BRL: Braille through Remote Learning

A quick inspection of the various print shapes below should convince you that a special shape indicator, dots 1246, is used unspaced before letters and/or contractions that describe the shape. The trick with shape indicators is deciding whether or not the indicators have some significance, or are if they are just used as a fancy visual interest method for sighted readers. If, in your judgement, the shapes have no value other than visual interest, then they are ignored in the braille. Many textbooks, however, will use a specific shape to make the reader aware of a specific type of material, such as a question to be answered or some experiment to be done. If this is the case, the shape should be retained.

The textbook codebook reads as follows for print shapes:

If print shapes are used in a text solely for visual interest, they must be omitted in braille. Print signs that are quite different from footnote or reference marks are often found in readers, grammars, spellers, and similar texts. They may be used to indicate a relationship between terms, as where print circles identify one part of speech and print squares another. Some may give constant reference to similar materials throughout the text, as where small characters represnting pencils or pens are printed before all composition exercises. The function or meaning of these print characters may be given in a footnote the first time they appear or they may be included in a list and explained elsewhere in the text.

Two examples are available: