Technical Document B 13: Braille labelling on consumer products Version 1: February 2015 © This edition: Comisión Braille Española Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (ONCE) Dirección General de la ONCE Calle del Prado, 24 28014 Madrid (España) [email protected] Coordinated by Pedro Ruiz Prieto · Alberto Daudén Tallaví ⋅ Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives · CC BY-NC-ND This Creative Commons license allows you to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material. Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................... 4 2. The Braille system: a reading-writing code ............................................ 4 2.1. Preliminary matters .............................................................................. 4 2.2. Text adaptation ................................................................................... 4 3. Printing techniques................................................................................... 5 4. Labelling with new technologies ............................................................. 6 5. Contact the Spanish Braille Commission for advice ............................. 6 Technical Document B 13: Braille labelling on consumer products 4 1. Introduction Labelling consumer products in Braille enables people with a visual disability to read product names, thereby affording them greater independence in their everyday lives. This Spanish Braille Commission Technical Document aims to inform companies wishing to label their products in Braille of a series of particularities and technical matters that should be borne in mind to ensure that their efforts in this regard are as effective as possible. 2. The Braille system: a reading-writing code 2.1. Preliminary matters An understanding of a few basics about Braille will help grasp the importance of the rules and standards that should be applied in consumer product labelling. • Braille is not a language, but an alphabet. Most languages can be written using its signs. The reference for Spanish is: Documento Técnico B 2 de la Comisión Braille Española: signografía básica [Spanish Braille Commission Technical Document B2: Basic Braille]. • The reference for other languages and countries is the book entitled World Braille Usage. • Both Braille dots and characters must be of a precise size to be legible to the touch. Factors to be taken into consideration include dot height, the distance between dots in a given character, and inter- character spacing. All these parameters are addressed in Spanish Braille Commission Technical Document B1, Dimensional Parameters in Braille. • Braille characters of different sizes cannot be used on the same package. Unlike the visual information ink-printed on packaging, some of which may be in very large (to catch consumers’ attention) and some (article composition) in very small lettering, in Braille all the text on the package must be printed in the same size as specified in the aforementioned document. • Typographic resources used in ink lettering, such as italics, underlining or bold face type cannot be used in Braille. Braille is always based on a six-dot cell containing raised semi-spherical dots arranged in three rows and two columns. The presence or absence of dots identifies each Braille character. 2.2. Text adaptation Given the size specifications of Braille letters, it may not be possible to include all the desired information on a given package. Technical Document B 13: Braille labelling on consumer products 5 The following recommendations are intended to ensure that the information provided in Braille is useful for people with visual impairment. • The information should be included on the surface of the package able to accommodate the largest amount of information. • If the surface is very large, all the information in Braille should be grouped and justified on the left. • If not all the information fits, the message should be reduced to include only the words bearing the most information. If articles, prepositions and pronouns do not fit, they can be deleted. • If absolutely necessary, readily recognisable abbreviations can be used. 3. Printing techniques In recent years, the procedures for labelling consumer goods in Braille have diversified widely. The variations primarily involve the place and surface where the information is to be included, product characteristics and the respective production costs. The most common techniques are as follows: a) Embossing. A die is prepared with the text in Braille. When impacted against the medium, the dots forming the Braille characters stand out in relief and can be read by touch. This is particularly recommendable for cardboard packaging weighing over 160 g. While it can also be used with lighter weight materials and still be legible, the risk of the impact poking holes in the medium is high. Braille characters should be embossed at a distance of no less than around 8 mm from the edge of the packaging. This ensures that the dot height will be unaffected by subsequent folding, which would render the characters illegible to the touch, for embossed dots are hollow using this technique. b) Moulding. In moulded packaging, where materials such as plastic, glass or metal are involved, the Braille text can be included as an element in the mould itself. c) Solid-dot Braille. This term is meant to cover any technique in which the dots forming Braille characters are obtained by depositing chemicals, normally polymers, on the surface of packaging or labels. As they solidify, these chemicals are transformed into raised solid (i.e., not hollow) dots. Their inclusion normally involves an additional step in the silk-screen printing of packaging or labels. The technique affords several advantages. • Braille can be printed on nearly any surface. Technical Document B 13: Braille labelling on consumer products 6 • Where paper is the medium, any weight is suitable. This makes it ideal for very lightweight labels such as used on wine bottles, for instance. • As the dots are not hollow, they are much more durable. 4. Labelling with new technologies The use of visual two-dimensional barcodes, such as QR codes, that either contain information or refer the user to a website to obtain it is becoming more and more common. Codes bearing product or manufacturer information may also be printed on packaging. It is indisputably an ideal alternative to enable people with low vision to recognise and receive information on products. QR codes do not, however, render information in Braille useless, any more than they entail the disappearance of other visual information on packaging. The position of these codes should be identified in relief so people with a visual disability can locate and capture the image correctly. Such relief identification may consist of: • a dotted or continuous vertical line running from the top to the bottom and left of the QR code • the letters ‘q’ and ‘r’ in Braille along the left edge of the code, a procedure that is particularly apt for small packages, such as the lightweight cardboard wrapping around canned goods. 5. Contact the Spanish Braille Commission for advice Since its inception, the Spanish Braille Commission (Spanish initials, CBE) has been offering advice on Braille labelling for products and services. Inquiries may be addressed to the Commission via any of the following channels: • by electronic mail: [email protected] [email protected] • by post: Comisión Braille Española Dirección General de la ONCE Calle del Prado, 24 28014 Madrid, Spain Users are invited to use these channels to contact the CBE for advice on printing product information in Braille, respecting questions such as legibility of the Braille text, the most effective printing procedure, information that should be included about the product and its position on the label and so on. Technical Document B 13: Braille labelling on consumer products 7 Technical Document B 13: Braille labelling on consumer products .