Hi Travis

British Braille has changed very much over the last 9 years or so.  UK Braille 
post-2004 is much like American Braille.  I have to know about this kind of 
thing now as it’s a major part of my job.

Kind regards

<--- Gordon Smith --->

<[email protected]>

Information Technology Accessibility Consultant;
Providing Help & Support To Young People LivingWith Visual Impairment, plus 
Braille Transcription services.
On 18 Nov 2013, at 20:04, Travis Siegel <[email protected]> wrote:

My understanding of the english vs. american braille is that your system uses 
the first possible contraction, regardless of where it falls in the word.  So, 
as you said, appear would have the ea symbol, followed by the r.  American 
braille doesn't break up sylabols, (though that doesn't hold in your example) 
but we'd use the ar symbol as you pointed out.
Unfortunately, I'm coming up blank on examples of english vs american braille 
for cross sylable splits, but I do remember seeing them when I read a book 
written in english braille many many years ago, and it confused me quite a bit 
until I got used to it. :)
I haven't read the specs for this universal braille yet, so can't comment on 
how it's doing things, but my understanding was that they wanted a single code 
to replace all the various systems, computer, nemeth, english, american, and 
foreign languages.  I'm not sure they've managed to cover all of those basis, 
especially since the whole computer braille code was specifically designed to 
be an exact 1 for 1 match for the ascii character set, and nemeth has it's own 
way of doing things, but if they've managed to pull it off, I'd be surprised.  
Are they planning next to unify the written alphabet as well, so russian, 
chineese, arabic and african languages all use the same set of symbols?  It's 
silly to contemplate such a thing, because each language has symbols denoting 
sounds in that particular language.  I submit braille codes served the same 
purpose, and except for the english vs american codes, I don't understand how 
they plan to squeeze all the others into a single unified code.  It's 
specifically because each code was designed for something different that made 
them the way they were, and throwing that all away, just because someone 
somewhere didn't like learning different codes seems silly to me, but then 
again, except for a short survey I participated in a couple years ago, nobody 
asked my opinion about it all, so what's a person to do?


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