Keysoft 9.4 Arrives
Contributed by Joel Zimba, Special Projects Coordinator, MDTAP
After months of fanfare, Humanware has finally released Keysoft 9.4 for the Braillenote Apex line of Braille Notetakers. You can download Keysoft 9.4 from the support page here.
There are 2 significant advances in the new release. First, support for reading the text contained within MS Power Point presentations. This is especially useful in classes and business settings, where slides for meetings or presentations are often part of the experience. Now, these slides can be reviewed as they are presented to a group. The ability to read this content in Braille in a professional context is invaluable.
Secondly, the addition of Nemeth Code translation, while less dramatic, may be far more reaching. A bit of background may be required to understand the importance of Nemeth Code.
For the most part, Braille is composed of combinations of 6 dots. This creates 2^6 combinations of dot patterns to represent all of the letters, numbers and symbols used in all printed material. Literary Braille creates elaborate methods for writing some of the more complicated symbols or those more mathematical or scientific in nature. Some characters, however, are simply not available. A student of mathematics, Abraham Nemeth, found this problematic, so he invented the code which bears his name.
Nemeth code is designed to expedite the writing and reading of mathematical and scientific notation. The trick here is that these same symbols are used to represent other symbols in literary Braille. This isn’t much of a problem for Braille written on paper for an individual student, but when looking at these symbols on a screen or printing them, you want the output to be understood by sighted colleagues as well.
This groundwork explains the context for adding proper Nemeth Code translation to the BrailleNote. It has always been possible to write the Code if it is read only in Braille by yourself or others. Reading documents with mathematical symbols would not properly print many symbols, and others would show up in literary Braille format. Humanware also added a Nemeth Code selection menu, which helps you find the Braille equivalents for uncommon symbols. At the very least, this will allow a blind student to complete Braille assignments using Nemeth Code and print them for an instructor knowing they will be properly formatted.
As with the last few updates, Keysoft 9.4 is a free upgrade. Enjoy!
