Progress in Automatic Production of Braille

Abstract

The problem of automatic Braille production by means of a computer has been with us for more than two decades. In fact the first informal meeting of scientists interested in automatic Braille production was organized during the IFIP congress 1962 at Munich. In the meantime a very fruitful cooperation took place between the European and the North — American countries. Today I am in the good position that Dr. Truquet, whose paper we just heard, has already defined the objectives, thus allowing me to launch into specific German problems. I am happy to report that we are leaving the experimental state of translation and setting up places for production. Emphasis is now layed on reducing the size of equipment needed for the translation process and putting it on a personal computer, which is even in the reach of institutions like schools or professionals. Though the programs became larger and larger, the personal computers grew so fast that they now can house such programs. The error quote of the transcription also is reduced so much that the result of automatic transcription depends mainly on the quality of the input. The daily inkprint newspapers show how bad this can be. With careful proofreading we can do much better.