However, many newly blinded adults find uncontracted braille useful for labeling personal or kitchen items when they are first learning braille. The standard system used for reproducing most textbooks and publications is known as contracted braille.
In this system cells are used individually or in combination with others to form a variety of contractions or whole words. For example, in uncontracted braille the phrase you like him requires twelve cell spaces. It would look like this:. If written in contracted braille, this same phrase would take only six cell spaces to write.
This is because the letters y and l are also used for the whole words you and like respectively. Likewise, the word him is formed by combining the letters h and m.
There are different letter contractions used in contracted braille including 75 shortform words like "him" shown above, which are simple abbreviations. These "short cuts" are used to reduce the volume of paper needed for reproducing books in braille and to make the reading process easier.
Most children learn contracted braille from kindergarten on, and contracted braille is considered the standard in the United States, used on signs in public places and in general reading material. Just as printed matter can be produced with a paper and pencil, typewriter, or printer, braille can also be written in several ways. The braille equivalent of paper and pencil is the slate and stylus. This consists of a slate or template with evenly spaced depressions for the dots of braille cells, and a stylus for creating the individual braille dots.
With paper placed in the slate, tactile dots are made by pushing the pointed end of the stylus into the paper over the depressions. The paper bulges on its reverse side forming dots. Because of they are inexpensive and portable, the slate and stylus are especially helpful for carrying to jot quick notes and for labeling such things as file folders.
By using the braille alphabet , people who are blind can review and study the written word. They can also become aware of different written conventions such as spelling, punctuation, paragraphing and footnotes. Most importantly, braille gives blind individuals access to a wide range of reading materials including recreational and educational reading, financial statements and restaurant menus.
Equally important are contracts, regulations, insurance policies, directories, and cookbooks that are all part of daily adult life. Through braille, people who are blind can also pursue hobbies and cultural enrichment with materials such as music scores, hymnals, playing cards, and board games.
Various other methods had been attempted over the years to enable reading for the blind. However, many of them were raised versions of print letters. It is generally accepted that the braille system has succeeded because it is based on a rational sequence of signs devised for the fingertips, rather than imitating signs devised for the eyes. The history of braille goes all the way back to the early s. As a military veteran, Barbier saw several soldiers killed because they used lamps after dark to read combat messages.
As a result of the light shining from the lamps, enemy combatants knew where the French soldiers were and inevitably led to the loss of many men. Characters are represented by an arrangement of raised dots. Each braille character or cell is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle comprising of two columns of three dots.
A dot may be raised at any of the six positions to form many combinations. Counting the space in which no dots are raised, there are sixty four such combinations. For reference purposes, a particular combination may be described by naming the positions where dots are raised, the positions being universally numbered 1 through 3 from top to bottom on the left and 4 through 6 from top to bottom on the right for example, dots would represent a cell with three dots raised, at the tip and bottom in the left column and on the top right of the right column.
Braille characters are three dimensional tactile bumps on a medium such as paper or board. In order for these bumps to be represented, viewed, checked and controlled on digital artwork the designer places appropriately sized and spaced filled circles on the artwork layout.
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