dots: a Braille translator for GNOME

While I am at GNOME Accessibility Hackfest I think it’s a good time to present a project we have been working on this year: dots. It is a Braille translator/transcriptor that translates a document (odt, pdf or html) into computer Braille representation so you can directly send it to a Braille printer (embosser):

You can configure the output (cells per line, lines per page, etc…) and select the translation table. Also it presents the document on the screen in ASCII representation of using a Braille font with a review line. All the low level transcription is done using liblouis and liblouisxml libraries (the same that orca uses for the braille output). Also another nice feature is that you can actually edit the translation table with a nice UI. All the code is hosted on GNOME git: browse dots source code.

This development has been sponsored by Consorcio Fernando de los Rios:

Consorcio Fernando de los Rios is a public company of the Andalusian Government created to spread the Information Technology in Andalusia, and that means bringing technologies to every one in every place. To bring it to every place they created Gudalinfo centers: to provide internet and information access to people living in remote and small villages. And to bring it to every one they have been investing a lot of time and money to improve GNOME accessibility: orca screen reader, caribou on screen keyboard, webkit accessibility, and this Braille translator.

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