Revised Braille IPA

[Robert Englebretson]

Dear Linguists,

Based on the number of queries I have received over the years regarding 
braille versions of the International Phonetic Alphabet, I thought the 
following link would be useful.
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~reng/BrlIPA.html
This page is devoted to the Unified IPA Braille project, which I am 
currently working on in conjunction with the International council on 
English Braille.  We are drafting an updated and revised version of braille 
IPA, which we hope can finally become an international standardized code. 
The page contains current versions of the code draft for download (PDF and 
formatted braille versions), presents some background and history of braille 
IPA codes, and seeks input from braille-reading linguists and others who use 
the IPA.  Because the system is designed around the Unicode IPA codepoints, 
makers of automated braille translation software will be able to support IPA 
characters in their products, which will hopefully lead to a greater supply 
of braille materials utilizing the IPA, and will improve access for blind 
professionals and students to the literature.

We would value all comments and suggestions, in order to make this code as 
robust and useful as possible.  I would especially welcome comments from 
braille readers living in countries which do not use English Braille, as we 
would like to make the braille IPA code a truly international system. 
Please pass this link along to anyone who may be interested.

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~reng/BrlIPA.html

In order to work out some of the details of automated Unicode to IPA braille 
translation, we are also seeking sample texts which have been transcribed 
into IPA using Unicode.  If you have any fully-Unicode compliant materials 
that you would be willing to share with the committee, please e-mail them to 
me at reng at rice.edu preferably as a Word, RTF, or UTF-8 encoded file.  Older 
"symbol fonts" won't work--these must be fully Unicode.

In addition to information on braille IPA, the page also contains a list of 
links related to blind accessibility in linguistics, including my 
instructions and character maps for reading Unicode IPA with the Jaws For 
Windows screen reader.

All input is welcome, and I hope this will be a useful resource.

--Robert Englebretson

******************************************************************
     Dr. Robert Englebretson
     Dept. of Linguistics, MS23
     Rice University
     6100 Main St.
     Houston, TX 77005-1892
     Phone: 713 348-4776
     E-mail: reng at rice.edu
     http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~reng