Transcript A Proposal for Increased Access to Braille Music * International

Joel Håkansson
Henry Larsson
Björn Westling
Contact information
TPB – The Swedish Library of Talking
Books and Braille, Stockholm
 Joel Håkansson

 [email protected]
 +46 8 39 94 80

Henry Larsson
 [email protected]
 +46 8 39 93 80

Björn Westling
 [email protected]
 +46 8 39 93 94
Purpose of the presentation

To propose cooperation in the braille
music field, concerning:
 Purchase/production
 Interlibrary loans
 Future sharing of catalogue data

To present and promote a proposal to
establish a new embosser format: PEF
Braille music in Sweden – a short
background

Producers:
 TPB since 1980 (governmental authority)
 The Society for the Blind – 1954
 Book foundation of the Blind
 Tomtebodaskolan
A short background (cont.)

Differences in producing braille notes
(which are the differences?):
 German style
 English style
 American style

Deposition of braille music at DBB in
1990 (the Danish National Library for the Blind)
 Limited request by Swedish borrowers for
braille music from Denmark
Today’s situation

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DBB is responsible for supplying Swedish borrowers
with braille music (a limited amount of borrowers)
A total production at TPB of 42 titles with braille music
– since 1980
Two producers of braille music in Sweden (commercial
companies)
Braille music users in Sweden: 30 among school pupils
A small increase in the demand for braille music (at
TPB)
A possibly large potential for braille music (unknown)
 Intention to investigate the needs
Public procurements of production
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No in-house production of Braille or other media at
TPB
Commercial companies are contracted for several
years at a time.
Effects:
 Lowered production costs over the years.
 TPB has a need of production systems that are
standardised.
 It is essential that the Braille embosser file gives the same
result regardless of where and when it is really embossed.
 Example: a Braille embosser file will be produced at a
certain location by a certain company, stored at TPB and
eventually embossed in a different location by a different
company.
Future Braille Service

TPB’s goal is to provide a better service
for our braille users by continuing to
incorporate new material into our
collection and by developing a more
efficient distribution system.
A more efficient distribution
system

Distribution via internet
 Feasible from a technical standpoint
 A new distribution system will launch in April
 File format?

“On Demand” services
More material to offer

Increasing the rate of production
 Procurement, while successful, stresses
some aspects of braille production
 Embossing a book that was produced
somewhere else is not a trivial task
 Shared procurement in the EU

Increase co-operation between braille
libraries
 Sharing of catalogue data
 Common file format for sharing
How to increase co-operation?
Sharing of catalogue data
 Common file format for sharing

 Internet distribution
 “On demand” services
 Procurement
 Co-operation
Common Exchange Format
Braille music is very expensive to
produce
 The braille code used in musical
notation is understood across nations
 With a common braille exchange format,
this material can be shared in electronic
form with anyone

Reasons for developing a
common exchange format
To facilitate ordering of additional braille
copies at a later point in time
 To ensure readability of material many
years from now, e.g. when investing in an
digitizing effort, the result must be
persistently readable
 To reduce costs for embossing
 To enable easy file sharing (in general, not
just braille music) across regions having
different embosser settings or software

Portable Embosser Format
The Portable Embosser Format (PEF) is a
data format for representing braille books,
accurately and unambiguously; regardless
of language, location, embosser settings,
braille code and computer environment. It
can be used for braille embossing and
archiving anywhere in the world, no matter
where nor how it was produced.
 PEF builds on XML, Unicode and Dublin
Core. Three well known, widely used and
reliable technologies.

What about ASCII braille?
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Problems with ASCII braille
 It is insufficiently defined
 It can be interpreted differently depending on software/embosser
 It depends on an alternate interpretation of regular ASCII
characters, but provides no means of how to differentiate one
interpretation from another. A stray file that has been taken out of
context or transferred from one computer to another can be very
difficult to make sense of, even for a skilled transcriber
 Common characters like .?()+$% and # render different braille
patterns depending on embosser and/or software locale. The
reality is that one can’t send an ASCII braille file to an embosser
without braille knowledge
 A user keeping a collection of ASCII braille files cannot rely on
embedded metadata when searching or organizing, such as one
can with for example mp3-files. In fact, no additional information
whatsoever can be attributed to an ASCII file.
Why use PEF?
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A PEF file provides metadata that can be used
for tracing, tracking, organizing and searching
PEF is a proper file format, defined in a
publicly available standard.
There is never any doubt about how to
interpret or use the contents of a PEF file
A PEF file can be shared with anyone in the
world
Publishing and republishing can be achieved
quickly and easily, without worrying about
embosser or software settings
Using PEF today

Software for reading, writing and
embossing is available in the Daisy
Pipeline. Using this software, you can:
 emboss a PEF file
 input an ASCII braille file and get a PEF file as
output
 input a PEF file and get an ASCII braille file as
output
 convert between different ASCII braille formats
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Package file prototype
Package file prototype
It enables instant embossing of PEF files
on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms
 It contains braille, embossing software and
a fully accessible web interface where you
can:

 find information about the publication
 set up the target embosser
 emboss the publication, in its entirety or a
selection of pages
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Package file is suitable for internet
distribution
Standardization
Widespread support for PEF will not
happen until PEF is an international
concern and/or a Daisy standard
 If your organization thinks that PEF is a
good idea and wants to support it, let us
know
 Read more about PEF on the Daisy
website or contact
[email protected] for more
information

What we propose you to do
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Talk to us about:
 TPB purchase/production by your
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organisation
Interlibrary loans
Sharing of catalogue data
Possibilities to introduce PEF in your
production systems
Software demonstration