[Athen] Is SimBraille in Word documents compatible with refreshable braille displays?

[Michael Cantino via athen-list]

I agree with Deborah. Give the student a file, and let them determine how
well it will work.

That said, I don't see how it could work outside of a BRF file. I tested it
with my braille display, and it did not provide me with the correct braille
transcription. Here's a quick explanation of where this is breaking down.

   - I typed the text "This is plain text with simbraille." into a Word
   document. If I change this font to simbraille, you won't be able to tell
   the difference on the braille display because only the font is changing.
   Visually, the braille will start to look incorrect (like dots 4-6 for a
   period instead of dots 2-5-6)
   - This really starts to break down once you prepare the simbraille as a
   correct braille transcription. Using the same sample text as before, the
   sentence would look like this: ",? is pla9 text ) simbrl4"
      - The screen reader is going to translate this text into either
      contracted or uncontracted braille because it still thinks it's
looking at
      print. It doesn't know that it's already being provided with a braille
      translation.
      - The capital indicator will be translated as a comma. The th-
      contraction (represented by the question mark) will be translated as a
      question mark. The -in contraction (represented by a 9) will be
translated
      as a 9, and so on.
   - Even if you write out the text as if it's uncontracted simbraille and
   you set your screen reader settings to translate into uncontracted braille,
   you're still going to have issues. Capitalization indicators, punctuation,
   and other symbols will not be interpreted correctly. Something like a
   number indicator, which is the # symbol in simbraille, will be translated
   as the 2-cell braille equivalent (_#) in uncontracted or contracted braille.

Basically, you can't trick the display into not translating the print text.
The best you could do is give it nice, clean print text to translate, but
you'll still run into issues with symbols that are unique to braille, like
the transcriber note indicator.

Good luck! If someone else cracks this, I would be very interested to know.

Michael Cantino (he/him)
BVIS Technology Specialist
Northwest Regional Education Service District
(503)614-1339
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