World Braille Day

  Introduction  In common with sighted people, the blind during the last fifty years have enjoyed a continuously increasing range of benefits which have come from the rapid and often bewildering advances in scientific knowledge that have been made in less than a normal life-time. Not the least of these benefits is the increasing volume and variety of braille literature which is becoming available through the development and increasing use of automated methods of production. But while it is highly desirable that this search for yet more efficient ways or producing p books should continue, it is surely no less desirable ( that thought should be given to devising ways of making braille a more satisfying and a more easily accessible ( reading medium. Studies already completed or now under way emphasise the need for a critical review of current methods of teaching braille reading and of the rationale for them. The purpose of this short paper is to describe briefly the research that...

  One of the most important problems braille printing houses and libraries have to face today is, beyond any doubt, the accurate transfer from the ink print to the braille book, especially with regard to the transcription of textbooks for the different subjects of the various educational levels: primary, secondary, vocational and university education without neglecting, of course, the difficulties which one encounters in other books, which while not belonging to any planned instruction, on account of their specific contents, also present certain difficulties. The book editing service, or if this does not exist, the transcribers in printing houses and libraries are the ones who first have to cope with the transcription problems the ink print book present, so that the braille book provides the blind student or reader with the same scientific or cultural information which is contained in the normal one. The following two principles have to be borne in mind: (a) That the blind have to ...

  Scientific and technical progress is correctly refer red to as one of the most important social phenomena of the present time. It has been instrumental in the intro duction of unprecedented changes in all fields of human endeavour. Its action is increasingly being extended to the solution of a whole series of matters which concern blind people all over the world. However, and this is true in any field of activity, the scientific and technical progress becomes a powerful creative force only if social conditions are favourable. Its achievements depend to a large extent on the economic power of society as well as on political and other institutions. ( The problems of the blind are deeply social and this is why the role of scientific and technical progress 1 depends entirely on the social policy of a given community, RP* HI rIt is very well known that in the USSR, in the countries of socialist cooperation and in the developed P countries of Europe and Asia great achievements have bee...

  In the discussion so far today, we have concentrated on the capability of the Center to attend to the needs of persons in the learning environment. We have concentrated on the ways in which we can make information transparent to persons with impaired or no visual input. But the Center's tasks include an even larger purview, and I should like to touch upon these in my remarks. First, we are undertaking a national sample survey of the braille and large print reading public, in collaboration with the American Foundation for the Blind. The results will document the areas in which the current system of provision of braille and large print product is ill served, in quantity, variety, and depth of material. In fact, some of the operating goals and priorities of the Center will be informed, in part, by our findings. Naturally, we also intend the scholarly publication of what we discover. Second, there are at least three areas in which appli cation of computer techniques can be made which...

  Introduction  The Nederlandsche Blindenbibliotheek (Dutch Library for the Blind) has been lending books to the blind since 1895. We started off with braille books only. In 1958 talking books on open-reel tapes were introduced and the number of readers increased rapidly. Nowadays we mainly lend talking books on compact cassettes. The talking book on compact cassette is by far the easiest to use and especially many elderly people benefitted from it. Since we introduced the compact cassette in 1972 the lending figures raised from 0.6 million to 2.2 million in 1978. Evidently this rapid growth imposed great changes on our library. In the early days a team of a few people registered the books in the catalogue, lent them to the blind and put them back on the shelves when they were returned. At the moment three departments are in charge of all this: The catalogue department registers books in the catalogue and selects books to be added to our collection. The lending department sele...