THE PRELIMINARY RESEARCH ON THE DESIGN OF HANZI BRAILLE

At present, the commonly used braille in mainland China is essentially a "syllabic braille" (or pinyin braille), which shows many deficiencies in promoting braille informatization and literacy for people with visual impairments. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for Hanzi Braille to solve the above problems. Based on Mainland Chinese Braille (also called Current Chinese Braille), Hanzi Braille is customized by using the existing braille and adding signs in front of it. These signs, which are associated with radicals of Chinese characters, help distinguishing homophones and expressing the meaning of a Chinese character. Derived from the existing braille, Hanzi Braille breaks through the limitations of traditional braille. To some extent, it can help people with visual impairments integrate into the society of sighted people better and improve the efficiency of conversion between Chinese character and braille in the computer.