Hi,
On Thursday I proposed a new table implementing extended U.S. English 8-dot
computer braille [1]. The file is en-us-comp8-ext.utb.
I would like to request feedback on this table. Especially from users of
Windows screen readers that already have a rich 8-dot table, but of course any
feedback would be appreciated. Below are some more details.
The primary motivation for this table is the fact that en-us-comp8.ctb doesn’t
support special characters [2]. In The Netherlands there is no 8-dot table, so
people either use the German or the U.S. table in their screen readers and
braille displays. In most cases, these U.S. tables will also cover accented
letters and special symbols, even if they are not strictly part of the English
alphabet. JAWS probably has the most extensive coverage. NVDA on the other hand
uses en-us-comp8.ctb and suffers from many missing characters.
In designing the table I mostly used definitions that at least two major screen
reader products agreed on. If that didn’t help I tried to come up with a
sensible dot pattern myself. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any
formal specifications, so decisions are based on the files that ship with
screen readers today. Furthermore, I haven’t included all products, e.g.
VoiceOver and System Access. More detailed documentation can be found inline in
the en-us-comp8-ext.utb file.
A consequence of my approach is that the proposed table is not 100% compatible
with any single product. One example where I chose a completely different dot
pattern is the not-sign (¬). Again, these decisions are documented in the table
file.
The table has been tested by a few people for 6 weeks. However, I am sure that
additions or modifications can be suggested to make it work better. For
example, there are no definitions for arrows (→) even though they are quite
common on the web.
Here are some questions I have been asking myself:
* Does this table work for you?
* Is the table complete enough to function well on Windows and the web?
* Does the language code en-US even make sense here?
* Could this table replace en-us-comp8.ctb? This would make things much
less confusing to users, but as I said this new table does not follow official
specs.
* Are there any official specs that I overlooked? BRLTTY has some
excellent documentation, but those dot patterns aren’t very similar to what
Windows screen readers use.
* … And so on. Please shoot at this proposal so I can make it better
before liblouis 3.1 happens.
Thanks,
Davy
Ref:
1. https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/pull/261
2. https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/537
