Braille services of Blind SA

1. Serving South Africans by means of Braille
2. Who reads our Braille?
3. The cost of production
4. A brief history of our development
5. The road ahead
6. Where to find us

1. Serving South Africans by means of Braille:

Gaining direct access to the written word is the greatest communication barrier faced by blind people. It is said that at least 80 percent of all knowledge is accessed through the eye. In the case of blindness, the sense of touch has to substitute for vision. Blind people can learn to read and write, using their sense of touch and consequently Braille is the most important medium of communication, study and relaxation.

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Braille is a raised script based on a cell of six dots in which different combinations of dots are used for each letter of the alphabet, for punctuation and for symbols representing whole words or groups of letters - 63 symbols in all. The system was devised in the first half of the 19th century by the French genius schoolboy, Louis Braille who was blind himself, and is used worldwide today to print most languages, music, maths, computer and other scientific codes.
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Braille Services of Blind SA is the only producer of Braille in all eleven official languages of South Africa. The organisation has also been deeply involved in the development of the necessary Braille codes to write these languages in a shortened (contracted) form, which speeds up reading and cuts production costs.
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2. Who reads our Braille?:

At Braille Services we produce Braille to order only and we strive to meet the reading needs of all our customers. These include learners at every level; workers, professional and others; the home maker; the hobbyist; the person involved in committee work; and the many, many people who read for pleasure and relaxation.
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This means that we print textbooks ranging from those for beginners in the lower grades to the most intricate material required at university or technikon; lecture notes and examination papers. Blind people are found in numerous occupations including law, education, physiotherapy, social work, theology, administration and switchboard operating. To keep up with their sighted peers, they need literature in all these disciplines plus other work related material such as anything from a labour contract or insurance policy to a bus or train timetable.
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The home maker needs recipes in Braille, Braille instructions to operate a multitude of electrical appliances and information on what is available in the shops. The hobbyist may need anything from knitting or crochet pattern to a Braille schedule to participate in a motor rally or to enjoy ham radio. To carry out family responsibilities, the blind parent of a sighted child may need Braille text to help with homework or to participate in religious devotions. For effective committee work on all kinds, agendas, reports and minutes must be brailled.
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To enable blind people to participate fully in discussion forums and the numerous transformation processes in South Africa. Braille Services has also been engaged in the production of countless discussion documents, Green and White Papers, Bills and Acts, including the Constitution of South Africa. As people have more and more leisure time at their disposal, reading for pleasure becomes important and the production of recreational books and six Braille magazines forms a large part of our work.
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3. The cost of production:

Because the Braille reading public is too small for mass production in the usual sense of the word and because advertisements play no part in Braille publications, Braille cannot be produced on a profitable basis. For this reason, Braille Services is run as a non-profit organisation, which supplies its customers with Braille material at about 25 percent of the actual production cost. The deficit on the operational account is made good by our own fundraising appeals to the general public, local authorities, business houses, schools, churches and community organisations and by an ad hoc financial allocation from the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.
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A donation from you, the reader of this brochure, would be appreciated indeed. Just think what reading means to you and know that, with your donation, you could help a blind person derive similar pleasure or achieve his or her life s ambition.
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If you have ever considered making a bequest to community service, please remember that the work of Braille Services is the key to education and cultural development for thousands of blind South Africans.
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4. A brief history of our development:

Braille Services was established by SABWO in 1953 and is the second oldest Braille printing press in South Africa. In the first ten years, Braille was produced manually on a small portable machine. Because no means of duplication existed at the time, the emphasis was on the production of single copies mainly for personal use. To make provision for multiple copies, a Crabb machine was imported from England. With it, Braille was written on a light gauge double metal sheet, from which a limited number of duplicates could be made, using a washing machine mangle. The process was slow, laborious and costly.
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The next step was the acquisition of a power driven stereotyper, with which Braille was written on heavy metal sheets. The process was much faster and a virtually unlimited number of copies could be produced on a high powered platen press.
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During the 1980s the demand for Braille rose to the extent that manual production was no longer practicable. With the aid of USA technology, Braille Services became the first printing house in South Africa to switch to computerised Braille production. Text is stored in a computer by a data typist (who does not necessarily know Braille), converted into Braille with the Duxbury translator software and then embossed in Braille, usually using the Express 150 or the new BraillePlace 300 printers, to be proofread by one of our highly trained blind proofreaders, assisted by a sighted proofreader who follows in the original print document.
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The Express 150 is an excellent Braille embosser, which came on to the market in the early 1980s. Its printing speed is 18 seconds per page (150 Braille characters per second) and a great advantage is that it prints on both sides of the page, cutting paper costs by half. It is used predominantly for shorter runs, 10 copies or fewer, and for proof copies. The bigger BraillePlace embosses at 300 characters per second, and can finish more than a thousand Braille pages per hour!
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For mass production, the final, corrected text is down loaded from the computer on to a plate embosser, the PED 30, which embosses Braille on both sides of heavy gauge aluminium sheets. These templates are the die from which numerous paper copies can be made at Braille Services, the maximum at present is 1 900 for certain magazines.
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The templates are mounted two at a time on a power driven platen press. A sheet of 105 or 135 gram Braille paper is inserted between the leaves of the templates and a perfect copy is produced with each impression.
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Once the printing has been completed, the pages are collated and stapled or stitched together before being bound into volumes by our staff, who has become experts in this field through in-service training.
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With the recent acquisition of a Heidelberg GT platen press with automatic paper feed, we have been able to speed up the printing process dramatically. A production run which would have taken 10 working days formerly, now takes 3 days and some of the time gained is used to improve the quality of our finished product as far as binding and packaging are concerned.
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With our new Viewplus brailler and state-of-the-art software, we are now able to enhance our publications even further with tactile diagrams and pictures, something only dreamed of hither to.
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5. The road ahead:

Louis Braille’s six wonder dots literally placed the written word in the hands of blind people and the establishment and continued development of Braille Service, has, without a doubt, provided blind South Africans with their most valuable educational and cultural asset. Constantly improving technology and a more equitable dispensation in our country, will promote more educational and employment opportunities for blind people, most of which will be underpinned by Braille. This in turn, will lead to more blind people becoming contributing members of society, once again increasing the need for Braille to support their various activities.

Louis Braille

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We at Braille Services welcome the challenge of increased Braille production. Much has been achieved already in the upgrading of our equipment and our skills. Staff and committee members keep themselves well informed on international production methods and the development of equipment and software. The heaviest burden on our organisation is the financing of all that needs to be done and for this reason, we constantly strive to improve our financial base.
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6. Where to find us:

Braille Services of Blind SA
Private Bag X9005
Crown Mines
2025 Johannesburg

Telephone: (011) 839-1793
Fax: (011) 839-1217
E-mail: philip@blindsa.org.za

You may also visit us in person at 102 Eighth Avenue, Mayfair.
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