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Unified English Braille Code (UEBC, formerly UBC, now usually simply UEB) is an
English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
Braille code standard, developed to permit representing the wide variety of literary and technical material in use in the
English-speaking world Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the '' Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest languag ...
today, in uniform fashion.


Background on why the new encoding standard was developed

Standard 6-dot braille only provides 63 distinct characters (not including the space character), and thus, over the years a number of distinct rule-sets have been developed to represent literary text, mathematics, scientific material, computer software, the @ symbol used in email addresses, and other varieties of written material. Different countries also used differing encodings at various times: during the 1800s
American Braille American Braille was a popular braille alphabet used in the United States before the adoption of standardized English Braille in 1918. It was developed by Joel W. Smith, a blind piano tuning teacher at Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston ...
competed with
English Braille English Braille, also known as ''Grade 2 Braille'', is the braille alphabet used for English. It consists of around 250 letters ( phonograms), numerals, punctuation, formatting marks, contractions, and abbreviations (logograms). Some English Br ...
and
New York Point New York Point (New York Point: ) is a braille-like system of tactile writing for the blind invented by William Bell Wait (1839–1916), a teacher in the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. The system used one to four pairs of poi ...
in the ''War of the Dots''. As a result of the expanding need to represent technical symbolism, and divergence during the past 100 years across countries, braille users who desired to read or write a large range of material have needed to learn different sets of rules, depending on what kind of material they were reading at a given time. Rules for a particular type of material were often not compatible from one system to the next (the rule-sets for literary/mathematical/computerized encoding-areas were sometimes conflicting—and of course differing approaches to encoding mathematics were not compatible with each other), so the reader would need to be notified as the text in a book moved from computer braille code for programming to
Nemeth Code The Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics is a Braille code for encoding mathematical and scientific notation linearly using standard six-dot Braille cells for tactile reading by the visually impaired. The code was developed by Abraham Nemeth. Th ...
for mathematics to standard literary braille. Moreover, the braille rule-set used for math and computer science topics, and even to an extent braille for literary purposes, differed among various English-speaking countries.


Overview of the goals of UEB

Unified English Braille is intended to develop one set of rules, the same everywhere in the world, which could be applied across various types of English-language material. The notable exception to this unification is Music Braille, which UEB specifically does not encompass, because it is already well-standardized internationally. Unified English Braille is designed to be readily understood by people familiar with the literary braille (used in standard prose writing), while also including support for specialized math and science symbols, computer-related symbols (the @ sign as well as more specialised programming-language syntax), foreign alphabets, and visual effects (bullets, bold type, accent marks, and so on). According to the original 1991 specification for UEB, the goals were: : 1. simplify and unify the system of braille used for encoding
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
, reducing community-fragmentation : 2. reduce the overall number of official coding systems, which currently include: :: a. literary code (since 1933,
English Braille English Braille, also known as ''Grade 2 Braille'', is the braille alphabet used for English. It consists of around 250 letters ( phonograms), numerals, punctuation, formatting marks, contractions, and abbreviations (logograms). Some English Br ...
Grade 2 has been the main component) ::: i. BANA flavor used in North America, et cetera ::: ii. BAUK flavor used in United Kingdom, etc. :: b. Textbook Formats and Techniques code :: c. math-notation and science-notation codes ::: i.
Nemeth Code The Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics is a Braille code for encoding mathematical and scientific notation linearly using standard six-dot Braille cells for tactile reading by the visually impaired. The code was developed by Abraham Nemeth. Th ...
(since 1952, in North America and several other countries) ::: ii. modern variants of Taylor Code, a subset of literary code (since 18xx, standard elsewhere, alternative in North America) ::: iii. Extended Nemeth Code With
Chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...
Module ::: iv. Extended Nemeth Code With Ancient
Numeration A numeral system (or system of numeration) is a writing system for expressing numbers; that is, a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using digits or other symbols in a consistent manner. The same sequence of symbo ...
Module ::: v. Mathematical
Diagrams A diagram is a symbolic representation of information using visualization techniques. Diagrams have been used since prehistoric times on walls of caves, but became more prevalent during the Enlightenment. Sometimes, the technique uses a three- ...
Module (not actually associated with any particular coding-system) :: d.
Computer Braille Code Computer Braille is an adaptation of braille for precise representation of computer-related materials such as programs, program lines, computer commands, and filenames. Unlike standard 6-dot braille scripts, but like Gardner–Salinas braille codes ...
(since the 1980s, for special characters) ::: i. the basic CBC ::: ii. CBC With
Flowchart A flowchart is a type of diagram that represents a workflow or process. A flowchart can also be defined as a diagrammatic representation of an algorithm, a step-by-step approach to solving a task. The flowchart shows the steps as boxes of ...
Module :: e. Braille Music Code (since 1829, last upgraded/unified
1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...
, used for vocals and
instrumentals A backing track is an audio recording on audiotape, CD or a digital recording medium or a MIDI recording of synthesized instruments, sometimes of purely rhythmic accompaniment, often of a rhythm section or other accompaniment parts that live music ...
—this one explicitly ''not'' to be unified nor eliminated) :: f. dded later
IPA Braille IPA Braille is the modern standard Braille encoding of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as recognized by the International Council on English Braille. A braille version of the IPA was first created by Merrick and Potthoff in 1934, and ...
code (used for
phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
transcriptions—this one did not yet exist in 1991) : 3. if possible, unify the literary-code used across English-speaking countries : 4. where it is not possible to reduce the number of coding systems, reduce conflicts :: a. most especially, rule-conflicts (which make the codes incompatible at a "software" level—in human brains and computer algorithms) :: b. symbol conflicts, for example, the characters "$", "%", "]", and " are all represented differently in the various code systems :: c. sometimes the official coding-systems themselves are not explicitly in conflict, but ambiguity in their rules can lead to accidental conflicts : 5. the overall goal of steps 1 to 4 above is to make acquisition of reading, writing, and teaching skill in the use of braille quicker, easier, and more efficient : 6. this in turn will help reverse the trend of steadily eroding usage of Braille itself (which is being replaced by electronics and/or illiteracy) : 7. besides those practical goals, it is also desired that braille—as a writing system—have the properties required for long-term success: :: a. universal, with no special code-system for particular subject-matter, no special-purpose "modules", and no serious disagreements about how to encode English :: b. coherent, with no internal conflicts, and thus no need for authoritative fiat to "resolve" such conflicts by picking winners and losers :: c. ease of use, with dramatically less need for braille-coding-specific lessons, certifications, workshops, literature, etc. :: d. uniform yet extensible, with symbol-assignment giving an unvarying identity-relationship, and new symbols possible without conflicts or overhauls : 8. philosophically, an additional goal is to upgrade the braille system to be practical for employment in a workplace, not just for reading recreational and religious texts :: a. computer-friendly (braille-production on modern Keyboard (computing), keyboards and braille-consumption via computerized file formats—see also
Braille e-book A braille e-book is a refreshable braille display using electroactive polymers or heated wax rather than mechanical pins to raise braille dots on a display. Though not inherently expensive, due to the small scale of production they have not been s ...
which did not really exist back in 1990) :: b. tech-writing-friendly (straightforward handling of
notations ''Notations'' is a book that was edited and compiled by American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992) with Alison Knowles and first published in 1969 by Something Else Press. The book is made up of a large collection of graphical scores ...
used in
math Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
/
science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
/
medical Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practic ...
/ programming/
engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...
/similar) :: c. precise bidirectional representation (both #8a and #8b can be largely satisfied by a precision
writing system A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable fo ...
…but the existing braille systems as of 1990 were ''not'' fully precise, replacing symbols with words, converting unit-systems, altering punctuation, and so on) : 9. upgrades to existing braille-codes are required, and then these modified codes can be merged into a unified code (preferably singular plus the music-code) Some goals were specially and explicitly called out as key objectives, not all of which are mentioned above: * objective#A = precise bidirectional representation of printed-text (see #8c) * objective#B = maximizing the usefulness of braille's limited formatting mechanisms in systematic fashion (so that readers can quickly and easily locate the information they are seeking) * objective#C = unifying the rule-systems and symbol-assignments for all subject-matters except musical notation, to eliminate 'unlearning' (#9 / #2 / #3) * objective#D = context-independent encoding (symbols must be transcribable in straightforward fashion—without regard to their English meaning) * objective#E = markup or mode-switching ability (to clearly distinguish between information from the printed version, versus transcriber commentary) * objective#F = easy-to-memorize symbol-assignments (to make learning the coding system easier—and also facilitate reading of relatively rare symbols) (see #7c / #5 / #1) * objective#G =
extensible Extensibility is a software engineering and systems design principle that provides for future growth. Extensibility is a measure of the ability to extend a system and the level of effort required to implement the extension. Extensions can be ...
coding-system (with the possibility of introducing new symbols in a non-conflicting and systematic manner) (see #7d) * objective#H =
algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
ic representation and deterministic rule-set (texts are amenable to automatic computerized
translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
from braille to print—and vice versa) (see #8a) * objective#I =
backward compatibility Backward compatibility (sometimes known as backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system, especiall ...
with English Braille Grade 2 (someone reading regular words and sentences will hardly notice any modifications) * objective#J = reverse the steadily declining trend of braille-usage (as a statistical percentage of the blind-community), as soon as possible (see #6) Goals that were specifically ''not'' part of the UEB upgrade process were the ability to handle languages outside the
Roman alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
(cf. the various national variants of ASCII in the
ISO 8859 ISO/IEC 8859 is a joint ISO and IEC series of standards for 8-bit character encodings. The series of standards consists of numbered parts, such as ISO/IEC 8859-1, ISO/IEC 8859-2, etc. There are 15 parts, excluding the abandoned ISO/IEC 8859-12. ...
series versus the modern pan-universal
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
standard, which governs how writing systems are encoded for computerized use).


History of specification and adoption of UEB

Work on UEB formally began in 1991, and preliminary draft standard was published in March 1995 (as UBC), then upgraded several times thereafter. Unified English Braille (UEB) was originally known as Unified Braille Code (UBC), with the English-specific nature being implied, but later the word "English" was formally incorporated into its name—Unified English Braille Code (UEBC)—and still more recently it has come to be called Unified English Braille (UEB). On April 2, 2004, the International Council on English Braille (ICEB) gave the go-ahead for the unification of various English braille codes. This decision was reached following 13 years of analysis, research, and debate. ICEB said that Unified English Braille was sufficiently complete for recognition as an international standard for English braille, which the seven ICEB member-countries could consider for adoption as their national code. South Africa adopted the UEB almost immediately (in May 2004). During the following year, the standard was adopted by Nigeria (February 5, 2005), Australia (May 14, 2005), and New Zealand (November 2005). On April 24, 2010, the Canadian Braille Authority (CBA) voted to adopt UEB, making Canada the fifth nation to adopt UEB officially. On October 21, 2011, the UK Association for Accessible Formats voted to adopt UEB as the preferred code in the UK. On November 2, 2012, the Braille Authority of North America (BANA) became the sixth of the seven member-countries of the ICEB to officially adopt the UEB.


Controversy over mathematics notation in UEB

The major criticism against UEB is that it fails to handle
mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
or computer science as compactly as codes designed to be optimal for those disciplines. Besides requiring more space to represent and more time to read and write, the verbosity of UEB can make learning mathematics more difficult. Nemeth Braille, officially used in the United States since 1952, and as of 2002 the de facto standard for teaching and doing mathematics in braille in the US, was specifically invented to correct the cumbersomeness of doing mathematics in braille. However, although the Nemeth encoding standard was officially adopted by the JUTC of the US and the UK in the 1950s, in practice only the USA switched their mathematical braille to the Nemeth system, whereas the UK continued to use the traditional Henry Martyn Taylor coding (not to be confused with
Hudson Taylor James Hudson Taylor (; 21 May 1832 – 3 June 1905) was a British Baptist Christian missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM, now OMF International). Taylor spent 51 years in China. The society that he began was respons ...
, who was involved with the use of
Moon type The Moon System of Embossed Reading (commonly known as the Moon writing, Moon alphabet, Moon script, Moon type, or Moon code) is a writing system for the blind, using embossed symbols mostly derived from the Latin script (but simplified). It is ...
for the blind in China during the 1800s) for their braille mathematics. Programmers in the United States who write their programming codefiles in braille—as opposed to in ASCII text with use of a screenreader for example—tend to use Nemeth-syntax numerals, whereas programmers in the UK use yet another system (not Taylor-numerals and not literary-numerals). The key difference of Nemeth Braille compared to Taylor (and UEB which uses an upgraded version of the Taylor encoding for math) is that Nemeth uses "down-shifted" numerals from the fifth decade of the Braille alphabet (overwriting various punctuation characters), whereas UEB/Taylor uses the traditional 1800s approach with "up-shifted" numerals from the first decade of the (English) Braille alphabet (overwriting the first ten letters, namely ABCDEFGHIJ). Traditional 1800s braille, and also UEB, require insertion of numeral-prefixes when speaking of numerals, which makes representing some mathematical equations 42% more verbose. As an alternative to UEB, there were proposals in 2001 and 2009, and most recently these were the subject of various technical workshops during 2012. Although UEB adopts some features of Nemeth, the final version of UEB mandates up-shifted numerals, which are the heart of the controversy. According to BANA, which adopted UEB in 2012, the official braille codes for the USA will be UEB and Nemeth Braille (as well as Music Braille for vocals and instrumentals plus IPA Braille for phonetic linguistics), despite the use of contradictory representation of numerals and arithmetical symbols in the UEB and Nemeth encodings. Thus, although UEB has officially been adopted in most English-speaking ICEB member-countries, in the USA (and possibly the UK where UEB is only the "preferred" system) the new encoding is not to be the sole encoding. Another proposed braille-notation for encoding math is GS8/GS6, which was specifically invented in the early 1990s as an attempt to get rid of the "up-shifted" numerals used in UEB—see Gardner–Salinas Braille. GS6 implements "extra-dot" numerals from the fourth decade of the English Braille alphabet (overwriting various two-letter ligatures). GS8 expands the braille-cell from 2×3 dots to 2×4 dots, quadrupling the available codepoints from the traditional 64 up to 256, but in GS8 the numerals are still represented in the same way as in GS6 (albeit with a couple unused dot-positions at the bottom). Attempts to give the numerals their own distinct position in braille are not new: the original 1829 specification by Louis Braille gave the numerals their own distinct symbols, with the modern digraph-based literary-braille approach mentioned as an optional fallback. However, after trying the system out in the classroom, the dashes used in the numerals—as well as several other rows of special characters—were found to be too difficult to distinguish from dot-pairs, and thus the typical digraph-based numerals became the official standard in 1837.


Implementation of UEB in English-speaking countries

As of 2013, with the majority of English-speaking ICEB member-countries having officially adopted UEB, there remain barriers to implementation and deployment. Besides ICEB member-nations, there are also many other countries with blind citizens that teach and use English: India, Hong Kong/China, Pakistan, the Philippines, and so on. Many of these countries use non-UEB math notation, for English-speaking countries specifically, versions of the Nemeth Code were widespread by 1990 (in the United States, Western Samoa, Canada including Quebec, New Zealand, Israel, Greece, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Lebanon) in contrast to the similar-to-UEB-but-not-identical Taylor notation in 1990 (used by the UK, Ireland, Australia, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Jordan, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Singapore, and Zimbabwe). Some countries in the Middle East used Nemeth and Taylor math-notations as of 1990, i.e. Iran and Saudi Arabia. As of 2013, it is unclear whether the English-using blind populations of various ICEB and non-ICEB nations will move to adopt the UEB, and if so, at what rate. Beyond official adoption rates in schools and by individuals, there are other difficulties. The vast majority of existing Braille materials, both printed and electronic, are in non-UEB encodings. Furthermore, other technologies that compete with braille are now ever-more-widely affordable (
screen readers A screen reader is a form of assistive technology (AT) that renders text and image content as speech or braille output. Screen readers are essential to people who are blind, and are useful to people who are visually impaired, illiterate, or ha ...
for electronic-text-to-speech, plus physical-pages-to-electronic-text software combined with high-resolution digital cameras and high-speed document scanners, and the increasing ubiquity of tablets/smartphones/PDAs/PCs). The percentage of blind children who are literate in braille is already declining—and even those who know some system tend not to know UEB, since that system is still very new. Still, as of 2012 many of the original goals for UEB have already been fully or partially accomplished: * A unified literary code across most English-speaking countries (see separate section of this article on the adoption of UEB) * Number of coding-subsystems reduced from five major and one minor ( + music/etc.) down to two major and two minor ( using formal codeswitching + music/ipa), plus the generality of the basic uebLiterary was increased to fully cover parentheses, math-symbols, emails, and websites. * Reasonable level of backward compatibility with the American style of English Braille (more time is required before the exact level of transitional pain can be pinpointed, but studies in Australia and the UK indicate that braille users in the United States will also likely cope quite easily) * Making braille more computer-friendly, especially in terms of translation and backtranslation of the encoding system * Fully extensible encoding system, where new symbols can be added without causing conflicts or requiring coding-overhauls Not all the symbol-duplications were eliminated (there are still at least two representations of the $ symbol for instanceContras
page 12 definition versus page 13 example
and compare wit
page 236
which follows the second style
). Since there are still two major coding-systems for math-notation and other technical or scientific writing (Nemeth as an option in the United States versus the Taylor-style math-notation recently added to uebLiterary that will likely be used in other countries), some rule conflicts remain, and braille users will be required to "unlearn" certain rules when switching. In the long run, whether these accomplishments will translate into broader goals, of reducing community fragmentation among English-speaking braille users, boosting the acquisition speed of reading/writing/teaching skill in the use of braille, and thereby preserving braille's status as a useful writing-system for the blind, as of 2013 remains to be seen.


See also

*
American Braille American Braille was a popular braille alphabet used in the United States before the adoption of standardized English Braille in 1918. It was developed by Joel W. Smith, a blind piano tuning teacher at Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston ...
* Gardner Salinas braille * Nemeth Braille


References


External links


The Rules of Unified English Braille
(2013)

* ttp://www.iceb.org/ International Council on English Braille (ICEB)
National Braille Press has a free booklet about the UEBC (in braille or electronic braille only)




{{Authority control Braille Constructed languages introduced in the 1990s 1991 introductions