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Braille + Hebrew?
Dear LJ Brain Trust,
A member of our minyan has a degenerative vision problem and can no longer use even a very-large-print prayer book. (She was absent for a while and returned this week with a guide dog.) She realized that she didn't know as many of the prayers by heart as she thought she did, so I'm spending some time with her to teach her by ear and we'll scare up some recordings for her, but memorization isn't really the ideal solution. Sure, people can and do memorize the core, common prayers, but it's hard to memorize everything, and sometimes there are seasonal changes, so you really want to be able to read the prayer book.
I once saw somebody who used a Braille prayer book, but at the time I didn't ask him how that worked and he's since passed away. Braille is, as I understand it, a letter-by-letter notation system with an extra layer (called "condensed", I've heard) where common words have their own symbols instead of being spelled out. (Like American Sign Language, except I have the impression that the balance between spelled-out and condensed is different. I may be wrong about that.) But -- all of that kind of assumes a particular alphabet, right? So how would Hebrew be rendered in Braille -- do they transliterate it and then Braille-encode that, or does the reader have to learn a different Braille language to match the different alphabet, or what?
I'd like to be able to help her get a prayer book she can read. I don't think she's ready to learn a second Braille language (she's still working on the first).
And a related question: she has an iPad; are there Braille peripherals for that like (I understand) there are for desktop computers? Is "digital copy of the book + iPad + peripheral" a practical alternative to the massive paper tome? (She would use technology on Shabbat for that purpose.)
A member of our minyan has a degenerative vision problem and can no longer use even a very-large-print prayer book. (She was absent for a while and returned this week with a guide dog.) She realized that she didn't know as many of the prayers by heart as she thought she did, so I'm spending some time with her to teach her by ear and we'll scare up some recordings for her, but memorization isn't really the ideal solution. Sure, people can and do memorize the core, common prayers, but it's hard to memorize everything, and sometimes there are seasonal changes, so you really want to be able to read the prayer book.
I once saw somebody who used a Braille prayer book, but at the time I didn't ask him how that worked and he's since passed away. Braille is, as I understand it, a letter-by-letter notation system with an extra layer (called "condensed", I've heard) where common words have their own symbols instead of being spelled out. (Like American Sign Language, except I have the impression that the balance between spelled-out and condensed is different. I may be wrong about that.) But -- all of that kind of assumes a particular alphabet, right? So how would Hebrew be rendered in Braille -- do they transliterate it and then Braille-encode that, or does the reader have to learn a different Braille language to match the different alphabet, or what?
I'd like to be able to help her get a prayer book she can read. I don't think she's ready to learn a second Braille language (she's still working on the first).
And a related question: she has an iPad; are there Braille peripherals for that like (I understand) there are for desktop computers? Is "digital copy of the book + iPad + peripheral" a practical alternative to the massive paper tome? (She would use technology on Shabbat for that purpose.)
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https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shabbos-clock/id302172998?mt=8
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And thanks for that link; I'll pass it on.
Oh, for that matter, is VoiceOver (which she mentioned using) Hebrew-compatible? Is having her iPad read to her a feasible way for her to work on memorizing the parts she wants to memorize?
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That said, while she will need to learn another code, this link:
http://www.jbilibrary.org/BrailleLibrary/
has books that have been put into Hebrew Braille. They can be embossed with a Braille printer or loaded onto the device and read with a refreshable Braille display.
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If it's like Japanese, then for general purposes they encode the native alphabet for the language rather than encoding transliterations.
Though, I'm guessing that regular print prayerbooks with transliterations along with (/instead of) hebrew letters must exist? You could try to find a braille version of one of those, perhaps.
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There are braille and audio Machzors, this link ought to help. It's old but I don't think dead.
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If you need a contact there, for anything special, I'm friends w/ a special projects person there, and also one of their advisory board members.
Contact Info For JBI
Arlene Arfe at the Jewish Braille Institute
800-433-1531
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I also learned that all Braille is read left to right; you don't have the immediate clue (from the character set) that this language is read differently, so you have to start reading the Braille to know what you're dealing with anyway. So, since you're going to start from the left...
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For books that are still under copyright, what has to happen with the publisher to make a Braille edition legally available? (Would we need to get the publisher to authorize it? Request it? (How) do they get paid for copies that are distributed -- or do they tend to waive that as a goodwill handicap-accommodation gesture?)
Re: Contact Info For JBI
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I know that one (SF) publisher will give books to blind folks, but that's a small sample of 1.
No clue how it works otherwise.
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Now, I have heard that there's some loophole. As long as the text is being put in a specialized format, they don't have to get permission to do it. That's very basic, and I am sure I am missing huge details, but that's how Bookshare is able to give us books, as well. (www.bookshare.org)
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(Anonymous) 2014-09-10 02:54 am (UTC)(link)I know that they can also put them on audio books, and books for the blind use a different, special format for exactly this reason...
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And if you get audio books, they are on a different type of tape & player for the same reason.
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Hebrew Braille under IOS8.0.2