DISPLAYING HEBREW AND GREEK ON A BRAILLE DISPLAY WITH JAWS

Sarah J. Blake

This site was compiled and is maintained by Sarah J. Blake.

The display of characters in braille is controlled in JAWS through the use of braille tables, files that instruct the program regarding the relationship of computer characters called Unicode characters and braille dots. Unicode is a system that enables computers to display a standard group of characters in a particular way regardless of what operating system is used or what program is running.

JAWS includes several tables to control the display of braille characters. If you are having difficulty displaying characters, first ensure that a Unicode table is selected. The following instructions from the JAWS help files will tell you how to do this.

  1. Ensure that Braille Translator is disabled. This is especially important if you are working with foreign-language documents, as well as any math and science texts.
  2. From the Options menu, choose Braille.
  3. Select an appropriate table in the Translation Table list. Be sure to choose a table with the word "unicode" in the title.
  4. Choose the OK button.

If this doesn't work, then the Unicode table may need modification. I found this to be necessary in my study. Since I live in the United States, I have chosen to modify the US_Unicode table so that it will display the characters for the languages I use. I am working with JAWS 9.0. My table is in progress and is updated as I have the time to work on it. I have made it available for those who wish to use it. It uses six-dot braille for Hebrew and Greek, though there may be an occasional stray eight-dot character left over if I failed to edit them all. (Greek characters which are unknown to me are still in eight-dot braille.) In Hebrew, bet, kaph, pe, and tav have separate characters in braille when accompanied by a dagesh; however, the dagesh preceeds all other letters, including gimel and dalet.

If you wish to install my table, first back up your own from C:\programs\Freedom Scientific\JAWS\9.0. This will allow you to reinstall your old table if you decide to at some point. If you lose your table, the only way to recover it is to reinstall JAWS.

Then you may download it and copy it to C:\programs\Freedom Scientific\JAWS\9.0. It should replace your US_Unicode.jbt file.

Right click to download. Table last modified 08/27/2008. Updates will be posted as they become available.

If you don't wish to install my table, here are the instructions for modifying yours.

  1. From the Utilities menu, choose Configuration Manager.
  2. From the Set Options menu, choose Graphics and Symbols.
  3. Select the Speak Character Value in Hex check box.
  4. Choose OK. Then, press CTRL+S to save your changes and press ALT+F4 to close Configuration Manager.
  5. Return to your document. Move the cursor to a lowercase letter "a" (type one if none are present) and press NUM PAD 5 three times quickly. JAWS should say, “Character U+61HEX”. If you hear anything else, do not proceed with these steps.
  6. Move the cursor to the character whose Braille representation you want to change and press NUM PAD 5 three times quickly to obtain the hexadecimal unicode value of the character. Be sure to make a note of this value, as you will need it in the next steps.
  7. Using a text editor like Notepad, open the currently active Braille table. The tables are saved in files with the extension .jbt in the folder where you installed JAWS (by default, C:\Program Files\Freedom Scientific\JAWS\X (where X is the JAWS version number)).The default Braille table file is US_Unicode.jbt. The table files specify the Braille representation for a number of symbols. The first section contains the basic 127 ANSI characters. It is then followed by unicode entries. The entry format is:

    8. U+XXX=YYYYYY

    Where XXX is the symbol’s hexadecimal unicode value, and YYYY are the Braille dots representing the symbol.

  8. If you want to modify a symbol that is misrepresented in Braille, then you must first find it in the Braille table. Using the search feature of your text editor, try finding the relevant entry. For example, to modify the Braille representation for unicode character 2018, you would need to look for the string “2018”. You would then find the following line:

    U+2018=34578

    This indicates that Unicode character 2018 is represented in Braille by dots 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8. To modify a Braille representation, replace the existing dot numbers with ones of your choosing.

  9. If a certain symbol does not appear at all on your display, then you can add it to the Braille table. The table entries are sorted according to their hexadecimal unicode values. If you are comfortable with hexadecimal numbers, you may want to add your entry in the appropriate slot. Otherwise, just add it to the bottom of the table. For example, if the symbol is reported as, “Character U+259HEX”, and you want to represent it in Braille with dots 3, 4, 6, and 8, your table entry should look like the following:

    U+259=3468

  10. After you have finished modifying the file, save it. Then, quit and restart JAWS. Your Braille table changes should now take effect.

Note: JAWS 9 can display multi-cell characters. If, for example, you wanted to define Unicode character 001 to display as dot 5 followed by the letter f, the line should read:

u+001=5 124

Note 2: If you need to compare Unicode character values to character names, use the following links:

Greek Extended Character Chart
This page uses Greek names for diacritics (oxia, varea, etc.) For reference:

Hebrew Unicode chart
This chart is similar to the Greek chart. Many symbols in this chart do not have representations in braille.

If Hebrew characters are still not displaying correctly in MicroSoft Word 2007, do the following:

  1. Go to the ribbon by pressing alt, then use the arrow keys to move to Office.
  2. Move first down once and then up until you loce Word options. Press enter.
  3. Move down to advanced.
  4. Press the tab key until you locate the checkbox that says diacritics. It is past all the "cut" options. JAWS may repeat the words "show document content" at this point unless you read the current line. Reading current line will allow you to determine the label and state of the various checkboxes. Check the diacritics box and then move to ok. Press enter to exit.

    5. The display of characters in Hebrew and Greek may also be negatively affected by the use of fonts that don't support Unicode characters. A number of Unicode fonts are available. To display Greek characters, a font which supports precomposed diacritics may be needed. I use Cardo, which supports both Greek with precomposed diacritics and Hebrew. I have not tried other fonts. If you are technically inclined, do some research and try some fonts.

    Return to the languages page.