Unified English Braille (UEB) is designed to be a common English braille code, and has been adopted in many countries.
BANA (Braille Authority of North America) has voted to implement UEB literary code, while retaining Nemeth for mathematics and technical subjects.
UKAAF (U. K. Association for Accessible Formats) had also voted to implement UEB.
UEB is currently being implemented in the UK, and a detailed timetable may be obtained from http://www.ukaaf.org/braille/ueb.
(NOTE: The Braille Authority of the UK (BAUK) is now part of UKAAF.)
This version of DBT includes the latest agreed UEB Rules, and so you may do your Braille translation using UEB, or one of the older Braille codes, according to your needs.
It should be noted that Unified English Braille specifically does NOT cover braille formatting. For this reason you will find a number of Templates in DBT 11.3 and later, which define any special local requirements.
Duxbury Systems, Inc. are happy to discuss the inclusion of Localized Formatting Templates in the standard release. However we would suggest you contact us at languages@duxsys.com as early as possible in the process.
Please note that you cannot always reliably convert a translated English braille file back to text. However, if you require a UEB version of an existing document (*.dxp) before it has been translated, you can change the braille table in-use to Unified English Braille, and then translate.
We strongly advise that you try to keep copies of all formats of files where a UEB version may be required at a later date. That includes the original file(s) you received before you started to convert them into braille.
DBT 11.3 has a feature designed to help you update older braille formatted files into UEB braille. Here is a hypothetical situation. You once created braille for a document. Now someone wants a copy of that in UEB braille. But you lost the DBT file (please, always save your DBT files), but you do have a braille formatted file. So the question becomes, "Would Duxbury please solve this problem caused by my losing the Duxbury file?" This new feature is designed to handle this situation. Remember: English language only, no math in the files you can process.
Instructions for Importing the Braille Formatted File for this Feature.
• Launch DBT
• Press Control-O to open a file. Select a braille formatted file (brf file).
• During the import process, there is a screen that asks the DBT Template and the Import Filter. Select as specified:
• Select the English (UEB) - BANA or the English (UEB) - UK formatting DBT Template
• The default Import Filter is Formatted Braille. The Import Filter just below this is Formatted Pre-UEB to Print. Move the cursor down to select Formatted Pre-UEB to Print.
• After file import, you will have an inkprint file (*.dxp) which has some errors (formatting and translation). Locate the errors and fix them.
• The translation table for your file is UEB braille. When you translate to braille, you should have well-formatted UEB braille.