Monday, November 6, 2006

Braille-enabled visiting cards ⠠⠃⠗⠁⠊⠇⠇⠑⠤⠑⠝⠁⠃⠇⠑⠙ ⠧⠊⠎⠊⠞⠊⠝⠛ ⠉⠁⠗⠙⠎

Peter Griffin wrote in about an organisation that helps visually impaired kids raise money by giving them work braille-embossing visiting cards. I visited the Wikipedia page on Braille last night and was fascinated to learn that Braille is a six digit (2x3) binary-encoding scheme that originates from military use. The system is designed around how fingers feel rather than being merely embossed versions of latin characters.

I’d like my cards braille-enabled, but have some questions. Peter, can you pass these on? Posting these in public because others may be curious too.

  • Do the kids do the embossing themselves, or are they just the beneficiaries? The Outlook article doesn’t say.
  • How do they mark the braille dots? By hand, one card at a time? If so, I do think these kids could benefit from a technology upgrade that lets them be more productive. Such an upgrade may not make sense when there isn’t much work, but I hope it’s in the plan.
  • What kind of paper should the cards be printed on, to make braille impressions that last? Since I’ll be carrying stacks of cards around, it would be nice to not have them smother the dots off each other.
  • The logistics. How do we do this? Do I get my cards done the regular way and then send them for braille-embossing? To what address do I mail them? Can I instead email a design and expect to receive printed and embossed cards in my mail a week later?

(Note: In the braille version of the title above, I’ve used regular spaces instead of the braille space, Unicode character 2800 “⠀”, because my browser treats the braille space as non-breaking and messes up the page’s formatting.)

  1. 1:15 PM
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    The Answers to your questions — Nov 6, 2006 2:24:02 PM — # ↩

    The Answers to your questions

    Hi!

    Thanks for spreading awareness about this.. :-)
    Am putting down the answers below:

    Do the kids do the embossing themselves, or are they just the beneficiaries? The Outlook article doesn’t say.

    • The kids are trained to do the embossing themselves.

    How do they mark the braille dots? By hand, one card at a time? If so, I do think these kids could benefit from a technology upgrade that lets them be more productive. Such an upgrade may not make sense when there isn’t much work, but I hope it’s in the plan.

    • It takes only about 20-30 minutes for a child to braille enable a set of 100 cards. Which means , working 8 hours a day at 50% capacity utilisation, a child can complete upto 800 -1000 cards a day. Mechanisation of a process that already takes so little time, is still being considered.

    What kind of paper should the cards be printed on, to make braille impressions that last? Since I’ll be carrying stacks of cards around, it would be nice to not have them smother the dots off each other.

    • Your normal card can be braille enabled easily. The only kind of paper where we have not been able to do braille enabling is the thin paper with a plastic coating. Cards on all other kinds of paper - handmade paper, normal cardboard paper, even thin paper which is not plastic coated, can be braille enabled as they are. The dots do not usually smother each other. (I also carry my cards in a rather unsightly heap in my purse.. they remain :-) )

    The logistics. How do we do this? Do I get my cards done the regular way and then send them for braille-embossing? To what address do I mail them? Can I instead email a design and expect to receive printed and embossed cards in my mail a week later? You can do either of the 2 things. We prefer doing it on pre printed cards within India at least. You can send them to either Mumbai or Bangalore, depending on which is geographically closer to you. Will send you the address from Esha_braille@yahoo.com

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