Recently an article was published on the Anderson University blog and in Signatures Magazine about my work as a braille transcriber. Space is limited in this article, and the author is able to provide limited introduction to my work. The following post is here to give further detail for those who are interested in what has been done and what is still needed.
The need for access to Hebrew text has always been very great. When I studied Hebrew, I used a text that was available from the Jewish Braille Institute. It was published in 1971 and transcribed into braille in 1978. The Jewish Braille Institute ceased production of braille materials in 201 and transferred their holdings to the National Library Service for the Blind. Locating the textbook I needed, therefore, was a tremendous challenge.
This is how I became active as a braille transcriber. In 2009, I began working with the Bartimaeus Alliance of the Blind to digitize a braille transcription of Jacob Weingraan’s A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew that was originally made in the 1970s. In working on this project, part of my job was to be sure that the current version was up to date with current Hebrew symbols and that the digitization had not introduced new problems.
Since finishing work on Weingreen’s grammar, I have had opportunity to transcribe some advanced Hebrew grammars as well as German, French, Greek, Syriac, and Coptic grammars that were sponsored by other institutions. All of these have opened doors for students who were at different stages of language study, including the doctoral level.
Three of my projects fall into the area of “most needed.” When a student takes a language course, including one of mine, they are always expected to be able to use a dictionary or lexicon to look up the meaning of unfamiliar words. Until very recently, blind students have not had the ability to do this. Likewise, they have not had the ability to use the edition of the Bible that provides symbols and notes regarding the use of original manuscripts. This edition is needed for doing research work in intermediate courses.
In 2016, I was hired to produce an edition of The Browne-Driver-Briggs Hebrew-English Dictionary and the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. In 2018, I was hired to transcribe the Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. These works opened up new doors for advanced language students.
There are still great needs with regard to language access. Blind people cannot access the critical edition of the Hebrew Bible with Masoretic notes. I would like to transcribe it one day. BDB is the most dated dictionary and is currently the only available reference in braille for biblical scholars who are blind. No other dictionaries or lexica are available for biblical Hebrew; and those available for Greek are highly abbreviated. These transcriptions are very costly; but they are badly needed.
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