[gui-talk] Article: Braille converter eases web use

[Laura Eaves]

presumably they mean conversion into grade 2 rather than just computer 
braille.  There is also mathematical and scientific notation which they said 
nothing about.  I wonder what they do with that.
What is new about this I wonder? -- I don't see it being much but an email 
service, similar to pdf2txt that used to be so popular.
Oh well.
--le

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "slery" <slerythema at insightbb.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 12:42 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Article: Braille converter eases web use


I may be showing my ignorance here, but if you have a braille display, would
that mean that you already have the ability to read things in braille?

Cindy

-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org]On
Behalf Of Steve Pattison
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 12:26 AM
To: GUI Talk; Access-L
Subject: [gui-talk] Article: Braille converter eases web use


From: Tim Murphy
info at cinox.demon.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.comp.blind-users
2007/04/12
BBC News website
http://news.bcc.co.uk/ http://news.bcc.co.uk
Braille converter eases web use
By
Geoff Adams-Spink
Age & disability correspondent,
A free service that provides automatic Braille conversion is proving popular
despite still being in test phase.
RoboBraille was started by a Danish organisation and now has partners in
five other European countries.
http://www.robobraille.org/index.htm http://www.robobraille.org/index.htm
Anyone wanting to use the service, which is partly funded by the EU, can
send plain text, rich text, html or Word documents by e-mail.
Within a few minutes they receive their document either as an MP3 audio file
or as electronic Braille.
Electronic Braille can be read by a tactile display - a device connected to
the computer with a series of pins that are raised or lowered to represent
the Braille characters - or sent to a Braille printer.
"About two or three years ago we came to the conclusion that it's simply too
complicated for the average user to produce Braille," consortium leader,
Lars Balieu Christensen told the BBC News website.
"You need to know far too much about Braille conversion, Braille characters
and layout."
Mr Christensen - who also runs a Danish assistive technology company - said
that he and a colleague decided that the process needed to be made far
simpler.
"We wanted to set up a system that was entirely automated, where the user
didn't need to know anything apart from an e-mail address."
Testing times
Although the RoboBraille site currently handles plain text, rich text, html
and Word format, Mr Christensen's team is about to add PDF documents as
well.
The consortium includes the UK's Royal National College of the Blind as well
as organisations from Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Cyprus.
The European Commission provided more than £500,000 for the testing phase
which should end this year.
It is hoped that the service will be fully implemented next year, and that
it will remain free to individual users and non-profit organisations.
Mr Christensen thinks that RoboBraille could be funded by a combination of
public and private grants as well as charging pharmaceutical companies for
producing Braille labels for medication which is soon to become a legal
requirement.
He says a number of other large institutions will also need to produce
information in Braille and could use his service as paying customers.
As well as widening the number of countries and languages involved, the
consortium has also decided to expand the number of users by catering for
people who - for a variety of reasons, for example dyslexia - find it
difficult to read.
The RoboBraille service is currently processing about 400 requests a day but
the system has the capacity to deal with up to 14,000 a day.
Mr Christensen thinks this will be sufficient to provide a viable service
for the first two years, which will cost around £135,000 a year to run.
With the second phase of testing about to begin, RoboBraille's developers
are now keen for more people to test the service ahead of its planned launch
next year.
http://www.robobraille.org/index.htm http://www.robobraille.org/index.htm
------
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/6542441.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/6542441.stm
Published: 2007/04/12 09:54:26 GMT
Regards Steve
Email: srp at internode.on.net
Skype: steve1963
MSN Messenger: internetuser383 at hotmail.com
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