VIDBE-Q Volume 69 Issue 1
Willow Free
American Printing House
wfree@aph.org
This pre-conference for Council for Exceptional Children's Division on
Visual Impairments and Deafblindness focuses on the new braille file type being
developed by people throughout the international braille community, eBRF or
eBraille. A certified braille transcriber with over 12 years of experience, I've also
worked on the braille transcription software BrailleBlaster, where I learned about
markup and how it could be adapted for braille. I've spent the past two years
working with the DAISY Consortium and representatives from over 40 companies
and organizations around the world to develop eBraille.
The whole idea of the eBraille effort is to create a new braille file type that
includes markup, links, and tactile graphics. Dynamic braille is changing, but the
file types we have relied on have not. One of the most popular braille file types in
the United States is the BRF (Braille Ready Format). A great file type that has
served our community well, it was designed primarily for embossers, which limits
users to one static, non-interactive page size and no need to adjust for any other.
Braille's Dynamic Future
