The timely production of quality braille greatly enhances blind people's access to educational, work place, and other activities. The current level of production of braille does not meet the need, particularly in the areas of mathematics and science at all levels, beginning with early elementary grades. The increasing existence of written material in machine readable form and the availability of braille printers provide an opportunity to greatly automate and increase the production of braille. The research will develop prototype software which simplifies the production of both mathematical and non- mathematical braille. It will require creating and integrating software tools for translating print to its braille equivalent; properly showing format information in braille; and making use of text files which were prepared for other purposes. Results of this research and prototype development will lead to implementation and distribution of flexible, easy-to-use braille translation implementation software working on several microcomputers. Without any knowledge of the braille rules, the software user will be able to produce quality braille, either by typing in text for that purpose or by using existing computer files from other software. Availability of braille translation software will provide blind persons with more comprehensive access to the flood of readily available information accessible to the sighted community and do so in a more useful time frame.
