Guidelines for chemistry in braille get modernized

A lot can happen in 25-plus years, given the rate of today’s technological advancement—including both scientific advances and advances in technologies that make science more accessible. This summer, the Braille Authority of North America (BANA) announced the publication of the Chemical Notation Using The Nemeth Braille Code 2023, a revision that replaces the 1997 edition and any updates and provisional guidance published by BANA between editions. The publication improves chemistry access for tactile readers.

BANA is the governing body for braille and tactile graphics in North America. Among its primary responsibilities are setting standards and communicating them to interested parties. Braille codes and braille authorities exist all around the world.

“Our mission is to promote the production, use, and teaching of braille,” says Jen Goulden, chair of BANA.

Partha Basu, chair of the American Chemical Society Chemists with Disabilities Committee (CWD), says one of the biggest updates to the 2023 code is the unification and standardization of symbols used in depicting molecular structures. For example, he says, one structural symbol that benefits from the update is the wedge single bond, which is used to describe organic molecules in 3D. The previous iteration of the guidance featured multiple ways to depict the bond, which resulted in different braille renderings of the same molecule in different texts.

“This led to confusion among braille users, especially students,” says Basu. “This update to the braille chemistry code simplifies and unites these symbols into one character, or representation, for a bond type or other element.”

Another big update to this code is guidance for rendering chemistry using tactile graphics, which are pictures and images that are printed on a plastic sheet or delivered to an electronic device that renders them temporarily.

“Keeping up with technological developments such as tactile graphics is critical to making chemistry accessible to as many people as possible,” Basu says. “By broadening participation in chemistry and science, we bring more people into a bigger and inclusive world. Accessibility and inclusion in science is not a zero-sum game; everyone benefits when more people, with different perspectives, are at the table working on hard problems.”

While braille has existed since the late 1800s, thanks to inventor Louis Braille, the Nemeth Braille Code has been officially around only since the 1950s. It was developed by Abraham Nemeth, a blind mathematician, in the late 1940s and later adopted by BANA.

“There were things in the 1820s that just weren’t a thing as they are now,” says Goulden. “[Braille], he wasn’t studying chemistry and high-level math.” But Nemeth was, and as it is with developing a code, if no one has needed braille for a particular thing or thought yet—no one studied it—a code might not exist yet. Goulden points to computers, “Braille needed to be able to represent that. Because if braille can’t represent all the things that print can represent, then it puts us at a disadvantage.”

Basu notes that chemists Joseph Priestley, Humphry Davy, and William Wollaston were all people with disabilities. “People with disabilities offer unique perspectives in solving problems . . . Without including them in science, we will miss out on important discoveries.”

Goulden calls this particular chemistry code update unique because ACS was a collaborator on the update, “That doesn’t always happen; we don’t always have mainstream involvement.”

Basu says the broader implication of ACS’s involvement is that the ACS sets the gold standard for diversity, equity, inclusion, and respect among professional societies. “Updating the text and tools like this shows that ACS is actively leading these efforts and understands the implications of these efforts.”

The update required coordination with BANA, which consists of 18 member and associate member organizations—including libraries, publishers, and other interested parties like the ACS Committee of Nomenclature, Terminology, and Symbols (NTS). An ad hoc committee featuring blind chemists David Wohlers, Greg J. Williams, and chair Cary A. Supalo offered recommendations. Between 5 and 10 technical experts in braille, such as braille transcribers and educators, were also involved in testing and implementing the new braille code.

“In some ways, the beginning of the process is somebody realizing, like, Hey, listen, this code hasn’t been updated for a long time,” Goulden says.

For NTS, the collaboration started back in 2018, when a member from CWD approached NTS committee members for potential support. “The two committees quickly established relationships and collaboration opportunities with BANA and its chemistry subcommittee,” Hayley Brown, the NTS chair, recalls. “The team was committed to ensuring that accurate and consistent nomenclature, terminology, and symbols were used in chemistry braille code.”

“Basically, what happens with the braille code is you have the symbols and then you have rules about how you can use them. Then you have formatting, which is like page layout, because braille readers look at a page like a sighted person might see a different font,” says Goulden. “It will stand out for a Braille reader. It’s all about things like spacing, blank lines, formatting.”

Braille readers, including transcribers, work with subject matter experts and go through the existing code and begin to make the changes: inserting updated examples, including new discoveries or symbols, and incorporating new technologies. These revisions go through multiple review processes, including technical and organizational reviews, to make sure that the revisions aren’t conflicting—and that they continue to go through reviews until all issues are resolved. The files are also reviewed for formatting for the various available formats such as PDF and braille-ready format, or BRF.

All that to say, it is a big deal when something like this gets updated.

Brown says that to keep the braille chemistry code current going forward, a process for updating it has been developed. This process will ensure that as new discoveries, understanding, innovations, and technologies arise, the code will support accurate communication of chemistry.

The updated code is available in PDF and BRF online at brailleauthority.org/nemeth-code.