To make it short, the Braille reader will be able to tell British spelling from American spelling just as well as a print reader can tell the difference. Let me add that the problem with Bookshare is that it treats British and American English as if they were different languages. The simple fact is that they are the same language that differ from one another a lot less than dialects within a lot of languages do. Anyone who can read one can read the other, whether the reader is reading in Braille or not. That makes a strong argument for me that they should be combined on Bookshare.
On 11/27/2012 9:33 AM, Ann Parsons wrote:
Hi all,Cindy, you are right that Braille is contracted when books are published. Braille comes in two basic forms: contracted and uncontracted. Uncontracted Braille, what we old-timers used to call Grade I, is a letter for letter transcription of print. this, form, as you might imagine takes up a lot of space. So, the inventors of Braille came up with contracted Braille or Grade II. Now, for those of you who are actual Braille readers, just forget that you know about Grade 1-1/2 or Grade III or Nemeth or Music or Computer Braille. I'm talkin' basics here.Most books are published in Contracted Braille. This involves several types of contractions including, whole-word contractions, letter contractions and so on. For example the letter h by itself stands for the word have. there are contractions for various letter combinations, e.g. th, wh, gh, er, ed, ation, ally, tion, and so on. By using these contractions, Braille is reduced in size.As for the British spellings, yes, one should be made aware of this so that one is not startled by surprize VS surprise, center VS centre, and colour VS color. Speech synthes have no trouble reading this kind of thing.Ann P.
To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
