Braille Math Made Easy with Tiger Formatter

A new software application called Tiger Braille Formatter was introduced at the 10th ICCHP by John A. Gardner and Leon Ungier from ViewPlus Technologies Inc., Corvallis, Oregon and John J. Boyer from JJB Software Inc., Madison, Wisconsin.

The Tiger Braille Formatter, a Windows software application, helps users of ViewPlus embossers to easily convert MS Office documents like Word and Excel to Braille before embossing. The Formatter enables users to transform and reform documents to Braille without any special editing. This assistive technology has the convenience of more than 20 literary Braille languages. More languages are being added to this list.

Apart from a choice of translation options and Braille languages, Formatter provides the choice of non-contracted or various levels of contracted Braille, according to what a selected language offers. A user has the ability to choose capital letters, emphasis mark-up, dots or ASCII font characters on screen post formatting and placing regular text interline. Once the user has finished transformation he/she can emboss on any ViewPlus embosser. A user can print the regular text on the embossed copy if a ViewPlus Pro Ink or Emprint embosser is being used.

While graphical information is embossed, text within graphics is translated and bitmapped text in graphics is not recognized. The dark and light areas of graphics are embossed in high and low dots respectively. Formatter displays page numbers in the Braille document as well as the original print. But margins, paragraph breaks, footer and header type among others cannot be transformed. Hand-corrections can be carried out by expert Braille transcribers to conform to official Braille codes.

An extension of standard Braille, DotsPlus Braille represents letters, numbers, and a few characters as Braille symbols. Most other characters are represented as graphic images. DotsPlus Braille consists of regular DotsPlus and DotsPlus Euro as well. Blind students from the US and UK have successfully used DotsPlus math representation since it is easily accessible from MS Word documents and is time-saving, and it makes communication with sighted people easier.

Most countries have adopted an official Math Braille, but these differ from country to country. However, Duxbury DBT Braille translator converts a mainstream math format to standard Math Braille.

Liblouis Braille project was developed as a multi-language open source Braille translator. Bearing in mind two main aspects of content and formatting, Liblouis concentrates on achieving quality translation of text content to Braille in multiple languages. This assistive technology solution is appropriate for Tiger Braille Formatter as it can be formatted from the Office document’s settings. Liblouis

Currently, tests are on to develop this assistive technology product. Translation tables are being corrected and improved. Errors in non-English Braille have been amended with the addition of commands to the basic Liblouis translator. While most standard Math expressions are being translated, advanced expressions will be first tested exhaustively.