NUBS
NEMETH UNIFIED BRAILLE SYSTEM
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ABL: Alliance for Braille Literacy
Annual meeting:
October 16, 2024, 9 pm EDT
via Zoom
Step right this way for common sense
in math braille.
Do you read Nemeth? Do you transcribe in Nemeth? Do you teach math to one or
more blind students? If so, this is the place for you, and here's some
information you will find fascinating and rewarding.
You know how elegant Nemeth braille is, with its lower-cell digits and
single-cell math operators. Its concise crisp presentation is easy to transcribe
and read, and for a math student to work with on a braille notetaker. But did
you know that there is a breakthrough solution for braille literature that has
the same consistency as UEB with the elegance of Nemeth! There is, and it's
called Nemeth Unified Braille System (NUBS), and it's Dr. Nemeth's final gift to
humankind.
The Nemeth Uniform Braille System (NUBS) is firmly rooted in the Nemeth Code
and therefore rather intuitive to the reader of American braille. At the same
time, it is, like UEB, devoid of the ambiguities that both stump automatic
translators and make today's braille code unnecessarily difficult to learn. The
Alliance for Braille Literacy's (ABL's) promotion of NUBS during this time of
UEB implementation therefore is not motivated by nostalgia for what many see as
a lost cause, but by the necessity for a braille code that furthers rather
than hinders the educational and employment opportunities for those who are
blind.
--Imke Durre, PhD
Since Dr. Nemeth developed this code several years before Unified English
Braille became official in America, you'll discover that the EBAE contraction
rules remain.
To see NUBS in action get a short story about Abraham Lincoln in NUBS
braille, click this link. Abraham
Lincoln Put it on your
braille notetaker or read the simbraille. You'll see that it is very much like
Nemeth without code switching or two kinds of numbers and symbols and
punctuation--in other words, a truly sensible system for all kinds of braille.
You will see that Nemeth's universal use of "dropped numbers" works
really well even in literary work.
To see something more technical, you'll want to read Math Guide for Advanced
Topics, that shows off how nicely NUBS handles square roots and complex
fractions. Use this link:
Math
Guide for Advanced Topics
To see how Geometry and Trigonometry works, check out this link:
Math
Guide Geometry and Trig
If you want to learn to transcribe in NUBS, you'll find it to be so much like
EBAE/Nemeth, you will enjoy the Training Manual.
Why NUBS?
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A
Matter of Educational Opportunity, not Nostalgia
Call
to Action: Prevent Educational Harm to Braille Readers
NUBS is precise, non-ambiguous braille. You can author NUBS on your notetaker,
and a tool like Braille2000 can turn it into printed form, on paper if you wish,
complete with good-looking math expressions. There are also no code switches to
manage and a consistency of symbols throughout the manuscript. Like all other
braille codes, NUBS has mode indicators. Just as UEB has "contracted"
and "grade 1", NUBS has "narrative" and
"notational", using the familiar (56) indicator.
There are many other examples of NUBS you may find interesting.
NUBS: General Texts
* A
Dog's Tale
* Abraham
Lincoln
Ben
Franklin of Old Philadelphia
* Maine
Sampler - A Collection of Maine Humor
* Mother
Teresa's Lessons of Love
Rascal
* Sherlock
Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia
* The
Old Somerset Railroad
* While
You're Here, Doc
NUBS: Math, Science, and Computer Texts
* All
the Math You'll Ever Need
* The
Many Colors of Blood
* Dunes
on Planetary Surfaces From EOS
* Sands
of Time
How Does It Work? ,h{ does x "w8
There are several code overviews and a comprehensive training manual for
NUBS. Our web site, All4Braille.org,
is "NUBS Central." Check these out:
NUBS Instructional Manual
Author: Joyce Hull
Description:
The NUBS Instruction Manual is currently in Version V2020. The manual
contains rules for NUBS transcription of literary material. This manual is made
available as a PDF document.
Start with Part 1 for literary projects Part
1: General Transcription in PDF and then try
out Part 2 (currently being finalized)for more complicated math materials.
Easy Guides to Math
Author: Judith Murphy and Joyce Hull
Description:
A guide for the use of NUBS in education. The guides are arranged as a set of
volumes base on grade level for elementary and high school students.
Each volume can be downloaded individually and comes in three formats: ABT,
BRF and DOCX. The three format versions for each volume are downloadable in a
compacted ZIP file to reduce download time.
Math
Guide for Grades 1 and 2
Math
Guide for Grades 3 and 4
Math
Guide for Grades 5 Through 8
Math
Grade 6 Workbook Vol 1
Math
Guide for Advanced Topics
Math
Guide Geometry and Trig
1. In NUBS there are two modes for text: narrative for most literary material
and notational for numeric and scientific material.
2. All numbers are formed from lower cell dots, (2356) Notice the parentheses
used here. Those shown here are notational because they are associated with
numerals. The dots (56) start the word to indicate the notational mode if the
first character is not a digit.
3. When used in narrative material, parentheses are started with dots (456)
as shown below.
_(,! ,CAT ,9 ,! ,HAT_)4
4. Narrative Periods are the same as in EBAE and are used with literary
material. When a period is in contact with numerals, scientific material, and in
a few other special cases, they are formed with dots (12456).
5. Commas also have two modes; dot (2) for narrative and dots (16) for
notational.
6. The contraction for "ation" has been replaced with the letter a
plus the contraction for "tion".
7. The contraction for "ally" is spelled out.
8. If you can read EBAE, you will be able to read this code quite easily. For
more information about NUBS, go to the web site for the Alliance For Braille
Literacy: allforbraille.org
9. For more information about mathematics, see the ABL website,
allforbraille.org for the Part 2 manual in four volumes.
What's different (from traditional Nemeth)? Not much!
Some examples:
Signs of Comparison
is equal to = = (123456)
is greater than > @> (4,345)
is less than < @< (4,126)
is not equal to ≠ .=
(46,123456)
63¢ +21¢ = 84¢ ;#63@c+21@c = 84@c;'
Notice that the numeric phrase indicators are needed before the first and
after the last number, but no indicator is used after the equal sign.
More Complicated
The next example does require some renaming. It can be seen at a glance
that 7 cannot be subtracted from 4, so we need to "borrow" a 1 from
the 9, changing it to an 8 and replacing the 4 with 14. In print, this is no
problem in that the number 14 can be written above the 4 in smaller font size
so that the alignment of the columns is maintained. This is shown on the
right, in print. As seen below, braille doesn't allow the 14 to align very
well over the 4.
| | ;# |
| 8 14 | 814 |
1394 | 1394 | ;7777 |
- 267 | - 267 | 1394 |
| | - 267 |
| | "333333 |
| | ;' |
Those who are familiar with how Nemeth code handled a problem that required
carrying recall a process that often became very complex.
NUBS solves this subtraction process by providing a clever technique.
Fortunately, a two-digit replacement number in a subtraction scheme is always in
the range of 10 to 18 inclusive. Therefore, we are able to devise a technique
for entering this two-digit number into one cell. We consider the unit's digit
of this number as a dropped number, as usual. We now add dot 1 into the same
cell to indicate that this is a two-digit number whose ten's place is 1. Thus
the numbers from 10 to 18 would be represented in one cell as follows:
z b l h \ < r ( v
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Place a borrowed number line, as described above on page 8, to
separate the borrowed numbers from the problem. This line should be one cell
shorter on each end than the ruled line.
Using this technique, a problem requiring carrying would be brailled as:
| ;# |
| 8\ |
| ;7777 | ←borrowed number |
1394 | 1394 |
- 267 | - 267 |
1127 | "333333 | |
| 1127 |
| ;' |
As you can see, this technique does not require any cancellation indicators.
For subtraction this is all we need to know for cancellation.
|