#braille code

For World Braille Day, we spoke with Peter Le, team leader in our transcriptions department, about the braille work that the alternate format production team does.

Abraham Nemeth born on 16th October 1918 was an American mathematician and inventor. He was Professor of Mathematics at the University of Detroit Mercy in Detroit, Michigan. Nemeth was blind, and was known for developing a system for blind people to read and write mathematics. Nemeth distinguished himself from many other blind people by being able to write visual print letters and mathematical symbols on paper and blackboards just like sighted people, a skill he learned as a child. Nemeth says that this skill allowed him to succeed in mathematics, during an era without much technology, during which even Braille was difficult to use in mathematics. He developed the Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics and Science Notation, which was published in 1952. Nemeth is also responsible for the rules of MathSpeak, a system for orally communicating mathematical text. In the course of his studies, Nemeth found that he needed to make use of sighted readers to read otherwise inaccessible math texts and other materials. Likewise, he needed a method for dictating his math work and other materials for transcription into print. The conventions Nemeth developed for efficiently reading mathematical text out loud have evolved into MathSpeak.