Transcription software can’t do it all: Even Braille 2000 doesn’t have every possibility

Hello folks,

While we’re still in beta in Braille 2000 before the 2.275 release, I’m now on assignment number 15. While I have seen the concepts in my daily reading, I’m still studying it thoroughly before I take the RTF representation made for me and have it transcribed. Here are some things I do not believe any transcription software can do:

• Transcriber-defined segments, I.E. words, passages, and the like
• Passage transcriber defined material
• Small caps, I.E. the instructions say that words are smaller than the other words, I.E. Star-Spangled Banner in one of the drills, the words are small caps minus the first letter
• Displayed Material by default unless its shaped or percent coded I.E. 5-3 paragraphs or 3-3 blocked material.

While the file i’ve gotten was shapped and percent coded, there are still some aspects I need to correct. Braille Translation software, including Braille 2000, should take the font attributes I.E. bold, italics, underline, and script, and take the appropriate symbols which would include passage appropriately. The lesson stresses that we should always check to make sure that it does this correctly. This is going to be fun, as now is the heart of what we’re going to learn from now on. Formatting, some foreign language, transcriber specific stuff, including pages, title pages, table of contents, and more.

Braille 2000 may be upgraded to assist in transcriber defined material, but it is not available as of yet. This way, the blind transcriber can be put in word or wordpad where it may be more accessible for them to work. I’m not sure about any other software and how it works with this type of thing, please comment here and let me know. I’d love to have a discussion about this new UEB concept, and how others do it.

I’m putting this in the Braille 2000 category for convenience, but this also implies other software as well and how they work and how you deal with such things.