled across a few other
translators but they seem to either only go from print to Braille and in the
case of Braille2000, the page seems not to have been updated since 2012 and
so I wouldn't consider it. Sadly, since Raised Dot Computing is no longer
around we no longer have their wonderful translation packages such as Hot
Dots or Megadots. It's possible that some of today's Braille computers,
sadly referred to as notetakers, might be able to convert a Braille file
into text. As I don't use devices such as the BrailleNote or BrailleSense I
can't speak authoritatively about those products but I'm sure many others on
this list can fill in those gaps.

If you have a Victor Reader product you can at least listen to a contracted
Braille file and navigate it as though it was a standard text file but this
isn't quite the same as converting the file into text.

Hope this helps.

David Goldfield,

Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist

JAWS Certified, 2019

Subscribe to the Tech-VI announcement list to receive emails regarding news
and events in the blindness assistive technology field.

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www.DavidGoldfield.org<http://www.DavidGoldfield.org>

-----Original Message-----
From: Trainer-Talk
<trainer-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org<mailto:trainer-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org>> On
Behalf Of JASON ALAMILLO via Trainer-Talk
Sent: Monday, September 13, 2021 6:46 PM
To: trainer-talk at nfbnet.org<mailto:trainer-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: JASON ALAMILLO
<leadershipjba at gmail.com<mailto:leadershipjba at gmail.com>>;
tress2005 at gmail.com<mailto:tress2005 at gmail.com>
Subject: [Trainer-Talk] Translating brail to text

Hello all. I have a friend copied on this email so she can see all of your
replies. She is now a new assistive technology instructor at one of our
centers here in Nevada and she will be working with a variety of clients.
Side note, she is also one of my clients, and we worked a lot together
especially in 2020. She is currently enrolled in a masters AT program in a
university, online of course, and she is in an intro to braille class. She
wanted to know if there is a software where she can translate braille to
regular text. So for example, BRF files to text, word, things like that. If
there is, which would you recommend? If there is a cost to any of them, how
much would it be and do they have any deals? And if there are any free
software products that translate braille to text, that would be helpful as
well. Thank you so much.

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