>From Abraham Nemeth
To: subscribers to this list
Subject3 an unexpected message
Date: May 9, 1996
The attached message was in my e-mail earlier this week. I never heard of
David Schleppenbach nor of his work at ,purdue before receiving his
message. The message speaks for itself3
==========
From engage@sage.cc.purdue.edu
Mon May 6 12:55 edt 1996
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: anemeth@ece.eng.wayne.edu
Subject: Nemeth Braille Code
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Dear Dr. Nemeth,
It is with great pleasure that I finally get a chance to contact you. I am
the director of the VISIONS Lab at Purdue University, which is a research
laboratory into adaptive technologies for visually impaired college
students. VISIONS stands for Visually Impaired Students Initiative ON
Science. In a short time, our lab has grown from one room to a world-class
center for developing new technologies and techniques for visually impaired
students of science.
We are very fond of and very supportive of the Nemeth code. As a sighted
mathematician and chemist myself, I am constantly amazed by the
flexibility, extensibility, and comprehensiveness of the Nemeth Braille
code for mathematics. We use it daily when providing educational materials
for our blind students of Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, Biology, and
other fields. Because we felt Nemeth code to be so essential to
understanding complex math and science coursework, my colleague Dr. Fred
Lytle and I developed a computer program to automatically translate
mathematical and scientific equations into Nemeth Braille. We believe our
program to be the first of its kind in that it allows sighted secretaries
in our Math department to type print equations in the WordPerfect for
Windows equation editor, for subsequent translation into Braille. The
print equations can be given to sighted students, and then those same
equations can be run through our translator and sent to a Braille embosser,
with the result being properly formatted Nemeth Braille. Our translator is
also compatible with the Duxbury Braille translator, and we are working
with Joe Sullivan to provide our Nemeth translator as an add-on to the
existing Duxbury Braille translator. We are also working on version 2 of
our program, which will allow voice output as well as Braille output of
equations. Our program is available for free on our WWW site, and I would
be happy to mail you both print and Braille copies for your evaluation.
We are also working on writing a user-friendly guide to creating
mathematical Braille via the Nemeth code by writing two books: one for the
sighted transcriptionist, and one for the blind reader. We hope to finish
these books this summer, and feel that we have become quite well-versed in
the Nemeth code in the process.
The reason for my letter is my concern over the current political debate
surrounding the Unified Braille Code. I have been corresponding with Joe
Sullivan and John Gardner at Oregon State University, as well as some
others, and been learning about the various types of Braille. I certainly
agree that the current systems of Braille are somewhat cumbersome. In
addition, it is true that Nemeth code can be challenging to learn.
However, I feel that the current movement towards UBC is somewhat askew.
My primary concern is in the replacement of Nemeth code with GS, DotsPlus,
or some other Braille standard. We really believe that the Nemeth code is
an amazingly superior form of information encoding, and find it difficult
to imagine any possible improvements. As we have worked with the code in
providing materials, writing our program, and writing our books, we have
yet to find any major flaws in the Nemeth code, and have found very few
minor ones to "nitpick". We feel that the adoption of a non-Nemeth Braille
standard for mathematics would be a tremendous blow not only to our
students, who have become dependent on the ability of our lab to crank out
Nemeth Braille rapidly with our program, but also to educators of the
blind, who must have a stable basis from which to teach. We plan to set up
a curriculum at Purdue for itinerant teachers of the blind, to educate them
on what we want blind college students coming in to Purdue to know. We
also are working on some statistical comparisons of Nemeth to other coding
systems, and while the results are preliminary, we have found that Nemeth
is the most superior in terms of information density compared to GS, UBC,
and DotsPlus. It seems to me that the argument against Nemeth has been for
two main reasons: 1. that it is difficult to learn, and 2. that it takes
forever to transcribe by hand. I believe that these are ridiculous
arguments. First, our program allows instant computerized transcription,
invalidating argument 2. Second, sighted students must learn a difficult
system of mathematical notation as well, and with the help of our book and
program, we feel that learning Nemeth will not be as difficult as it once
was. We have some blind test subjects lined up for the fall. Another
argument is that there are too many forms of Braille, and we need one code
to express every concept. This is an interesting argument, but consider
that sighted people use many different types of code for communication, and
one would certainly not be able to complete a math or science degree
without knowledge of these codes. Our main contention is that for a
college level science degree, given the current state of Braille, one must
know Nemeth to succeed.
I don't want to give you the impression that we are inflexible. We could
be wrong. If someone can demonstrate to us that they can translate a page
of a calculus text as fast as we can, and in a code that blind students can
understand and really learn from, then we'll switch. I just want you to
know that we really support the Nemeth code, and would like to work with
you to emphasize it to grade and high-school students, so they can be ready
for college. One of the greatest advantages to learning Nemeth is that it
trains your mind for a science career, by teaching grouping skills, pattern
recognition, and multi-level thought patterns. By the way, we use the 1972
revision of the Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics as our primary
resource, as well as the later addendum on ancient numeration systems. We
are interested in finding more sources on the code, especially the book on
formatting of textbooks that is mentioned several times in your book. If
you have any additional information, please send it to us. We have also
developed some new conventions, not mentioned in the Nemeth book and in the
spirit of the Nemeth code, for dealing with Chemistry, which we have
developed a comprehensive program for.
I encourage you to peruse our Web site, and to read the attached paper,
which discusses our work in more detail. We have a very large budget and
are planning great things for the field of science education for the
visually impaired, but want to get started on the right footing by using
the best Braille code available. I would dearly love to talk with you, and
would be happy to pay for the call. Please contact me via phone, fax,
e-mail, or snail mail at your earliest convenience. We would also be very
happy to pay for you to come to Purdue and give a seminar and take a tour
of our facilities. We have invited Dr. Gardner and he will be coming to
Purdue on Tuesday.
Regards, --
David Schleppenbach
Director, VISIONS Lab
Purdue University Department of Chemistry
393 BRWN box # 725
West Lafayette, IN 47907
phone: (317) 496-2856
fax: (317) 494-0239
email: engage@sage.cc.purdue.edu
WWW: http://www.chem.purdue.edu/facilities/sightlab/index.html
.
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