Bookshare has made major upgrades to how braille and math are delivered to students who are blind or have low vision — and there’s nothing new to install or set up. These improvements are already built into Bookshare, so students can keep using the screen readers and refreshable braille devices they already use to get a better reading experience right away.
Interactive accessible math
Math has long been one of the hardest subjects to make accessible — equations were often just images dropped into a page, invisible to screen readers and unreadable on a braille display. Bookshare now uses MathML to change that.
With MathML, math that used to be a flat image can now be read aloud by screen readers and rendered on refreshable braille devices — giving students full access to equations, not just the text around them.
Braille that reads the way braille should
We’ve been improving braille in Bookshare, and we’re not done yet. Headings, lists, and tables are now presented the way braille is meant to be laid out, so students spend less time hunting for where they are on the page and more time reading.
Why braille matters to Bookshare
- Braille supports literacy, independence, and equitable access to information
- Quality braille output ensures a meaningful reading experience for students who are blind or have low vision.
- Braille enhancements are a major part of improving accessibility and the overall user experience in Bookshare.
Benefits of Bookshare braille
- Immediately download books in BRF format for almost all titles in the library.
- Available in both contracted and uncontracted UEB and EBAE.
- Customize lines and cells to accommodate most braille displays and devices.
A year of major braille upgrades
Over the past year, Bookshare has made significant strides in improving the quality of its braille output through major improvements to the underlying file structure. Here’s what’s changed:
Cleaner tables and lists
- All lower-level headings are now correctly hardcoded.
- Layout and formatting issues in tables and lists have been resolved.
- Blank lines no longer appear between headings and lists.
- Line breaks now appear before orphaned headings or the first line of a list.
Better spacing and page flow
- Inconsistent spacing issues — especially around headings and lists — have been resolved.
- Lists no longer start on the last line of a braille page.
A modernized technical foundation
- Fully upgraded to the latest version of Liblouis.
- Eliminated errors previously caused by Benetech custom fixes.
- Resolved or removed outdated custom layout modifications.
The result: braille books that are easier to navigate, more consistent, and closer to how a print reader would experience the same page.