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Braille Transcription Career Options
Before you consider braille transcription as a serious career option, there are a few questions you should ask yourself:
- Am I a loner?
- Am I extremely picky?
- Do I have the patience of the Biblical Job?
Most braille transcription is done by people working in their homes or in small offices. It is not a social job in most situations. There are a small handful of employers who have several transcribers working in a facility at the same time, but not many. If you really don't need other people around during the day, then you can probably tolerate this career.
Pickiness and accuracy are absolutely essential. The braille reader is depending on you to have every last word, period, hyphen and number exactly right, not according to print layout, but according to a complex set of published rules. If you are the kind of person who counts the errors in novels, newspaper and magazine articles, and your friend's emails, then maybe you are picky enough to fit in this business.
Braille transcription is a slow, methodical, nit-picky task. If you don't have someone else to proof your work, as most transcribers don't, you must read each word and compare it to the print text. Glancing back and forth between the computer screen and the hard copy hour after hour becomes quite tedious, especially when you are checking your own work for the second or third time for errors.
Here are the most frequently asked questions and our answers to them.
Q. What does it take to become a braille transcriber?
A. There are both certified and non-certified transcribers working in the industry. Many school districts and public agencies will hire a certified transcriber and a group of non-certified folks to work under that certified person.
The non-certified transcriber relies heavily on using software to assure that rules for proper transcription are being followed. Good skills with MS Word or WordPerfect programs are an excellent starting place to learn the software. However, software makes mistakes when it comes to judgments about such things as the style of a paragraph. A person who doesn't understand those concepts is at a loss and in jeopardy of making serious errors. The non-certified transcriber is also at a disadvantage as a subcontractor working out of the home. Certification carries with it some assurance that the work will be done properly, and those seeking subcontractors tend to prefer certified workers.
Certified transcribers come in several levels - literary, Nemeth, music, among others. All must first pass the literary certification. They have completed either a correspondence course or classes through a community college to gain the skills for passage of the course. They learn:
- The braille code - what dots mean what
- The rules - when to use abbreviations; and
- Formats - layouts of paragraphs and pages.
Then, the student turns in a sample manuscript of 50 pages as a final test. This whole process may take upwards of 18 months as a correspondence student, but may go faster if the local community college or a volunteer group offers such a course of study.
The Library of Congress, National Library Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped offers the free correspondence course. For more information, call toll free: 800-424-8567, or see information at http://www.loc.gov/nls/bds.html. They will fax or mail you an application. The only enrollment requirement is a high school diploma. They offer all the levels of certification. Community college offerings are more difficult to locate.
Q. How do I find work?
A. Contractor type transcribers build an intricate network of sources of work and referral. A school district in one state may contract with a well-known transcriber in another. She may get too busy and have to turn away any more work when the school next calls her, so she refers the school to someone else. There are also lists of transcribers posted with many websites - Duxbury Systems website at www.duxsys.com; American Printing House for the Blind at www.aph.org.
Those seeking employment as transcribers must turn to major institutions - school districts, universities and the like.
Q. What is the future for making a living in this occupation?
A. There are several factors impacting our answer. First, many transcribers who learned their skills in the "help-the-other-guy" 60s are retiring. They need to be replaced. Second, the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal and state laws make it clear that braille materials need to be available in hundreds and thousands of locations - banks, hotels, schools, government meetings, for example. And, blind people are becoming more insistent that they find information accessible and available in braille.
Those two factors make the career attractive. On the other side of the scales are two other factors.
First, the publishing industry is being required to make textbooks for Kindergarten through 12th grades available in electronic format that is easily transcribed through use of software. The result of this requirement is that a certain book that required 300 hours for a transcriber to produce in braille two years ago may now only take 30 hours. That means one transcriber can do 10 times as many books. The only arena in which those electronic files are not going to be available soon is in the math and sciences.
The other factor that weighs against this career is the fact that only about 10% of the blind people in the United States use braille on a consistent basis. The other 90% use other formats - large print and audio. And many youths are not learning to use braille effectively, in spite of state and federal laws encouraging the use of braille in the educational process.
Q. Should I be a contractor or an employee?
A. Can you wait for your paycheck? Do you want to be your own bookkeeper? Do you want a business or a job? The answers to those questions will make up your mind.
Q. What would I need to start my training?
A. You have to turn your lessons into braille somehow. Your choices are either a manual Perkins Brailler (from Howe Press) or a computer, special software and an embosser.
Brailling software is really a matter of personal taste. Duxbury Systems markets two - DBT and MegaDots. These are the most commonly used and would provide the more easily exchanged files.
Embossers come in varying sizes, speeds and costs. They start at about $1500 for 15 characters per second, hit 50 csp at $4,000, then follow that trend of $100 per character-per-second. Occasionally, one can find used embossers on the market.
Q. Are there professional organizations to help support continuing education for transcribers?
A. Yes. The National Braille Association is the most well known and a good place to start. There are also national and state-sponsored conferences from time to time. Finally, there are a number of listservs in the industry for mutual support and problem solving.
Good luck in your career choice!
Davey Hulse, CEO
davey@brailleplus.net
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