Thanks to the Braille Authority of North America (BANA) for its permission to include these samplers on the ICEB web site.
Starting in April 2001, this series was prepared under the auspices of BANA to provide information about UEBC to North American readers and to solicit feedback. See BANA's original Sampler 1 Cover Letter.
If you wish to view a sampler in braille online, follow the link marked "(Braille)". Use your browser's "back" button to return to the list after viewing it.
Braille Display Access to the Braille: If you are using a screen reader with braille display device to view the braille pages, make sure that it is set for North American ASCII-Braille code.
Visual Access to the Braille: If you are sighted and have the "SimBraille" font installed, you should see the braille examples displayed in "simulated braille". If you see only ordinary ASCII letters &c., it is most likely because you do not have SimBraille installed; see the UBC Symbols List page for information on where to obtain it free. (Also, please note that the font size was set for convenient viewing with Internet Explorer 5.0, with "medium" text size setting. You may need to experiment with your browser's settings if the simulated braille appears too large or too small.)
To view a sampler in print (and simulated braille), follow the link marked "(PDF)". These are visual images of the original documents, and require Adobe Acrobat to view (available for free download at Adobe).
The other available forms are standard ZIP archives that you may download. These contain one or more files that you may extract and then view, emboss or print offline using appropriate software and hardware. BRF files are braille files in North American ASCII braille code, preformatted for pages 25 lines deep and 40 cells wide. WPD files are for Corel Wordperfect (version 6 or later). DOC files are for Microsoft Word (Word 2000 or later). Note that WPD and DOC files may not yield exact images of the original document, depending on your printer and installed fonts. In particular, for proper rendering of simulated braille in WPD or DOC files, you will need to have the "Braille" and "SimBraille" fonts installed on your system; see the UBC Symbols List page for information on where to obtain them free.
BANA UEBC Sampler 1 contains 11 short samples, mostly ordinary text with some technical symbols; the final sample is basic algebra.
ubcb1brf.zip
containing BRF file)ubcb1wpd.zip
containing WPD file)ubcb1doc.zip
containing DOC file)BANA UEBC Sampler 2 contains 6 samples emphasizing advanced technical areas, namely: (1) Spatially-arranged computation; (2) Algebra; (3) Calculus; (4) Teaching materials; (5) Computer notation; (6) Chemistry. (Note: The 375-page (21 Mb) PDF was scanned from the physical print document and so contains all relevant graphical items, such as chemical structure diagrams. Some graphical items may not be present in the WPD (WordPerfect) files, but the ZIP is much smaller at about 2.4 Mb if you are downloading over a slow connection. Some other word processors, including Microsoft Word, can import WordPerfect files.)
ubcb2brf.zip
containing BRF files)ubcb2wpd.zip
containing WPD files)