[duxuser] Re: Article on Braille transcription focuses on NBP transcriber and Duxbury Systems
- From: Catherine Thomas <braille@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 08:43:14 -0400 (EDT)
It's ironic but true--products like Duxbury have actually made it more
difficult for Braille transcription to be taken seriously. Duxbury and
other translation programs are now being used constantly by people who
know nothing about Braille. The resulting documents are often ghastly for
the Braille reader, the final user. On balance, an article like that in
the Boston Globe is a good thing because it makes people aware of Braille
transcription. There is also no question that the number of
non-professionals transcribing Braille is going to increase. It will be up
to us as professional transcribers and up to Braille readers to insist on
quality Braille. I believe that we need more written material explaining
the differences between Braille and print documents.The bottom line is to
produce documents in Braille that are user-friendly. It's impossible for
transcribers to do that if they don't understand what portions of a
document a Braille reader finds useful and which portions only provide
clutter, cunfusion, and unnecessary pages. We may need to develop a
common-sense guide to Braille transcription which goes beyond the rules
and codes and gets to the heart of what people actually need in order to
make a document readable.
If anyone wants to write to me privately about this, I'd be glad to hear
from them.
Catherine
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-Catherine Thomas
braille@xxxxxxxxx /
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