Braille Exchange – The Changing Braille Code
Seminars@Hadley
Braille Exchange -
The Changing Braille Code
Presented by
Danette Johnson
Vileen Shah
Jennifer Ottowitz
Moderated by
Doug Anzlovar
April 28, 2015
Doug Anzlovar
My name is Doug Anzlovar and I’m the Dean of Educational Programs and Instruction here at the Hadley School, and today’s seminar topic is the Changing Braille Code: How Did We Get to UEB and Why? I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome our three presenters today, Jennifer Ottowitz, Danette Johnson and Vileen Shah. Jennifer is a Certified Vision Rehabilitation Therapist and Instructor with Hadley. She currently teaches courses in our braille curriculum to sighted professionals and family members. Jennifer has over 15 years of experience in the field of vision.
Vileen Shah is also an Instructor with Hadley. He currently teaches in our Braille Literacy Series to our tactile audiences. Valine is also a braille transcriber and proofreader Certified by the Library of Congress. Danette Johnson is a Certified Teacher of the Visually Impaired and Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist. She is an Instructor with Hadley and teaches courses in our Braille Literacy Series to our tactile audiences. Danette also is an Adjunct Professor at Illinois State University and teaches in coursework in Literary Braille and Nemethcode. So without further ado, I’m going to hand off the microphone to Danette to get us underway.
Danette Johnson
Okay, good morning, everyone, and it’s great to be here. I’m glad you all joined us for this. This morning I’m going to begin by giving you – everyone a little bit the history of reading and writing systems for the blind from sort of the beginning until – up until the 1960’s. Go ahead and change the slide. Really writing – reading and writing systems for the blind didn’t begin much until the 1600’s, and at that point the only thing was that sometimes the alphabet was cut into wood. So the alphabet as it looked in print, was cut into wood, and then people would use their fingers to trace the letters and then in order to write, they would memorize the motion sort of kinesthetically through motor movement and then they would mimic that motion on paper with pencil and paper.
In the 1700’s, really you had to be of either good fortune or intelligence enough to develop your own system of reading and writing because there was still nothing that was uniform or nothing that was sort of published out there. In 1762, Mademoiselle [De Selniac0:02:57] could read and write letters formed by pin pricks on paper. She was very wealthy, and so she had entire books printed for her but you can imagine, if everything was hand-pricked by pins, how long it took to make entire books and so this really wasn’t again, a uniform system that was available to everyone.
Starting in the late 1700’s, next slide, the first formal system for teaching the blind was developed. Mr. Valentine Hauy in France began by cutting or pasting embossed letters of the alphabet on cards, and so they could read those cards that were pricked by pins. Books were actually made by taking these embossed letters that were on paper and then putting moistened paper on top of them and pressing down to form another embossed copy. So as you can imagine, it would take a long time to take each letter in a book and write it out letter by letter and then emboss it one page at a time, but that was the first books that were technically embossed or printed.
Writing then was done at this same time on a frame cord like elastic or string was stretched across the frame in lines such as what we might think of as lined paper, but they had cord their lines stretched across the paper to sort of guide the person as to where the line was to write. Well, then the letters were made with the right hand, while the left hand covered up the previous letter. So the left hand would move along and cover up a letter, and then the right hand – using the right hand the person would form the next letter, writing with a pen or pencil. So this was called Square Hand Writing because to the sighted reader, the letters were all very boxy and square but they could be read. The problem with this was that the blind person couldn’t read their own writing, and that nor could they read what anyone else was writing. So this was a way for them to communicate with the sighted world but not to be communicated with in response.
So these early methods were all very cumbersome and expensive equipment, and so it was really still some flawed methods. Slide, so then came the 1800’s and the 1800’s was a great period of experimentation for the blind world. The problem was originally, many developers couldn’t get around the thinking that whatever system of reading had to look just like printed to the sighted world, and so many of the early formats or reading and writing, the print alphabet was used as the model and so all of the methods were embossed and the alphabet looked like it did in print.
So the first one was Boston Line Type and this was developed by Samuel Gridley Howe, who was the founder of the New England School for the Blind which is now known as the Perkins School. Again, he took the regular Roman alphabet without capitals, and he developed a system of embossing that on paper. So everything was sort of just a raised alphabet. He made the first book in this Boston Line Type. His first book was 19 – 1834, excuse me, but this Boston Line Type was the primary mode used in the United States and especially at the Perkins School for about 50 years.
At the same time, next slide please, William Bell Wait was developing what’s called New York Point. Now this was a system very similar to braille, in that this was the first system in the United States that used dots instead of trying to look like print. This code was points that were two dots high and one, two, three or four dots wide. So each letter was not exactly the same number of what we think of as cells today in braille. Each letter could have been either two cells or three cells or four cells wide. This system was widely used in the late 1800’s in the United States, but it even had a writing machine called the Kaleidagraph that helped with its production.
So this was really sort of similar to braille in its development. Next slide, while these systems, the New York Point and the Boston Line Type, were being developed in the United States, across the ocean we had some other systems being developed at the same time. In Great Britain, William Moon was developing what we know as Moon Type. It’s based on print letters but they don’t look like the print letters. It is really more lines and angles, arches and hooks and curves that are embossed on paper. The Moon Type was believed to be easier and more tactually simple to discriminate than braille, and it was widely used in Britain, Canada, Australia and many, many books were produced and there are still books available in Moon Type. In fact, it is still used widely in Great Britain for students who have learning or fine motor difficulties, as it is thought to be more tactually easier to discriminate.
It can also still be produced using a duxbury or with a stylist on plastic sheets with a framed guide. Next slide, in France during the 1800’s was when braille came about. Braille was named after Louis Braille, and he was born in 1809 in a small village near Paris. Louis Braille’s father ran a leather shop, and when Louis was three he was playing in his father’s shop and he was blinded on an – with an awl, one of the tools for his father’s leather work. Most instruction to that point was auditory. So in his early years, Louis did go to school. He sat in a classroom and he listened. So he did go to school for the blind. He went to a school with sighted students but he did not have any materials available to him, excuse me. He had to just sit and listen.
A few tactual books might have been made available by pressing wire on to paper but for Louis there was no system of writing. When he was a teenager he heard about the Army Captain Charles Barbier. Barbier had developed a system that soldiers could use at night so that they didn’t have to turn on lights to read messages. He developed this system using dots arranged in columns. The original system was groups of 12 dots arranged in two columns of six dots each. Barbier adapted his night-writing system and presented it to the Institution for the Blind Youth.
His original system was based on phonetics and if you think about braille as it is today, we use a lot of phonetics in our – in the braille code. The contractions for E and an IN, for SH and TH and GH are all phonetically-based. Well, Louis Braille decided he needed to work on his system, on Barbier’s system, and change it a little bit. So he wanted to base it on the normal alphabet and he only wanted it six dots, instead of twelve. He felt that the twelve dots were too tall. He wanted to be able to move his hands across the page and not have to move his fingers up and down at the same time. He only wanted to have to move them from side to side.
So he reduced the dots to six dots, instead of twelve. Next slide, well, braille was first published in a book form in 1829. So if you think about this timeline, 1829 was the same type that – same timeframe that Moon Type was being published, that New York Point maybe was being – that might have been in the early years of New York Point and that the Boston Line Type was being published. So all of these sort of systems were being generated at the same time, but braille was kind of the one that took off. Braille was adapted as the years went on. Symbols for math and music were added in 1837, but it took awhile for braille to be widely accepted.
In fact, Louis Braille was a beloved and respected teacher. He died of tuberculosis in 1852 before his system of braille was really widely accepted and thought of as the writing – reading and writing method for the blind. Braille was introduced to the United States in the 1860’s but a marketable braille writer was not available until the 1890’s. So really this whole gener – this whole century was sort of influx. We had all these different systems and none of them were exactly perfect, but as time went on, next slide please, as time went on and as braille was adapted and modified, originally braille was just one symbol for one letter and then gradually, these abbreviations and contractions that we know of now were added, and Grade 2 Contracted Braille was complete by 1905. So we have all of these English speaking countries. We have Great Britain and Australia and the United States.
So uniformity of the braille code was first attempted in 1878 by the International Congress of Work for the Blind. The problem was that it didn’t address letters beyond the 26 letters. So with braille’s spread to other languages, changes were made in those languages to meet those language conventions. In the United States, American modified braille was attempted. Then again in 1951 unification was attempted by UNESCO. UNESCO is an agency of the United Nations dedicated to promoting international collaboration through education, science and culture. In this big conference, it was decided to let English contractual braille be the sort of partial international standard but other languages could still make changes to it to fit their needs, and so that’s sort of where braille was sort of in limbo a little bit as of the 1960’s. I will now pass this along to Vileen Shah and he can catch you up from the 1960’s to where we are today.
Vileen Shah
Good morning, everybody. This is Vileen Shah. As you know, I’m an Instructor at Hadley School for the Blind. I hope everybody can hear me well. I’ll just release the control key to confirm and then continue and will go over the history and reasons why we adopted, and how we adopted UEB, the United English Braille.
Doug Anzlovar
Valine, we can hear you well and to let you know, the braille code 1960 to 2015 slide is up for you.
Vileen Shah
Thank you, Doug and before that slide makes more sense, I would like to give you a little background. When the news about the United English Braille code was spreading around in the air, one of my Hadley students called me and we started talking about UEB. Her question was that we have such a [inaudible 0:15:46] work in braille that we have produced in the United States. Why this change? Are we going to throw out all this braille work? Unfortunately not.
I just tried to explain to her you know, that the change was necessary. Her question was based on two assumptions. One, that we are good where we are and two, the change is not good. Well, friends, that’s not right. The change is the code of a life. Change occurs in every walk of life, every now and then and braille is no exception. So as the slide suggests, that braille has undergone many changes. Around early 1960’s, the United States started differing from Great Britain. Until then, they were using the same code, but there was a big issue about using the capital sign. I will not go into details about why we differed but let’s – I mean let’s accept that the United States decided to go on its own way and in 1962, the first English Braille American Edition, that is EBAE, was published and since then, braille has undergone so many changes.
This edition was revised in 1968 and then it underwent minor or major changes at different times, such as in 1980, 1987, 1991, a large major change in 1994, again in 1995, 1998, 2002 and 2007. That tells us that we have been changing the braille code. It may not be such a major change as the UEB, and of course there is also a [inaudible 0:18:10] assumption that my friend, coworker, Jennifer Ottowitz, will tell you, that the change is not so huge, but it is definitely remarkably a different change that we are going for now with the adoption of UEB. So I’m going to briefly discuss on two premises why and how the UEB has been adopted.
Next slide please, in answer to the question why, I would like to cover three major premises. One, multiplicity of codes. Two, the event of the computer age and three, more opportunities of mainstreaming for the blind and visually impaired. To begin with, in the 1960’s and further on, braille underwent many changes, and something that I slightly forgot to mention, that when the changes were occurring in the braille code, we also had a computer code adopted in 1972 which was revised in 1980 and then 2000. So now in the [use 0:19:35], there were a number of codes, braille codes, multiple codes like LiteraryBraille Code we call it, then the Computer Braille Code, the Nemeth Code for math and science, the Music Code.
A child had to learn the three different signs for the dollar sign consisting of the period sign which is stars 256, then consisting of dot 4 and 256 and then the ED sign which is dot 1246 by the time the child would enter the third grade, and that’s a lot just for one currency. You have to learn three signs. This multiplicity needs to be avoided. Uniformity was certainly called for. Also in the meantime, the computer age came in, and the computer brought in new changes and new challenges. Now that you’re able to produce computerized braille which means using the computer and the electronic braille printer and braille embosser, we were able to produce the computer document into braille, but it involves so much of work because a plain word document had to be formatted according to the textbook format code and that took so much time.
Also, there was a need for the change in braille system so that a document produced in braille could be easily converted into print and a document can – prepared in print could be easily converted into braille. So braille to print and print to braille translation was very necessarily and for that, the change was necessary. The current braille code was not compatible with this braille to print and print to braille need, and then of course as we all know, that with thecomputers coming in and combining the use of braille and computer, many of our friends, blind and visually impaired people, got opportunities of employment. Also, the school-going children got better opportunities to learn in education.