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Seminars@Hadley
UEB & You: What You Need to Know
about Unified English Braille Code
Presented by
Dr. Frances Mary D’Andrea
Moderated by
Doug Anzlovar
January 24, 2013
Announcer
You’re listening to Seminars@Hadley. This seminar
is UEB and You: What You Need To Know About
Unified English Braille presented by Frances Mary
D’Andrea; moderated by Doug Anzlovar.
Doug Anzlovar
Welcome to Seminars@Hadley. Today’s topic is the
UEB and You: Adopting the Unified English Braille, a
BANA Update. Today’s speaker is Dr. Frances Mary
D’Andrea. Dr. D’Andrea is currently the Chair of the
Braille Authority of North America BANA and has
served as AFB’s Representative to BANA since1998.
She is an instructor at the University of Pittsburgh and
other universities. She is an educational consultant,
specializing in literacy issues related to students with
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visual impairments. Dr. D’Andrea began as a teacher
of students with visual impairments in 1982.
From 1995 to 2005 she worked at the American
Foundation for the Blind (AFB) and helped establish
their National Literacy Center. She has co-authored a
number of textbooks used in university teacher
preparation programs. And I proudly would like to
introduce you to Dr. D’Andrea. Dr. D’Andrea, the
microphone is yours.
Dr. Frances Mary D’Andrea
Good morning everyone and thank you very much for
inviting me to talk this morning about the Braille
Authority of North America and about Unified English
Braille. This morning we’re going to go through the
presentation that is on the PowerPoint and there will
be time for questions at the end.
When Doug and I were talking about this session, we
thought it would probably make most sense to kind of
go through all the slides first and give you some
background and then have a Q&A session at the end.
So next slide please, Doug.
So the objective this morning will be to give you more
familiarity about BANA, the Braille Authority of North
America – its purpose and current activities.
Secondly, to increase your familiarity with UEB, the
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Unified English Braille Code – what the Code is, how
it’s similar to current Braille Codes and how it’s
different and how we got to this point. And third, to
just give you a little bit of information about the
development of an implementation plan for the United
States for UEB. Okay, next slide please, Doug.
So let’s talk first about what is BANA – the Braille
Authority of North America. And the United States
has had a Braille authority for many years; it’s just it’s
had different names over the years. It was called the
Joint Braille Authority for a while and it has had
different names for about 100 years or so.
But the current BANA and the way it’s structured now
has been since 1976 and also at that time the
Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) also
joined BANA which is why it’s called the Braille
Authority of North America.
So the BANA Board consists of representatives from
organizations, sort of like an organization of
organizations. The organizations are those
representing our constituents – Braille readers, Braille
educators and transcribers. As I mentioned it is an
international organization. There are 15 member
organizations and three associate members.
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Let me just briefly tell you who the member
organizations are. The Alternate Text Production
Center is our newest member of BANA. The
American Council of the Blind; American Foundation
for the Blind; American Printing House for the Blind;
the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of
the Blind and Visually Impaired or AER; Associated
Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired; Braille
Institute of America; California Transcribers and
Educators of the Blind and Visually Impaired;
Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually
Impaired; CNIB as I mentioned earlier – the Canadian
National Institute for the Blind; Horizons for the Blind;
National Braille Association; National Braille Press;
National Federation of the Blind and National Library
Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.
And we also have three associate members as well
and that includes the Braille Authority of New
Zealand, T-Base and Crawford Technologies. The
associate members pay dues but are at a reduced
rate and have other responsibilities but are not
members of the full Board. So as you can see,
members represent producers of Braille, readers of
Braille and educators.
So that’s the Board. But much of the work of BANA is
actually done through our technical committees. And
we have seven technical committees that work on
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various aspects of our Braille codes. For example we
have a Music Braille Committee and a Tactile
Graphics Committee, a Mathematics Committee –
those kinds of things.
We also have seven ad hoc committees that are
working on particular projects. For example, we have
a ad hoc committee on Braille Signage; we have an
ad hoc committee on Standardized Tests; we have an
ad hoc committee on Early Literacy Materials
Production.
So we have the technical committees; we have the ad
hoc committees and then we also have general
committees such as Publications and Research that
help the work of BANA. And then there’s the usual
Board committees, just Bylaws and Awards and
Membership and those kinds of things.
And our technical committees and ad hoc committees
are designed to include at least one Braille reader,
one transcriber, one educator and one person from
each member country in some permutation. So
generally our technical committees have five to seven
members and we make sure that there’s
representatives from all of our constituents on each
committee. So that’s how our committees are
structured and how the Braille Authority is structured.
Next slide please.
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This one says how does BANA work and BANA
meets twice a year, the Board meets twice a year and
each meeting is hosted by a different organization
that’s a member of BANA so we move around the
country, which is kind of fun. Our last BANA meeting
was at the Braille Institute and was hosted by the
Braille Institute so we met in California. Our spring
meeting last year was hosted by the National Braille
Association so it was at St. Louis where they were
having their spring conference. This spring our
meeting is hosted by the National Library Service
(NLS) so we’ll be meeting in Washington, D.C.
We also meet by teleconference during the year. We
also have a very active listserv and we are in contact
electronically all the time. So we’re working all year
long and our committees are as well. All of our
committees have listservs and they do their work
through listservs primarily electronically. Sometimes
our committees will also have face-to-face meetings.
And the other important thing to know about BANA is
that the work is done primarily by volunteers. There
are no paid positions within BANA. A number of
BANA folks do BANA work as part of their job. For
example, they might be working for a school system
or a state Department of Education or material center
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as a transcriber and they may do some of their BANA
work as part of that.
But for a lot of folks this is not part of their job
description at all and is something that they do in the
evenings or on weekends. So we’re really indebted to
our hard-working volunteers. Many people have
served on BANA committees for many years and
we’re just really delighted that we have such devoted
people getting all this work done.
So there are a number of projects that are ongoing.
You may be familiar with the tactile graphics
guidelines which are on our website and are going to
be published in hard copy soon. We also have
formats guidelines that came out I think last year. No,
two years ago – this is 2013 now so… and are also
being readied for publication in hard copy but again
right now are all online.
Right now we’re working and talking about our foreign
language guidelines. We have some guidelines from
our crafts and hobbies committee related to knit and
crochet, so that will be a small document that should
be coming out sometime this year. We have projects,
as I said, working on standardized tests, so there’s
many, many things going on all the time within BANA.
As I said, hard-working people and getting a lot done
which is really great.
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So how did this whole Unified English Braille thing fit
in with that? Now that we’ve talked about what BANA
is and how BANA works and the projects that we’re
doing, let’s talk a little bit about again some
background about this Unified English Braille thing.
So, Doug, if you could switch the slides, we’ll give you
a little bit of background about this.
The first part of the background to understand is how
print itself has evolved over time and on our BANA
website in fact, you may be familiar with an article – it
was actually three parts that came out over time in the
last year – but now you can read the entire article on
our website called The Evolution of Braille.
Part of that is how print itself has evolved. I think
certainly when I was in elementary school, textbooks
especially were fairly simple. There may be a picture
on top and then text on the bottom and the next page
is a picture on top and text on the bottom. But over
the years there have been drastic changes in the
appearance and production of print, not just in
textbooks, but even in general magazines and things.
The text is very, very busy on the page; it’s all
different colors and fonts and sizes and different
emphasis and it goes in different directions and
things.
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And we have especially heard from a lot of
transcribers about changes in textbooks for children
and how very complicated they have gotten as far as
layouts and all kinds of things. So a typical textbook
for students now might have photographs and maps
and all kinds of graphics and then a picture, a
handwritten letter that the kids are supposed to read
and it’s just very, very complicated. So the
appearance and the production methods of print have
certainly changed and we are hearing that from a lot
of people about the difficulties of this.
The other thing that has changed a lot about print is
that print is now increasingly being read from screens.
So you may have heard there are more and more
schools that are adopting textbooks not on paper, but
actually electronic textbooks. In fact, the Secretary of
the Department of Education, Arne Duncan, even last
fall said that he sees that as the way of the future that
schools are going to go to electronic texts.
Well we have to ask how is that going to be
accessible to our students and what is going to be the
impact. But even many of you who are on this call
right now use paper Braille but you may also be using
refreshable Braille displays, maybe accessing things
with Drawers or Window-Eyes, so print is not just on
paper anymore.
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And the other thing that’s kind of happened is that the
boundaries between what was considered technical
materials and everyday materials is blurring. When
the computer Braille Code was developed, it really
was developed originally for programmers and people
who use computer codes all the time. But over the
years now there’s more and more websites and email
addresses that are being inserted and they’re now
considered part of just plain literary text.
In fact even for young children, again you get the
Weekly Reader or you get magazines for children and
they’ll have websites and URLs in them. So again,
what used to be considered strictly technical materials
and just kind of everyday text is getting blurry. Next
slide please, Doug.
And also part of the background – not only has there
been an evolution of print, but also of Braille. And
again, we’re very lucky that the plethora of digital text
that is out there provides for Braille users to have
more access to all kinds of text, especially via
refreshable Braille displays, either displays that
connect to your computer or to your phone even or in
portable assistance PDAs, note-takers – those kinds
of things.
So Braille is more widely available than ever because
of technology – Braille embossers, translation
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software, refreshable Braille. So not only has print
changed over time but so has Braille as well. Next
slide please, Doug.
Okay, and this is the “however” slide. However, three
things. Because of ambiguities in current codes, the
computer translation of text into Braille is still not
perfect. There are still errors that are introduced
because of the flexible and creative way that people
are using print these days.
So for example, I was just listening to the radio
yesterday and they were interviewing the singer,
will.i.am, and it’s the name William but he puts
periods between will.i.am. And of course in Braille a
period also looks like a DD when it’s in the middle of a
word. So if you were going to Braille that name, how
would you Braille it the way that he spells it with
periods in the middle if that also looks like a DD?
Now that seems like a small example, but it’s the kind
of thing that is happening with print more and more
that again, a lot of transcribers and educators and
Braille readers were telling us that things were
becoming more and more ambiguous.
Another example might be having organizations or
companies that have capital letters in the middle of
names. So example, a company might be called
SportsNation and it’s all one word with a capital N in
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it. Well, is it a capital N or is it an “ation” sign? Is it
“ationation?” So there are more and more creative
ways that text is being used that creates ambiguity as
far as how the symbols are being Brailled.
People with dollar signs in the middle of their names
or dollar signs being used as Ses and those kinds of
things. Well, a dollar sign also looks like a DD or a
period. So this ambiguity was making difficulties for
our readers.
The second one that we heard, especially from
students, was the problem of back translation where
students were using their refreshable Braille displays
or using their note-takers and then trying to convert it
back into print for their print reading teachers and
having lots of difficulty with back translation, lots of
errors being introduced. And as I said, that has been
a big problem.
An aside here – when BANA has our meetings, as I
said, we move around the country because we’re not
centered in any one place since we are
representatives from various organizations from all
around North America. We have what’s called an
open forum where we invite people from that local
area to come in and meet BANA.
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And a few years ago we were meeting in Boston and
we met with some students who were at the Carroll
Center and they were middle and high school
students, a few college students, and we had a lot of
questions for them about how they’re using Braille
and their textbooks and things like that. And the No.
1 thing that they mentioned to us was the problem
with back translation, of never knowing how their
things were going to come out in print. And a lot of
that, as I said, is because of the ambiguity in the
current codes.
And the third thing is related to even basic math
material not displaying correctly, so again needing a
lot of human intervention to make it come out correct.
Okay, next slide please, Doug.
Need for Code Change – so No. 1 was concern about
Braille complexity. Ever since the Computer Braille
Code was introduced in the late 1980s – and again I
alluded to this earlier – when the Computer Braille
Code was introduced for good reason, there needed
to be a symbol-by-symbol match for people who were
computer programmers. What ended up happening
were multiple Braille symbols for the same print
symbols, depending on context.
So you ended up then with three different dollar signs
for example. Or the print (.) where there’s a period or
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a decimal point or a dot in a web address or an email
address, they all ended up being different and again,
that added more ambiguity and this increased
contextuality for Braille. In other words, the same
symbol might be different depending on the context.
There is also increasing difficulty in constructing new
code symbols to reflect changes in print. And again, I
direct you to the article that’s on our website,
www.brailleauthority.org, where we give an example
of the kinds of discussions that our technical
committees were having so that when they were
trying to construct new symbols because of the need
for that. We kept running into problems in maintaining
the current code so that it still was accurate.
So in 1991 Dr. Abraham Nemeth and Dr. Tim
Cranmer presented a paper to BANA stating the
urgent need to unify these various Braille Codes used
in North America so that one symbol meant the same
thing no matter where you saw it. And there’s a link
to that original paper on our website and it’s very, very
interesting and you may want to go to our site and
read it. Alright, so next slide please.
There we go. So this is where the Unified English
Braille comes in. UEB started as a BANA research
project as a result of that letter that was sent to the
BANA Board. So it started as a research project with
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a small group of people looking at what would need to
be involved to unify the various codes to have one set
of symbols.
The international community became interested in this
project as well because other countries that were
English speaking had similar problems – Australia,
New Zealand, the United Kingdom – they had the
same issues in their codes too.
So the UEB project became an international project in
the early ‘90s and it had several names. It was
originally called the Unified Braille Code so you may
have heard it referred to as UBC but then somebody
said, “Well, you know it’s not just a unified Braille
code for the entire world; it’s really just for the English
speaking world.” So they added the E in there so it
became Unified English Braille Code and then the
word “code” was eventually dropped because
obviously it’s a code. So if you’ve heard UEBC or
UBC, it’s all the same thing; it’s just the name kind of
evolved over time and now we just refer to it as UEB
– Unified English Braille.
So UEB was working on internationally but primarily
by Braille readers in these seven English speaking
countries and that were all part of the International
Council on English Braille – ICEB – and those
countries were Australia, New Zealand, South Africa,
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Nigeria, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United
States. The United States was actively involved in
the development of Unified English Braille as
representatives.
The entire process was open and in fact many of you
may remember at the time that there were listservs up
that you could participate in and read what was going
on. There were different committees set up for
different aspects of the code, but it was primarily
Braille readers themselves who worked on developing
this code.
So by 2004, the ICEB – the International Council –
stated that UEB was sufficiently complete for each
individual country to adopt it if they chose. And that’s
important to know too because when I talk later about
the vote that was taken last November, it was a vote
for the United States because the way the
International Council had this set up, it was adoption
by country rather than Braille authorities.
So the first two adopted I believe was Australia and I
think… maybe South Africa was first; Australia and
New Zealand were close behind. In fact Australia and
New Zealand have been using UEB now for five
years. Canada and the United Kingdom have also
adopted it within the last year or two and now the
United States which we’ll get to in a minute.
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But prior to adoption in the United States, BANA had
been closely monitoring the adoption of the code and
how it was implemented in all these other countries.
So we were really monitoring it through our
participation in the International Council on English
Braille, attending international meetings, reading
reports from other countries, studying research on
UEB and by participating in international listservs and
talking to folks about how the implementation was
going. So we really have been very careful in our
attention to UEB and how it was being used and how
it was adopted and the materials that were being
used, etc. Next slide please.
On this one I just wanted to point out that there has
been some research on UEB and there was research
conducted in the United States and Canada that has
been published in The Journal of Visual Impairment
and Blindness. You can find a list of all the research
studies again on the BANA website –
www.brailleauthority.org – and with the citations.
There has also been research done in other countries
as well and again, you’ll find those articles and links
on our website that looked at readability studies,
some studies done in the United Kingdom indicating
that the majority of readers there who tried out UEB
were able to read it without difficulty. And also about
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the transition period which was much briefer in the
countries that have implemented it than they actually
expected.
Next slide please. I want to get into what is this code
or what are some general characteristics of UEB. I’ve
talked a little about why there was this need to unify
the code to eliminate these ambiguities in these
difficulties and also with how the process was done.
So let’s talk a little bit about the code itself.
UEB is based on current literary code so literary code
changes very little. It’s still the same alphabet; still
mostly the same contractions. It includes new
symbols for items that are not currently in our literary
code – English Braille American Edition or EBAE, so it
unifies the existing codes – except for music cause
music is already international. UEB – the folks who
were developing it were concerned about that
ambiguity so it eliminated some contractions from the
literary code and I’ll tell you what those are in the next
slide – to reduce ambiguity and it added a few others
and changed just a few punctuation marks and things
just to again to make it very clear that a symbol is a
symbol. And in the next slide I’ll go over what those
are.
In UEB numbers are written in the upper part of the
cell as they are in current literary materials and it’s
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also designed to be extensible, in other words, much
easier to add new symbols because it’s based on kind
of a pattern to the symbols and how they’re done. It’s
consistent and it’s also unambiguous so it’s more
computable and it’s better for back translation.
If you go to the next slide, I’ll tell you about there’s
some specific changes that you’ll see. One of the
changes you’ll see is that UEB follows whatever the
original text is, including spacing, so all symbols have
spaces between them. And that means “and,” “for,”
“of,” “the” and “with.” If they are spaced in the original
text, then they are spaced in UEB. If for some reason
the original text has no spaces in it, then UEB doesn’t
either. I don’t know why you’d want to read a book
that way but that’s important to know. I teach a Braille
course for the University of Pittsburgh and I always
refer to those as the “snugglers,” so “and,” “for,” “of,”
“the,” “with,” “a” now all have spaces in between
them.
Okay then there are nine contractions that are not in
UEB from current code and three of them have to do
with that snuggling rule that I just told you about.
Since there’s a space between every word in UEB,
“to,” “into,” and “by” are no longer contracted in UEB.
And it’s because for “by” of course, “by” is already its
own symbol if it was standing alone.
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“Into” of course you can still contract the “in,” but “to”
was a problem because the problem with “to” is it’s a
dropped F and when the readers who were working
on this code, there was concern that if they kept “to”
as a contraction but just spaced between it, that it
would be confused with “from” and since “to” is only
two letters long, it seemed more logical to just drop
“to,” “into” and “by” and just spell them out. Obviously
you can still use the “in” for “into.” And you know,
even in current code sometimes we spell them out
anyway in certain circumstances.
The other contractions that were dropped were
because of ambiguity. So for example, “ble” is
dropped and that’s because it also looks like the
number sign. And since I was saying nowadays you
find numbers in the middle of names and proper
nouns and all kinds of things, “ble” was dropped
because of it looked like the number sign.
“dd” as a contraction was dropped so that way the
period or the dot is 256, no matter where you see it
and it’s always the same no matter where you see it.
So when you see the 256 now, it is always a period;
it’s always that dot, whether it’s a period, whether it’s
in the middle of a word or what.
“com” was dropped because it could be confused with
the hyphen and then “ation” and “ally” because again
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those .6 contractions could be capital letters in the
middle of words. “o’clock” was also dropped because
of ambiguity related to some other rules with UEB that
had to do with adding things to it. So those are the
only nine – “bb,” “dd,” “com,” “ation,” “ally,” “to,” “into”
and “by” and “o’clock.” All the other contractions are
still there, so those are the only nine that were
dropped.
There are some symbols that have been changed as
well and probably the one you’ll notice the most is
parentheses. The parentheses now instead of
looking the same whether it’s an open or a closed
parentheses, now there’s a definite open parentheses
and a definite closed parentheses. The ellipsis now is
three periods instead of being three single dots
because again, it matches what it does in print.
There have been some other symbols that have been
added or changed. There’s now a bullet. The
asterisk has now been changed; the dollar sign has
been changed and the dollar sign now follows the
same pattern as all the other currency. All the other
currency was a dot-4 and a letter and the dollar sign
is now a dot-4 and an S, just like the yen is a dot-4 Y
and the pound is a dot-4 L, so it now follows that
same pattern. And in fact, the dollar sign is the same
as the Nemeth dollar sign, so if you’re familiar with
that, then you’ve already seen it.
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The bullet in UEB is the same as the one that’s in the
new formats book. And as I already mentioned, the
other change is that all the numbers are in the upper
part of the cell in all contexts. Next slide please.
What’s going on currently here? As I mentioned, we
voted at our last meeting in November before
Thanksgiving to accept the code change and the
motion is also on our website and you may want to
read it. It’s rather lengthy but the motion that was
passed was to adopt UEB, replacing English Braille
American Edition and adding UEB as an official code
in the United States along with Nemeth Music and the
International Phonetic Alphabet – IPA.
And the reason that Nemeth was maintained is
because we heard from many of our constituents that
there was still a need for a specialized math code. So
while UEB is a complete code and you can do math in
UEB, there was a strong feeling from the consumer
conventions, the American Council of the Blind and
the National Federation of the Blind last summer.
Their resolution supported UEB as long as Nemeth is
maintained. And we also heard from others who felt
that, as I said, that there was still a need for a
specialty math code and so Nemeth is still an official
code in the United States as well. And again, this is
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different from some of the other countries that have
adopted UEB. New Zealand, for example, used to
use Nemeth but now they only use UEB. In fact I was
just in New Zealand last week and I was talking to the
folks there about their implementation which has gone
quite well and the students are using UEB for math
quite happily. In this country, as I said, we can use
both so we’re lucky that way.
The other thing that was part of the motion and that
BANA has already started is developing an
implementation plan. We have not set a date yet as
to when we’re going to start using UEB because we
realize there’s a lot of work that needs to be done
before the United States is ready.
We know we need training materials; we need to
reach out to as many people as possible which is why
I’m so delighted that Hadley invited me here today.
We need to reach out to Braille readers and to
educators, transcribers and producers of Braille and
that’s all part of our implementation plan.
The other thing is that we want as many people at the
table as possible. There’s no other way to do it. We
need to be hearing from as many people as possible
about what their needs are as far as making this
transition.
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The other thing that you need to know is that UEB
does not include any formats at all. In fact what the
International Council has stated is that each country
can continue to use their own formats, so those
formats are not going to change. The new formats
that are up on our website – we’ll probably need to
revise some of the symbols and things going along,
but the actual formats themselves, as far as headings
and all that kind of stuff, that’s not going to change
and neither will the tactile graphics guidelines.
In the next few years, as part of our implementation,
we will be looking at those and making any necessary
changes, but the main bulk of that stuff is not going to
change. They’re still in place with appropriate
updates. Okay, next slide please.
Resources and Support – The great thing is that
translation software for UEB already exists. If you
use Duxbury Braille Translation DBT, there’s been a
UEB setting in Duxbury for quite a long time. Since
UEB is already international, it’s already compatible
with existing Braille devices. So if you have for
example a Braille Note or a Mountbatten or anything,
you can set it to already be reading in UEB. As I said,
it’s already an international code so it’s already built
into and compatible with these existing Braille
devices.
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Even your iPhone, if you have an iPhone, what you
need to do is change the country to Australia and if
you put it on Australian English, you’ve got UEB. Also
on the BANA website, you can find a copy of the UEB
Rule Book. I’m laughing because looking at code
books is not exactly the easiest way to become
familiar with a new code because it’s written not as an
instructional guide.
But we do also have on our website some existing
training material. So for example if you’re a
transcriber, you might be interested in looking at the
materials from CNIB. There’s like 15 lessons to kind
of get up to speed with UEB. Also on the website
now there are some Braille Ready Files (BRFs) of
various articles that are in UEB. You can download
them and read them and look at them. As I said, the
other training materials.
We’re in the middle, we’re just about ready – we have
a shorter document that kind of outlines the changes.
When we were looking at our implementation plan we
were looking, kind of, at immediate needs, kind of
intermediate and then long-term. We knew that some
of the immediate needs was getting information out to
people about what the changes are that’s almost
ready and will be on our website in the next week or
so. We’re just copy editing it now.
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We’re also working with somebody to create our own
materials for current transcribers. As far as the
university programs and things, there’s already in the
works a training manual for teachers that we hope will
be out by the summer. So all of these materials are
kind of in the works and will be available soon. But
you can already be looking at some articles in UEB
and as I said, you can look at some things that are
already on there.
And if you have Refreshable Braille, if you have an “i”
device with a Braille display, if you’re using Braille
Note or something, you can be playing with UEB now
or if you have Duxbury. Next slide please, Doug.
I added a few extra little things. Just to know that the
United States is still part of ICEB. A number of us
went to the last General Assembly which was in
South Africa in May and again talked to folks in other
countries who have… we’re still in close contact with
other countries that are using UEB or implementing it
and we’re sharing information as far as training
materials and implementation plans so we can learn
from other countries what’s worked for them, what’s
not worked for them, what we might need to do
differently.
Ireland has now joined ICEB even though it’s part of
the United Kingdom. There are other countries that
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are interested so that international community is
growing. And as I mentioned, Canada and the U.K.
are also beginning implementation.
And then the last slide is just the “Contact Us” slide
and if you wouldn’t mind putting that up. The website
for the Braille Authority of North America is
www.brailleauthority.org and again I encourage you to
visit there and read the materials about Unified
English Braille. And if you want to contact me as
Chair, my email is literacy2@mindspring.com and I
know that Hadley will make these slides available to
you, so you’ll have this information.
But I want to stop talking because I think there’s
probably questions. So I’m going to stop talking and
turn the mic.
Doug Anzlovar
Thank you, Dr. D’Andrea. This is Doug, your
moderator again. There was one question in the text
chat that I think is pretty important. There is a
participant in today’s seminar who is engrossed in
taking the transcriber’s course and she’s wondering if
she should put this on hold until the UEB is
implemented.
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Dr. Frances Mary D’Andrea
Yes, that’s a good question. The National Library
Service has not yet made decisions about
recertification of transcribers. They’re still discussing
how that might be done, and for people who are in the
middle of the course, you know, how that might work.
I would say generally speaking, to go ahead and
finish because in my opinion I think you’ll find it easier
to switch over to UEB once you finish the course
rather than waiting. So I mean if you’re already
halfway though, you might as well go ahead and finish
– this is my opinion anyway – and get certified
because in this instance we’re in the middle of an
implementation plan. It’s going to take some time for
the new training materials to become available and for
the whole certification thing to change.
I know as I said in other countries they have had fiveyear implementation plans and I imagine for the
United States it will be a similar amount of time. So I
would encourage you to finish what you’re doing now
and then… That’s my opinion anyway. I’m going to
turn the mic back.
Doug Anzlovar
Okay, I will open the floor for questions from the
audience for Dr. D’Andrea.
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Kelly
Hi, my name is Kelly [Sapruzia] and I’m from
Saskatchewan, Canada. One thing I was wondering
about. I use a Braille display with Jaws, specifically
it’s a handicapped Braille Star 40 and I believe they
do have an option in Jaws where you can use Unified
English Braille.
But what I’m wondering is - is it – and this is probably
an obvious question – but is it the most up to date
code? I mean I know it’s I guess already been
implemented in various countries, but I’m just
wondering if it is the most recent code and if there’s
been anything that’s been implemented since – I’m
not really sure what would be the year I’m thinking of.
But that’s just what I’m curious about.
Dr. Frances Mary D’Andrea
Okay, thanks. That’s another good question. My
understanding is yes, it is the most up to date version.
I believe the last version of the UEB Rule Book was
out in 2010 and I know that they are working now on
doing some updates. The updates that I’ve seen from
the last General Assembly of ICEB were things that
had to do with more mathematical symbols and lines
and more complicated esoteric things than kind of
what would be in the general… And that new Rule
Book has not yet come out.
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So I think like any code, including our current codes,
there are updates that come out from time-to-time and
then there’s generally a period of time where we allow
people to get training so that it can get implemented.
So my understanding is that since the new Rule Book
has not come out yet, what you have is up to date.
Vollie
Dr. D’Andrea, this is [Vollie] Nelson. I’m from Georgia
and I use a [Pat Mate] but the question I just wanted
to ask you is will this new UEB format affect the
Frenchman, Louis Braille’s, literary code that we’re
used to as blind people?
Dr. Frances Mary D’Andrea
Hi there. Not very much. Louis was an awfully smart
person and he set up, for example, the alphabet –
how it had the 10 symbols and then the next 10
symbols added the dot-3 and then the next ones
added the dots 3 and 6. None of that has changed.
The only things that have changed as I said are those
nine contractions and some punctuation.
Even a couple of years ago there was an update to
English Braille American Edition – when was that –
four years ago maybe – so there have been changes
to the Braille Code periodically throughout history.
1959 is when they made some changes; they made
some changes again while I was learning it in college
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and they got rid of the natural pause rule. I don’t
know if you guys remember that.
So over time there have been some shifts in various
aspect of the Code. But the basic Code – the
alphabet and those kinds of things – are not changing
at all, as I said other than those nine contractions and
some punctuation. UEB is perfectly readable and in
fact, what I’ve been told from folks in Australia and
New Zealand, cause I’ve been to both countries
recently, their folks who use UEB now are able to
read the old codes just as easily. So since UEB is
based on current literary code, there are not very
many changes.
Laurie
Hi, this is Laurie from California and I might be a little
bit confused, but when you commented about
numbers, I thought you said that numbers would be
upper case now but also that there’s no number sign.
So as an example, whether I’m confused or not, how
would Literacy 2 for your email address appear? How
would the 2 appear?
Dr. Frances Mary D’Andrea
That’s a great question. No, what I said was that all
numbers now are in the upper part of the cell like
literary numbers are now. So the way literary
numbers are for page numbers and for sports scores
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and other kinds of things, that’s what all of the
numbers are now. So UEB doesn’t use dropped
numbers.
What I said was that “ble,” the contraction for “ble”
has been eliminated. So not the number sign, but
“ble.” So the word “table” you would now spell t-a-b-le because the “ble” looked like the number sign. So
it’s “ble” that was one of the nine dropped
contractions, but the number sign is still there.
So the nice thing with UEB, instead of like now, where
you have to go into Computer Braille Code, you have
to put the symbol and spell out literacy and then the 2
is dropped and then there’s a different symbol, where
with UEB you don’t have to go into and out of a code.
You can just write l-i-t-e-r-a-c-y #2 and then the @
symbol because there’s one set of numbers in UEB.
Does that make sense?
Vileen Shah
Hi, this is Vileen Shah. I’m an instructor at the Hadley
School for the Blind. I welcome UEB and I believe it
should have been adopted much earlier. But anyway,
my question is we have a number of currently certified
transcribers. Once UEB is adopted, shall we all have
to go for recertification?
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Dr. Frances Mary D’Andrea
Yes, that is… I’m saying yes because I acknowledge
your question. I mentioned it earlier. The National
Library Service has not yet ruled about how they’re
going to handle that. So I don’t have an answer to
that question right now. The National Library Service
– we have a representative on the BANA Board who’s
Dr. Judy Dixon who many of you know - she had been
Chair of BANA before me. And in our discussions
about the implementation plan, we’ve had quite a few
questions about how that’s going to work and that
really is something that the National Library Service is
going to have to decide how they want to handle.
So that’s really one of BANA’s member organizations
and how they decided to handle that. So I don’t have
an answer for you right now about that. You may
actually want to talk to NLS directly and share your
opinions about how that might be handled. So I’m
sorry I can’t answer that today. Hopefully we’ll know
in the upcoming months.
Doug Anzlovar
Dr. D’Andrea, it’s Doug. We have a participant in the
audience who’s a teacher at the Illinois School for the
Visually Impaired and she has started in Boston some
of her more seasoned Braille readers readings in
UEB. She would like to know do you support using
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UEB now or waiting until it’s more widely available in
the U.S.?
Dr. Frances Mary D’Andrea
Wow, that’s an interesting question. Since we
actually have not… we haven’t set an implementation
date, I would say you’re probably jumping the gun a
little bit. Although I don’t think that there’s any… I
mean there’s certainly no harm in exposing especially
your older, more proficient students to UEB.
But because it is not yet… hasn’t had an
implementation date as far as when it’s going to be
set, you’re right that materials are going to continue
being developed in the older Code. But I would be
really quite interested in talking to you maybe offline.
We could email or something cause I would like to
hear more about your students and what they think
about the new Code or especially whether they’ve
been having difficulty changing from one to the other
or whatever.
So I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind sending me
an email and talking to me a little bit.
Doug Anzlovar
Thanks, Dr. D’Andrea. And another question from the
text chat came in. I think there still might be some
confusion out there between UEB and Nemeth. I’m
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going to do my best here to describe what I think is
the question here.
They want to know how can it possibly work to use
both UEB and Nemeth for math? You said that we
are lucky that we can use both but how do you decide
whether it’s UEB or Nemeth that you’re going to want
to use in a document? Does it have something to do
with whether it’s a math assignment versus literary
Braille with some math in the literary Braille? Let me
know if that’s clear.
Dr. Frances Mary D’Andrea
Sure. What I meant was they are two separate
codes. UEB is a unified code, as I said, and it
includes math. And so other countries that have
adopted UEB are using UEB for math and they’re not
having any difficulty at all. Their high school students
are taking advanced math; they’re not having any
difficulty. They’re passing their standardized tests,
their graduation tests; they’re going on to college and
they’re using it quite well.
Because, as I said, in this country we heard from
many of our constituents that there’s still a need for
the specialized code Nemeth – and Nemeth is a
completely separate code than UEB – it is still an
official code. Now how states decide to implement it
is really going to be part of the discussion that we’re
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going to have to have and they are going to have to
have with their constituents.
I know that there are some teachers I’ve spoken to
who are very interested in using UEB in its entirety for
younger children because that way children don’t
have to learn a separate set of numbers and there’s
also teachers who feel strongly that we should
continue using Nemeth Code.
BANA has set both of these as official codes so that
as we move forward and talk to State Departments of
Education – as we’ve already started doing; we’ve
already been talking to structural material centers –
that decisions can be made based on what is best for
students. So since they’re both official codes that
both could be used, how that is put into practice is
something that we will have to hear from our
constituents as far as how that will best work.
If states want to continue using only Nemeth, that’s
their prerogative. If they would like to try using UEB
with younger students or students with visual
disabilities or anyone, that’s fine too. We’re certainly
hoping that there will be some research done as
implementation is done and that we continue
gathering information about its implementation and
that states are making decisions based on the needs
of students.
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I know in other countries that have implemented UEB
the students who had already… as I said I was just in
New Zealand, for example. Some of their high school
students are still using Nemeth quite happily and
switching back and forth with no difficulty.
So there are other countries that we can look at and
decide what they’re going to do – Canada for example
and how they do their implementation plan – and then
we’ll make decisions based on what’s best for our
students and our students’ needs.
Teachers that I’ve talked to are extremely creative
people and I’ve talked to a number of teachers who
say that they already adapt Nemeth for some of their
students by putting in extra spaces and other things. I
know teachers use Uncontracted Braille for the same
reasons – that they have students who would benefit
from that.
So I think as we move forward and start talking to
people about the students that they’re teaching and
educational practices, that it will become part of the
implementation plan as far as resources and
guidelines.
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Doug Anzlovar
Thank you, Dr. D’Andrea. Our seminar has come to a
conclusion. This seminar, like all seminars at Hadley,
will be archived on our website and available 24 hours
a day, 7 days a week. We will also post today’s
PowerPoint slideshow with the seminar recording so
that you will be able to access it.
The seminars will be archived on Hadley’s website
under the Past Seminars link. That’s
www.hadley.edu. Information on podcasts and how
to set up podcast notifications are available by going
to the Past Seminars page.
Hadley also offers a variety of courses related to
Braille Literacy and Instruction. Just a few for
professionals of family members include our
Introduction to Braille course; Contracted Braille;
Braille Teaching Methods for Children; Braille
Teaching Methods for Adolescents and Adults; our
Braille music courses for professionals.
For adult Continuing Ed and high school students, our
ACE and high schools students, we offer our Braille
Literacy Series and our new Braille Reading Course.
So please visit our website for a comprehensive
course listing of Braille courses available through
Hadley.
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Thanks again for participating today. We do value
your feedback. Please let us know what you thought
of today’s seminar and you are also welcome to make
suggestions for future seminar topics by emailing
feedback@hadley.edu. I’m going to turn the
microphone back over to our speaker, Dr. D’Andrea,
for her concluding comments. Dr. D’Andrea, the
microphone is yours.
Dr. Frances Mary D’Andrea
Thanks, Doug, and thanks all of you for participating
today. As we’re still in the early stages of the
implementation plan, there will be much more to come
as the months go by. We absolutely want to hear
from you all and there’ll be other opportunities to
share resources and ideas and to talk to people as
things move forward.
So please do be in contact with BANA and feel free to
email me and maybe in some future webinar we’ll be
able to give another update. Don’t you like how I
invited myself back, Doug?
Doug Anzlovar
You’re always welcome, Dr. D’Andrea. Thank you
again for taking the time to speak with us today and
share this valuable information.
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