Translate shows you what a braille user is writing, as they write it.
The child brailles on the left; the same words appear as ordinary print on the right.
Who it is for
Anyone who needs to follow braille but doesn't read it fluently -
sighted teachers, teaching assistants, parents, SEN staff, and
classmates. You don't need to know braille: you can see what the child is typing,
and check it with them.
It is equally usable by a braille reader: both panels work with a screen reader,
and the braille panel sends real braille cells to a braille display.
How the child types
Braille is entered the way a Perkins brailler works - press the dots for a
letter together, like a chord, then release.
- Space finishes a word - the print appears then.
- Enter starts a new line. Backspace deletes a cell
and says which one went.
- Arrow keys, Home and End move around the braille. You can go back
into anything already written and change it; the print keeps up.
- Ctrl+Shift+L reads the line the caret is on. Press it
twice for a closer listen - words are spelt out cell by cell,
maths is said again more fully (see Reading aloud).
A word only appears in print once it is finished, so half-written
words don't flash up and change.
The braille panel is a real text box, not a picture of one. That is
what lets a braille display work with it properly - the cursor dots
show where you are, panning follows you, and the display's routing keys move the
caret. If you use a screen reader, its own commands work here too: JAWS and NVDA
read the current line with Insert+↑, in their own voice and
verbosity.
Six-key entry can be turned off
Under ⚙ Settings, six-key input can be switched off.
The S D F J K L keys then type normally instead of forming braille chords, which
suits anyone using a braille display's own keyboard, or pasting braille in.
Seeing which braille made which letters
Click any word in either panel. It is highlighted in both, and the bar along the
bottom explains it - how many cells, whether a contraction was used,
and what each cell stands for. Matching colours link each braille cell to the letters
it produced, e.g. ⠐⠺ = “work”.
This works inside equations too: clicking a specific mathematical symbol in either the Braille or Math pane will precisely highlight that exact symbol in both panes. It will also speak the entire equation aloud for context.
Maths
Choose which maths code you use - Nemeth or UEB maths
- once, under ⚙ Settings. Then Ctrl+M (or
Ctrl+I) switches between ordinary text and that code, and says which
you are in. The right-hand panel lays the maths out properly: real fractions, powers,
roots, matrices, even number lines drawn as pictures. Clicking an expression
explains the maths signs used.
Translate's advanced math engine completely supports the Nemeth standard—from basic algebra to complex calculus, chemistry bonds, and 2D spatial layouts. The system is designed around graceful failure: if a child enters an ambiguous or partially correct braille cell, it does not crash or confidently guess a wrong answer. Instead, it marks exactly which cell defeated it, allowing a teacher to instantly point out the gap and help the student correct it.
After Load (or Clear), choosing a mode applies to the
whole document - so you can load a saved file and then pick how to read it.
Once you start typing, modes stick to lines again.
When you load a file, Translate also looks at the whole document:
if every line is clearly UEB maths (or clearly text) the boxes are set for you,
with a spoken and written note saying so - one click undoes it. If the file is
mixed or unclear, nothing is changed. Files saved here mark their Nemeth lines
with the switch indicators, so those describe themselves - and a file whose
lines are all switched ticks the Nemeth box for you.
Maths starts where the caret is, not at the start of the line.
Put the caret where the sum belongs, press Ctrl+M, and a maths
group opens with the caret inside it. Write the expression, press
Ctrl+M again and you step out to the right of it. The words you had
already written stay words - a sentence can carry a sum in the middle of it.
In Nemeth the switch indicators are written into the
braille, because that is how Nemeth marks itself on paper and a reader needs to see
them. In UEB nothing is written at all: UEB maths is UEB,
so there is no switch sign to write, and inventing one would put cells in the
braille that the child never typed. The run is remembered instead, and an eBraille
file keeps that memory.
The two maths codes are different, so only one can be on at a time.
Nemeth cannot be detected from the cells alone (its digits are the same cells as
ordinary punctuation), which is why you choose it - except when the braille
carries the explicit switch, which is unambiguous.
What you see, and how it is set
- Which braille code. Settings lists the codes Translate can read,
with your own language's first. Six travel with the app and work offline; the
rest are fetched the first time you choose them.
- Dots or ASCII. The braille panel normally draws real braille
cells. Switch on show ASCII braille and it shows the BRF letters
instead - the spelling a notetaker or embosser file uses - in a plain typeface so
they read as letters, not as dots.
- Forty cells to a line. The panel sizes its braille so a line
holds the forty cells a page does. If the window is too narrow for that to stay
readable, the two panels stack one above the other to win back the width rather
than shrink the braille further.
The checks - what the coloured notes mean
Translate never guesses silently. Under a maths line you may see:
- A yellow warning - part of the line could not be read.
The unread cells are marked, and where one added or removed cell would fix it,
a “may have been meant as…” suggestion appears.
- “FYI - not an error: this braille can mean more than one
thing” - the braille legitimately has two readings (the codes
themselves say so). Both are shown; you and the child decide which was
meant.
- “Unverified - worth checking with the child” - the line read
cleanly, but translating the maths back into braille doesn’t reproduce what
was typed. Usually it is just an alternative braille spelling; occasionally
it is a real slip, which is why it earns a glance.
No note at all means the reading was verified: the maths shown
translates back to exactly the braille the child typed.
“Display fault on line …” is different from all of
these and should never appear. It means the braille panel has drawn something other
than what the document holds, and it is reported rather than hidden because braille
you did not write is the one thing this app must never show you quietly. If you see
it, the panel cannot be trusted for that line - please report it.
Reading aloud
Under ⚙ Settings you can pick a voice and choose what is spoken:
each letter as it is written, each finished word,
and each finished sentence. If several are on, the later one speaks
and the earlier is dropped, so nothing overlaps. Touching any braille key stops the
speech.
Ctrl+Shift+L reads the current line at any time. Press it
twice for a second, closer listen - and what that second listen
gives you depends on the kind of line, because the useful answer is different:
- A line of words is spelt out, cell by cell -
“dots 2 3 4 6, space, c, a, t”. A cell with no letter of its own, such as a
contraction, is named by its dots. This is the reading that answers “which cells
did I actually write?”.
- A line of maths is said again, more fully.
Normally an equation is read in the shortest way that stays unambiguous -
“square root, 9” - which is what a child re-reading their own work wants.
The second press asks for the fuller wording - “the square root of 9” - naming
every structure instead of leaning on pauses. Spelling a fraction cell by cell
would tell a child almost nothing, which is why maths does not do that.
For teachers: the two readings come from the same engine and the same
maths - only the wording differs. If the two disagree about what the maths IS,
that is worth investigating, not a quirk of the setting.
The voice list shows voices in the language you are working in, with the rest a click
away. Maths is spoken by MathCAT, the same engine that produces the
braille, so an equation is read as a sentence rather than a list of signs - in
English, Spanish, French and ten more languages.
Saving
Save writes an eBraille file
(.ebrl) - the DAISY standard for braille documents. It keeps things a
BRF cannot: which lines are text and which are maths, and which code they were
written in, so a saved page opens back exactly as you left it.
Export offers two, because the two sides of the app go to
different people:
- Export braille (BRF) - Braille Ready Format, what embossers and
braille notetakers read. BRF has no way to record which lines were maths, so that
memory is the price of the wider compatibility.
- Export print (Word) - the right-hand panel as a
.docx, for a teacher who has to read and mark it. The maths is
written as real Word equations, not pictures of them: they can be
edited, and a screen reader reads them as maths. Anything the app could not read
is left out rather than guessed at, so what arrives is only what was understood.
Load opens either, deciding from the file itself rather than its
name. Clear empties both panels after asking. Translate keeps
working with no internet connection.
Credits and licences
Typefaces: the interface is set in Inter
(SIL Open Font License 1.1, © The Inter Project Authors); the braille pane uses
APH Braille Shadows, by permission of the American Printing House
for the Blind. Both travel with the app rather than being fetched from anywhere, so
nothing about your use of it is reported to a third party and it looks the same with
no internet connection.
Braille translation by liblouis (LGPL-2.1-or-later).
Maths layout by Temml (MIT) and MathCAT
(MIT, © Neil Soiffer / DAISY)..
© Sensory App House Ltd.
Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
