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RoboBraille named "Project of the Month" by European Commission

Dublin, June 15, 2007

Today, the Danish-led RoboBraille Consortium announced results of its ongoing pilot tests with reading impaired users in Cyprus, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Although still preliminary, feedback from the user community confirms the value, relevance and quality of the service beyond doubt. The publication of the results coincides with the European Commission naming RoboBraille project of the month, selected amongst alternative EU projects. The pilot tests are conducted as part of a pan-European project supported by the European Commission under the eTEN programme.

"We are obviously very pleased with the positive feedback from the user community across Europe. The service is still in its infancy and although it has been well received by our domestic users, we were uncertain how users from other countries would react to the concept," said Lars Ballieu Christensen, RoboBraille Coordinator and leader of the RoboBraille consortium. "In addition to the high score, the users have provided us with a wealth of suggestions on how to make RoboBraille even more useful. We are now sorting through these to select ideas that will have the greatest impact for the visually impaired, dyslexic and poor readers," he added.

The first pilot test of RoboBraille was conducted by more than 700 visually impaired users in the winter/spring of 2007. On a scale from 1 to 5 where 5 is best, RoboBraille scored 3.8 in overall satisfaction, 4.2 in support, 3.9 in accuracy, 4.4 in ease of understanding, 4.4 in ease of use and 4.0 in relevance. The pilot test furthermore revealed that RoboBraille is mainly used for translation of educational material, manuals, articles and letters. Comments added by pilot users furthermore suggest that RoboBraille leave people with reading difficulties better off in terms of independence, access to digital information, and self-sufficiency. Suggestions from pilot users included support for more document formats such as PDF, support for more output formats, e.g., DAISY talking books and the ability for users to control the speech quality, e.g., select to lower the quality or increase the reading speed. A copy of the preliminary pilot test is available from the RoboBraille Coordinator upon request.

The second and final pilot test of RoboBraille is due to commence in June and run throughout the summer, bringing the number of pilot users well beyond 900.

Coinciding with the announcement of the first results of the RoboBraille pilot test pilot, the RoboBraille project was named Project of the Month for the month of June by the European Commission. In its justification, the Commission states: "Before the RoboBraille service was launched, the conversion of electronic documents into contracted Braille or speech was either handled de-centrally by individuals using complex and expensive software installed on their computers or handled through centralised production facilities. With the help of the Danish RoboBraille translation service, the situation has significantly improved."

For more information, please visit: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/eten/projects