- From: Lloyd G. Rasmussen <lras@loc.gov>
- Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 15:30:42 -0400
- To: wai-xtech@w3.org
- Cc: jdix@loc.gov
Your analysis looks OK to me. I don't know of any implementations of the x2800-28ff range of code points for braille exchange. It is a good thing that this range has been defined in Unicode. In writing the Z39.86 digital talking book standard and discussing braille inclusions, we were most likely thinking of braille that would be readable on currently available equipment without further translation, not having experience with doing braille any other way. We were probably not thinking of using this range, although it would solve problems of conflicts with the angle brackets, ampersand, etc. Clearly, x2800-28ff could be used in DTB text content files and perhaps should be, but I don't know of any software which would know how to process such characters. Braille embossers and displays outside of North America are sometimes set up with part of the mapping from ASCII to braille different from the North American mapping because of different expectations for punctuations and numbers. And the mapping used for 0080 to 00ff will vary depending on whether the bottom dots are being used to represent capitalization or visual attributes. Control characters may be shown on a braille display in some code translation tables, but there is no standardization of this. Currently, people doing a braille text chat would be exchanging one-byte characters which have a meaning to the participants, but not a tightly-defined schema. English-speaking people who are using braille keyboards as well as braille displays are likely to write in Grade 2 (now called "contracted" braille). In contracted braille, many of the symbols represent standardized letter groupings or words. In North American contracted braille there are 189 standardized contractions. I think German braille has more contractions and Russian has few, if any. Bottom line: I don't think that anything major would be lost by considering the braille range to be symbols rather than letters, partly because there is practically no implementation yet, and because there is no universally accepted mapping between braille code points and print alphabets. Any mappings that exist are based on language of the participants and the purpose of the communication. I would be happy to hear differing views, however. Braille is the solution to the digital divide. Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Staff Engineer National Library Service f/t Blind and Physically Handicapped Library of Congress (202) 707-0535 <http://www.loc.gov/nls/> HOME: <http://lras.home.sprynet.com> The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of NLS.
Received on Tuesday, 23 September 2003 15:30:29 UTC