Steven Potter
Board president Patricia Herrling, left, and vice president Constance Risjord hold the products of the transcription service’s work.
When Charles Biebl wants to read a new nonfiction novel or page through a cookbook to find just the right recipe, he makes a call to a small and unique l ibrary across the country.
He inquires about the library’s offerings, makes his selection and then waits about a week until a large package containing his new book arrives.
As a blind man, Biebl gets most of his reading materials this way, from the Madison-based Braille Library & Transcription Service Inc. He uses BLTS because he doesn’t have many other options: As the number of Braille readers decreases over time, so do the number of transcribed reading materials and lending libraries that have them.
“I get Braille books wherever I can find them but, unfortunately, that’s not many places these days,” says Biebl, who lives in Eldersburg, Maryland. “Braille [production] is going away, it’s decreasing. It’s very sad.”
Biebl, who lost his sight as an infant due to complications from a premature birth, uses technology and text-to-audio programs for some things but notes that “listening to a book is not reading.” When reading Braille, his comprehension is better and he can also go back and re-read parts easily. He also appreciates the touch of the raised points on the page. “I like the Braille under my fingers,” Biebl says. “It feels good, especially when it’s nice and crisp.”
He’s just one of almost 200 active library members in the U.S. and Canada who uses BLTS’ services each year. Created in 1971, the nonprofit houses more than 2,000 novels, cookbooks, nonfiction works, textbooks and children’s stories. Many of its kids’ books are print-braille hybrids so sighted adults can read to children who follow along by running their fingers across Braille stickers on the pages.
BLTS headquarters, on Madison’s west side just south of the Beltline, looks much like any other library except a bit smaller. A few rows of the transcribed-and-bound books are numbered sequentially in the order they were added to the collection. A couple of tables, computer and book-binding workstations, and two offices for the library’s two paid staff — an office manager and a Braille coordinator — take up the rest of the space.
Upon request, BLTS also transcribes books as well as instruction manuals, utility bills, bank statements and even restaurant menus and crossword puzzles. While there are costs associated with transcription, BLTS subsidizes 70 percent of them through donations. The group’s lending library is free, aided by federal law for free postal shipping for the blind.
To keep up with transcription requests that come in, BLTS trains volunteers who — after completing more than a year of training and passing a manuscript transcription test administered by the Library of Congress — transcribe reading materials at home on their own computers. Currently, BLTS has about a dozen transcription volunteers.
Pages to be transcribed are first scanned and then run through the Braille 2000 computer program, which looks similar to Microsoft Word. The program attempts to transcribe the writing but it needs a lot of help and much of the volunteers’ time is spent going line by line correcting and editing.
Current board vice president and a BLTS volunteer since 1976, Connie Risjord, who co-teaches the Braillist volunteers alongside board president Patricia Herrling, says that people are sometimes confused over the nonprofit’s mission. “We do not teach blind people to read Braille,” she explains. “We teach the sighted to produce Braille.”
Transcribed Braille materials differ greatly from the writing’s original format. The Braille materials are double-sided, with thousands of raised dots covering each 12-inch x 12-inch page. They’re also huge — it usually takes two-and-a-half Braille pages for a standard book page, so a 300-page novel is usually three or four bound volumes when transcribed. Once converted into Braille, the writing is then embossed using a large, loud printer that punches the dots into the page and then the pages are bound together.
Transcription isn’t as simple as word-for-word replacement. While Braille uses the standard alphabet, it has evolved to also incorporate short-form words and other dot combinations to stand in for more common words like ‘the’ and ‘and.’ In all, there are 250 characters in the United English Braille system that can be made using different configurations of six raised dots, which resembles one side of a domino tile.
Learning to read Braille leads to other skills and, often, jobs.
“The majority of blind people in the United States do not read Braille, but of those who do read Braille, most of them are employed,” says Herrling. “[Being able to read Braille] makes a difference in your ability to lead the kind of life you might want to lead. It’s part of being a literate member of society.”
According to the National Federation of the Blind, there were almost 8 million Americans 16 years or older who reported having a visual disability in 2016.
Laura Purchis, a certified teacher for the visually impaired at an elementary school in a small school district outside San Antonio, Texas, has been using the BLTS library for a year. She finds the library’s selections necessary to keep her lone second-grade Braille-reading student engaged and participating in reading challenges like her sighted classmates.
“When you have a Braille reader, it’s hard to find books,” she explains. “We checked out 20 books [from BLTS] last year.”
Without groups like BLTS, Purchis says her student would not have access to the reading materials that are a “foundation” of learning.
“[My student] has maybe two dozen books at her school, but that’s it,” she continues. “That’s why having services like this are important — being able to check new books out, read them and then get more — it keeps her reading.”
Those interested in becoming a Braille transcription volunteer can learn more about the training classes at an information session Tuesday, Sept. 17, at 10 a.m. at the Braille Library & Transcription Service Inc. office, 6501 Watts Road, Suite 149.
