Computer-assisted transcription provides a means of responding to the challenge presented by the large increase in printed materials requiring human interpretation. The process of transcribing printed sheet music into Braille music is currently a tedious manual process that can be performed only by specially trained Braille music transcribers. In addition, the certification process for music transcribers is long--two and a half to three years--and arduous; one must take the correspondence course offered by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of Congress, which entails one year to learn literary Braille and then another 18 months to two years to learn music Braille. As a consequence of the extensive training required and the small number of individuals who complete it and stay in the field, thousands of blind musicians in this country alone are severely limited in their access to Braille music. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project from Opus Technologies will develop prototype software for a computer-aided (PC Windows environment) Braille music transcription system which allows individuals with no training in the Braille music code to transcribe printed music into Braille. The system interfaces to a scanner which captures an image of the sheet music for display on the screen. A sighted user uses this image as a template for accurately entering musical symbols into a graphical music notation editor. The entered music is then translated into Braille. A built-in Optical Character Reader (OCR) in combination with a literary Braille translator recognizes scanned lyrics and other textual elements and translates them into literary Braille. A Braille editor displays the resulting Braille code for editing and output. A reverse translator allows a blind musician to enter Braille music code and produce printed sheet music for use by sighted musicians. Results of this research will lead to the development and co mmercialization of a complete Braille music transcription system for the U.S. and international markets and will improve blind musicians' access to printed music. Building on the concept that the user will hear the graphics that represent the Braille music characters spoken; in the future, the next step will be to make the graphics that represent the print music symbols and their position also spoken. Thus ultimately, the whole process could be accomplished without the intervention of a sighted person. In addition, these same techniques have potential applications to other Braille codes including mathematics and graphics data.
