2008_06_converter tools evaluation - rnib · web viewpentium iii 700 mhz or equivalent ......

RNIB Centre for Accessible Information (CAI) Technical report #3A

Converter tools evaluationComparison of Braille Maker Pro, Cipher, Duxbury Braille Translator and Easy Converter

Published by:RNIB Centre for Accessible Information (CAI), 58-72 John Bright Street, Birmingham, B1 1BN, UK

Commissioned by: As publisher

Authors:(Note: After corresponding author, authors are listed alphabetically, or in order of contribution)

Sarah Home (Accessible Information Development Officer, CAI)Tel: 0161 355 2023Email: [email protected]

Date: 12 June 2008

Document reference: CAI-TR3A [06-2008]

Sensitivity: Internal and full public access

Copyright: RNIB 2008

mailto:[email protected]

© RNIB 2008

Citation guidance:Home, S. (2008). Converter tools evaluation: Comparison of Braille Maker Pro, Cipher, Duxbury Braille Translator and Easy Converter. RNIB Centre for Accessible Information, Birmingham: Technical report #3A

Acknowledgements:Thanks to the evaluators and software developers who contributed to these evaluations.

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Translation software evaluation reportRNIB Centre for Accessible Information (CAI)

Prepared by:Sarah Home (Accessible Information Development Officer, CAI)

© RNIB12 June 2008

Introduction

Evaluations of four products for translation into accessible formats were evaluated by expert transcribers. The same sample materials were used for each evaluation. These sample documents included were taken from the British Braille manual.

NOTE: The Duxbury software was tested using samples from British Braille during development. As the same sample materials were used in this evaluation, it is likely that Duxbury will show fewer specific translation issues than the other products tested, as it is likely any issues found have already been addressed.

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Table 1. General informationArea of evaluation

BrailleMaker Cipher Dolphin EasyConverter

Duxbury

Product name

BrailleMaker Professional

Cipher Dolphin EasyConverter Duxbury Braille Translator (DBT)

Version number

1.6 / L August 2007 1.03 3.0.1 Build 053 10.7

Date tested 16 April 2008 27 May 2008 14 April 2008 12 June 2008Software producer

Seeing Differently (sold and supported through Cragside AccessABILITY Ltd)

Dolphin Computer Access Ltd

Dolphin Computer Access Ltd

Duxbury Systems

Purpose of product

A very powerful braille translation and editing tool aimed at the professional transcriber

Designed to let you transcribe a text document into braille and emboss it using a connected braille embosser with a minimum of effort

From Dolphin's website:"EasyConverter quickly creates Large Print, MP3, DAISY and Braille versions of learning materials that can either be scanned from paper, or input from Word, PDF, html or text files."

DBT is probably the best known, most used and developed braille translator on the market today.True Windows software that translates a wide variety of file formats into braille.The program provides powerful braille editing functionality for the professional transcriber

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Area of evaluation


Duxbury

Purchase cost of product(NOTE: Prices correct at date of evaluation. All prices are exclusive of VAT)

£382.91 for a single user licence

£1340.16 for network version - 5 users

£4211.94 for network version - 20 users

Unsure - tends only to be bundled with embossers now

£2660 for commercial user (including 1 user licence) + £1596 for each additional licence

£1495 for Higher and Further Education/Local Education Authority/Library (including 1 user licence) + £897 for each additional licence

£890 for school/charity/not for profit (including 1 user licence) + £534 for each additional licence

If purchased through UK distributor Techno-Vision Systems Ltd:

Single user licence - £3855-user site licence - £1,59510-user site licence - £2,695Additional 5-user packs - £1,195

Maintenance plan(Cost of maintaining product annually and any known

Unaware of any maintenance costs

Various pricing structures are available to upgrade versions that are over a year old -

None Standard Maintenance Agreement (SMA) is payable annually.

Various pricing structures are available for maintenance plans.

Duxbury offers free upgrades within the first year of purchasing the product

Maintenance packages can be purchased to

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Area of evaluation


Duxbury

additional costs.)

versions under a year old have free updates

No known additional costs

extend the free upgrade period to 2 years

Various pricing structures are available to upgrade DBT versions that are over a year old

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Table 2: Installation and set upArea of evaluation


Duxbury

Minimum system requirements

10 Mb hard disk space Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, Me, NT, 2000, XP Home, XP Professional or Windows Vista

No data available - as the product is so simple it should run on any system

Processor: Pentium III 700 MHz or equivalentMemory: 256 MB RAMSoftware: Microsoft Windows 2000 SP2, Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 SP1, Microsoft XML 4 (if not already present on the system, this will be installed as part of the Dolphin EasyConverter installation)

25 Mb available hard drive space; Microsoft Windows version 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Vista

Activation method

Internet or manual activation options are available

Doesn't appear to be any activation method - this is outdated software and not in general use

Product can be activated via the internet, or manually (with the input of an activation code)

A licence key code number must be typed in during installation to activate the product

Installation and initial set up

Easy to install/set up No assistance neededNo problems

Easy to install/set up No assistance neededNo problems

Easy to install/set upNo assistance neededNo problems

Easy to install/set upNo assistance neededNo problems

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Table 3: UsabilityArea of evaluation


Duxbury

Usability (How usable/ intuitive is the product?)

Program is intuitive and relatively easy to use

Not very - you need an excellent knowledge of the outdated $ coding system to get anywhere near acceptable braille output

The product is quite easy to use, and is intuitive once you become familiar with the interface and the different stages of the program

It can be quite confusing at times - the user is not always sure if they are saving a project or a specific output format

Very intuitive and usable

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Table 4. AccessibilityArea of evaluation


Duxbury

Full use via keyboard

Not known Not known Not known Yes

Shortcut keys defined and applied

Not known Not known Yes Yes

Focus cursor visible to indicate position of keyboard input

Not known Not known Not known Yes

Accessible with the main screenreaders and Zoomtext - various scripts are available (JAWS etc)

Note: These products have not been tested by an accessibility expert. It is recommended that an access audit is carried out.

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Table 5. FunctionalityArea of evaluation

BrailleMaker Cipher Dolphin EasyConverter Duxbury

Input formats HTML, ASCII text, Word Perfect and Wordstar formats

Documents with .txt extensions or braille ascii files only

Plain text files (.txt)Rich text files (.rtf) Microsoft Word document files (.doc, .docx)Hypertext markup language (HTML) files (.html, .htm) Portable document format files (.pdf)NIMAS (National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard) filesDTBook DTD compliant XML filesPaper documents input via optical character recognition (OCR) - scanner needs to be connected to PC

NOTE: Dolphin EasyConverter does not

WordPerfect 3x, 5x & 6xMS Word 6 or laterDuxbury formatted brailleDuxbury formatted textSGML/ICADD/HTMLXML - DAISY/NISO

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support HTML files with a linked CSS file

Output formats

Embosser files - .bmkBraille Editor files - .bmwNotetaker files - .brl

Braille files (.brl) that are sent directly to an embosser

Text files (.txt)Compressed audio files (.mp3)DAISY 2.02 compliant digital talking book (DTB) Large print (.doc)Braille - extension is dependent on which braille translator is used

ASCIIFormatted braille

Flexibility It appears relatively easy to change settings - maybe a bit fiddly at first until you get used to it

Settings are easily changed

It is relatively easy to change settings but could be improved by rethinking the structure of the settings option and making it a bit more intuitive

NOTE: If your source documents have headings properly styled in Word you will need to

Very easy to change settings

NOTE: braille tables cannot be altered in the program by the user - to prevent braille being produced that doesn't conform to the local braille rules

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Area of evaluation


change the settings with EasyConverter so that it will not automatically try to define structure in your documents which could cause problems

Speed of translation

Translation slowed slightly on larger documents (50 pages took about 30 seconds)

Translates very quickly On smallish files there is no problem - but when translating large books it can take over an hour to translate and the computer slows down even further if you have other applications open

Program translates to braille quickly

Stability Program was very stable during entire evaluation process

Program is very stable The program is on the whole pretty stable, but if you exit the program and then open it again within a couple of minutes an error box appears telling you that an instance of EasyConverter is already running

Program is very reliable and stable

Automation Not known No automation possible Don't think it's possible Macro option is not

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Area of evaluation


(E.g. how easy is it to set-up macros/batch processing?)

to set-up macros or batch processing

currently available

Unsure about batch processing

Positive observations

Overall functionality is very good. Ability to produce

capitalised and non-capitalised grade 1, grade 2 and learner braille

Braille editing features are very powerful and braille pages re-paginate automatically

Incorporates a learner braille feature which enables material to be produced with the gradual introduction of contractions, running in-line with the braille primer

No positive observations Functionality is very good overall - not aware of anything missing from this type of multi-media product. Program offers the

ability to produce a number of accessible formats from the same source file

Program correctly produces braille to post-2004 rules and also has the UEB translation tables included

Program will import a good range of file formats

Program will export embosable braille

Functionality is very good Ability to produce

capitalised and non-capitalised grade 1, grade 2, UEB and learner braille

Braille editing features are very powerful and braille pages re-paginate automatically if text is altered

Wide range of braille translation tables available

Runs on network or standalone

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Area of evaluation


Good range of options for representing tables in braille and on the whole imports tables from Word well

Program will ask if it's not sure how a portion of text or character should be translated into braille - this function can also be turned off within the settings if necessary

Print page indicators are correctly placed and shown in the main text

Options to ignore or include font attributes from original source file - bold, italics, underline etc

User is able to flick between original file

files dependent on which embosser you select

The quality of the accessible format version is dependent on the original source document, but you do have the option to amend the original file and then re-translate if necessary

The braille editor offers the usual cut, copy, paste and undo features and you also have the ability to change the way you view the braille dots on screen - ASCII, dots or shadow dots

The program analyses the source document and suggests (if appropriate) that a

Maths Can import

GOODFEEL braille music files

Incorporates a learner braille feature which enables material to be produced with the gradual introduction of contractions, running in-line with various braille teaching courses

Extensive range of language translation options including all the most popular ones and Hebrew, Cyrillic, Arabic and Indian languages

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Area of evaluation


and braille version without having to re-translate the text

Automatic generation of a table of contents is available and dynamically updates if you change any text

Range of language translation options - French, German, Irish, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Castilian, Catalan and Welsh

PDF document (for example) would be better if it was run through OCR first (this function is also built into the program)

Negative observations

Inability to automatically populate heading info on braille page information line (PIL) from original source file - user has to enter text and remember to change it at the next chapter/section

The program doesn't

Functionality leaves a lot to be desired

It's missing almost everything that you would expect from a modern braille translator

Only produces braille to pre-2004 rules - should not be used

The program slows down considerably when translating lots of text and occasionally crashes

When creating the braille version, there is no option for generating text to be included on the page information line (PIL)

Inability to automatically populate heading info on braille page information line (PIL) from original source file - user has to enter text and remember to change it at the next

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Area of evaluation


currently import or convert PDF files

The program doesn't pick up the first heading in a document as a centred heading - has to be manually tagged, even if it's been styled as a heading in the original document

When using the find and replace function, the user has to type in the ASCII character for a braille contraction (p]sonal for personal) otherwise the word is not found

Print page numbers are not indicated in the text of the braille version, but they do appear correctly on the PIL

The braille editor allows for minor changes to the text to be made, but if you delete portions of text it will not re-paginate - you have to alter the original file and re-translate

The program doesn't offer automatic generation of contents pages

The program will only either ignore tables in the braille version or convert the table to paragraphs - but it is able to add an explanation of the

chapter/section The program

doesn't currently import or convert PDF files

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Area of evaluation


columns

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Table 6. OutputsArea of evaluation


Duxbury

Does it import/ output/ produce the formats it states?

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Does it adhere to published standards/ guidelines for outputs

On the whole yes - see below on specific braille issues

No (see below) On the whole yes, although there are some minor issues with conformance to British Braille 2004 when using the internal braille translator(see below)

Needs quite a lot of changes in the settings to produce good quality large print output though

Yes

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Area of evaluation


Duxbury

Feedback on specific translation issues

Dates (1980s etc) translate with an apostrophe before the s - no longer needed in new braille rules

Omitted digits in a string should be replaced by dot 3s

25 kWh - letter sign missing. Phoenix - "en" should be

contracted Email addresses translate

incorrectly Computer file names

translate incorrectly Lists and bullets sometimes

indent too far to cell 7 in the braille (should be cell 5)

CD should have a double letter sign before it - not letter sign C, letter sign D

Phone numbers incorrectly represented.

Times of the day translate incorrectly when the original source uses a colon to separate the numbers

Only produces braille to pre-2004 braille rules

1. Braille (using EasyConverter's internal braille translator) An apostrophe at the beginning of a word should be dot 3 - not dots 2,3,6 (inner quote)

When capitals and italics are used together the signs must be closed in the reverse order to how they were opened - e.g. open capital, open italic, TEXT, close italic, close capital.

Dates - 1930s, 70s etc - when no apostrophe is present in the original text there is now no need to insert an

NOTE: Duxbury was trialled using samples from British Braille during development, therefore it is likely most specific translation issues would have already been addressed. Phone numbers

incorrectly represented in braille - imports with same spacing as original source document

Web and email addresses translate incorrectly unless the correct Duxbury styling is applied

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Area of evaluation


Duxbury

apostrophe in the braille

Part-italicised words - the two-cell dots 4,6 and dot 2 sign should precede the italicised portion and the usual two-cell dots 4,6 and dot 3 terminator sign should be used

Omitted digits - 4**7 etc - however represented in print should now be represented in braille by the equivalent number of dot 3s

Print page indicators - the two-cell dot 5, dots 2,5 sign - these should be shown

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Area of evaluation


Duxbury

in the text of the braille on a line of their own and followed unspaced by the new print page number - see British Braille 9.1.5 for more info

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Table 7. Product supportArea of evaluation


Duxbury

How useful is the help file?

Very comprehensive and you get a hardcopy manual as well

OK, but quite sparse Very helpful and easy to use

Very helpful

How are support issues handled?

DotLine is the dedicated technical support facility provided by Cragside (BrailleMaker distributors in the UK). It's available to all BrailleMaker customers from 09:30 to 17:00 Monday to Friday

Dolphin has a few FAQs on it's online knowledge base

Unsure if Cipher support calls are handled at all

Dolphin offer extensive support mechanisms via their website - on-line manuals and user guides, access to knowledge base for FAQs, tips and tutorials, discussion forums, submitting queries on-line and a manned telephone helpdesk

Techno-Vision Systems Ltd (UK distributors of Duxbury) offer comprehensive support and are closely linked to the US developers

What type of training would be needed?

Would suggest at least half a day if the trainee is familiar with braille

Minimal Would suggest a half-day session to get used to the product as long as the user knew braille

Would vary dependent on the complexity of the material the user will be producing

Is external training available?

Yes - provided at customer's workplace

Unsure - probably not as the product is so basic

Dolphin offer training courses through their certified training

Yes - from Techno-Vision Systems Ltd:Basic and Advanced

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Area of evaluation


Duxbury

network on this product - prices available on application

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Table 8. Suitability for a range of usersArea of evaluation


Duxbury

Suitable for light desktop use (e.g. admin staff)

Yes No Yes - with relatively straightforward well-structured documents

Yes

Suitable for professional use (e.g. transcribers)

Yes No Not for braille outputs, due to lack of braille editing facilities, no heading information on page information line and no ability to show print page numbers in the main text

Yes

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Table 9. OtherArea of evaluation


Duxbury

Security issues

None None None None

Semi automated functionality

Yes Yes Yes, giving you the option to check the document and tweak before translation into output format

Yes

Fully automated functionality

Not known No Yes, can be fully automated if you are sure the source document is good

Not known

Development plan

The introduction of braille tables for UEB are currently in development and should be available before the end of 2008.

Mathematics braille is due for release shortly

RNIB was asked to evaluate this version of Cipher - not sure if there will be any further development work on this product as Dolphin have developed a new braille translator which is much better

Unknown Developers are constantly enhancing the product based on customer feedback

Some items on the wish list: Volumisation Better handling of

tables from Word Hyperlink recognition Parsing options

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Area of evaluation


Duxbury

Better handling of footnotes

Better handling of long heading information

Enhanced Word importer settings

Automatic UK table of contents generator

PDF importer

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SummaryThe findings of these evaluations have been shared with the developers of the products in question. Developers were grateful for this feedback, and may use it to enhance their products in future developments.

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