Ho il piacere di comunicarvi che, grazie al supporto e al Sostegno di Pedro Zurita, segretario generale dell'Unione Mondiale dei Ciechi dal 1986 al 2000 e personalità di spicco per i ciechi di tutto il mondo, a luglio abbiamo inviato la candidatura di Biblos per il concorso internazionale Braille21 organizzato dall'Unione Mondiale dei Ciechi.

Di seguito vi inserisco il bando e il testo a Sostegno della candidatura di Biblos, che abbiamo scritto io con Traduzione inglese di Pedro Zurita, per la mia parte, e Pedro Zurita per la sua.
L'internazionalità di Biblos si nota anche in questa occasione: un Progetto Italiano sostenuto da Pedro Zurita, stimatissimo mio grande amico spagnolo.

Non ci aspettiamo nulla, quel che verrà sarà comunque buono. E' stato utile partecipare per far conoscere la presenza di un prodotto Italiano così di alto spessore.
La politica incoronerà il vincitore di questo concorso. Per ciò che ci riguarda Biblos ha già vinto, e se le due cose dovessero coincidere tanto meglio, il mondo avrà fatto un passo avanti.

Biblos, Giuseppe Di Grande e Mr Zurita: cittadini del mondo.

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World Blind Union
WBU Braille21 Award

The World Blind Union (WBU) is a worldwide movement of people who are blind or low vision, acting to eliminate prejudice, promote belief in the proven abilities of blind and low vision persons and achieve full participation and equality in society.

The World Congress Braille21 will be the most significant event focused on innovation, promotion and development of Braille for a generation. Participants from all over the globe will gather to discuss the development and relevance of Braille and the outcomes from the congress will act as a framework for innovation in Braille as the primary global tactile medium.

In recognition of the prominence of the event, the WBU is creating an award to celebrate innovation in the affordability and accessibility of Braille throughout the world.

The award will be presented at the World Congress Braille21 to be held in Leipzig, Germany - visit www.braille21.net for further information. Shortlisted nominees will be expected to register for the congress and should be able to bring any developed technology to the event.

The award will be given to a service, project or technology which meets the following criteria:

1. Delivers defined global benefit for all who can make use of Braille
2. Presents a unique service or technology which will enhance the use of Braille throughout the world
3. Improves the affordability of Braille technology
4. Can be easily accessed and used by blind people throughout the world
5. Can be demonstrated to the awards committee as being sufficiently developed to offer benefit to blind and partially sighted people

Up to 5 short-listed nominees will be given an opportunity to present to the congress and the award will be presented sufficiently early in the Congress programme to allow for publicity to be arranged.

The award-winner will have an opportunity to meet with influential people from key organisations who may be in a position to assist with the further development of their proposal. This opportunity may be arranged following the congress.

The nominations process commences on 15 March 2011 and will close on 31 July 2011. Completed applications are to be addressed to the WBU President and must be received on or before 31 July 2011. Applications should be marked 'Attention to the President - Braille21 Award' and should be supplied in electronic form using Microsoft Word to info@wbuoffice.org taking into account the need to provide information in accessible formats.

Self-nomination

First name: GIUSEPPE
Last name: DI GRANDE
Organisation or company if applicable:
Address: OMISSIS
Country: ITALY
Telephone: OMISSIS
E-mail: OMISSIS
Website: https://www.digrande.it/

Description of service, project or technology

(Provide a brief description of the project, service or technology, describing how it meets the award criteria -up to 500 words)

Biblos is a comprehensive Word processor usable by everyone, both sighted and blind. It contains an innovative system to translate and print Braille documents.
Biblos is also capable of printing tactile graphics.

Giuseppe di Grande is a professional programmer having a multifaceted Computer experience, both prior to his becoming blind and thereafter. He lost his sight when he was 22. Giuseppe di Grande began developping in Biblos features related to Braille late in 2007.

Biblos has generated a keen interest in people to automatically print Braille with it. The relevant Software has already been fully developped and it is constantly being upgraded. It is being utilised by many users, ranging from school pupils to teachers in order to selfsufficiently produce school textbooks in Braille. Some Braille printer dealers in Italy include Biblos as part of the overall outfit of their printers.

Giuseppe di Grande has developped Biblos without benefitting from any private or public financial subsidy and he has only taken maximum advantage of his twenty year Computer expertise.

One of the strenths of Biblos is its capability to print in Braille standard files at significant speed and with remarkable simplicity. A user can open files in the most popular document formats or he may create them using the usual standard writing techniques. All along the Braille translation process, Biblos carries out his work in a totally transparent manner respecting the whole original document layout. Thus the user succeeds to print a document in Braille with a single click. From a single original document, without any change, you get the possibility to read the document on the screen, to get an audio copy, to get an inkprint copy and a Braille copy and all of them with an excellent quality.

Biblos has had the commendable merit of rendering Braille accessible to everyone. It has made familiar with Braille sighted people not having any prior particular experience with it. This latter feature has become very visible in school environments where both pupils and teachers can operate with a common tool.

Biblos uses optimally Unicode and this enables the writing and printing Braille in any language. The actual version has already preset many Braille tables: Italian and English (uncontracted and contracted), French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian, Esperanto. Biblos can print musical scores from Bme2 (italian project), maths of Braillemat (italian project), and Lambda (european union projecct). It can print in Braille files the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA). Biblos can be used to read and write documents in classical Greek, both employing synthetic speech and Braille displays, and had them brailled.
You may get within a few minutes a paper copy in Braille in classical Greek, exploiting many Internet resources for that end. All letters and diacritical signs are fully respected.

Biblos lets the creation of Braille tables of any language in the world. A user may himself add any new Braille table or change the preset ones. A powerfull regular expressions can be utilised into every Braille code to make an intelligent Braille translation.

Biblos is a flexible and customisable tool by any user. Biblos adjusts to your personal expertise and it can be used by beginners and advanced users.

Besides automatically translating into Braille any character, Biblos fully respects the inkprint paragraph formatting, font styles, bulleted and numbered lists, tables, tabbed text, and many other formatting features. Biblos is outfitted to print tactile graphics taking file images, scanned images or designing vectorial graphics.

Braille producing functions are only a small part of the overall possibilities of Biblos. Biblos has many helpful features for blind users, such as the production of audio books in MP3 and DAISY and spelling proofreading. You may also easily surf with it given Internet sites, Biblos is an outstanding schooling tool too.

Can the project, service or technology be examined by the awards committee before end August 2011: YES

(If yes, give details of how the project, service or technology can be examined by the award's committee)
Download installation (direct): https://www.digrande.it/Biblos.aspx

Please confirm that it will be possible for you to bring any developed technology to the World Congress Braille21: YES

Supporting statement

First name: PEDRO
Last name: ZURITA
Organisation or company if applicable:
Address: OMISSIS
Country: SPAIN
Telephone: OMISSIS
E-mail: OMISSIS
Website:

Relationship to nominee (customer, organisation of blind people, etc):

Will the supporter attend the WBU Braille21 Congress?

Statement in support of nomination

Please enclose a statement (500 words maximum) in support of this nomination. The statement should be from a Braille user or group of users and should emphasise the importance of your innovation. Please be aware that the awards committee may seek assurance concerning the veracity of the statement.

Pedro Zurita and the Braille production feature of Biblos
Even though I knew before late 2007 that Biblos existed there as a mainstream Word processor which contemplated very well the special requirements of blind people I started using it actively when I learnt that its creator Giuseppe di Grande had added features to easily produce Braille material on paper. I have no expertise in Computer matters but I am a very motivated Computer user. On the other hand my familiarity with services and technology for the blind throughout the world and my mastery and frequent use of a few languages place me in a rather special position to assess the appropriateness of any Computer tool designed to produce Braille from Computer files.

I have been using Biblos to produce Braille on paper for the past four years in Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, esperanto and occasionally in a few other languages. It has been a simple and quick process to effectively adjust my Braille printer to produce material with the appropriate format.
I have created my own personal set of signs to prefix toned syllables in Chinese using the official transliteration writing of that language using the English alphabet. It is very easy to create tables in any language because Biblos fully exploits the Unicode signs. One of my immediate goals is to use it to produce Russian.

Biblos is entirely based on Windows and it fully respects the file you have for inkprint purposes. To learn to use it and to utilise it is indeed very easy. However it is potentially a most powerful Software. Since a few months I also employ with great satisfaction and success its capability to generate embossing of graphics. I could thus print on paper several Chinese characters. I am very aware I cannot use Chinese characters to read but this is an excellent means to perceive the logogram shape with  my fingers. I could have the Chinese logograms downloaded from the Web as Internet Unicode symbols.

Occasionally I use Biblos to convert texts into MP3 or DAISY files.

Biblos is beyond any doubt a revolutionary Braille translation and production tool, simple and powerful and I take a special pressure to nominate Giuseppe di Grande for the WBU Braille21 Award. This well deserved recognition will encourage him to keep tirelessly upgrading this Software.

Per ulteriore supporto ci si può iscrivere nel Gruppo di Biblos su Facebook.