Je vais parler en anglais, just to save a bit of time.
My name is Jen Goulden, as you heard. I have a master's degree in linguistics, and I work for Canada Revenue Agency. I'm a certified Braille transcriber, and a proofreader as well. I work in English and French. I'm here today, also as you've heard, representing the Canadian Braille Authority. I'm also here partly because I live in Ottawa. We have members from all across the country, but I live here, so I'm here today.
What I want to say is very short. I don't have much to say except that the standardization of Braille in French...well, in English, or in any language for that matter, only serves to improve efficiency of transcription. It allows transcription to happen more quickly, more effectively. It's more cost-effective because the software can do more. Less human involvement is necessary, which makes things go faster and again is less expensive.
The benefits of standardization are many. It also means that students can access more information. For example, in the standardization of English Braille, I can get something from England that we may not have produced here.
A lot of good things are being done in Quebec. There's some funding from the provincial government. This is a really good thing. The unfortunate thing is that because provinces have jurisdiction to set their own standards on this, particularly in education, students outside of Quebec, be they francophones, or anglophones studying French, don't have the same kind of access. They don't necessarily have access to
an abridged braille in French.
So whether they're students attending a French-language school, or whether they're English students in immersion, or simply anglophone students studying French as a second language, they aren't necessarily going to have access to this level of Braille. The problem with that is that those of us who aren't able to access regular print are already limited in the material that we can access. So as braille abrégé is the standard, both in English and French, it's what you'll get unless you specify when you order something. Not as much is available in uncontracted Braille, so basically what's happening is these students are being limited even further because they aren't able to read this level of contracted Braille.
I can attest to this as an anglophone student who grew up in Ontario. I took French all the way through school, and I had to teach myself braille abrégé as an adult. I bought a book and I taught myself. I was able to do that, but it would have been better, and I may have had more opportunities, more access to information, if I had learned contracted Braille while I actually was a student.
So the summary of what I'm saying is just that there needs to be--you would know better how this works than I would--a federal way of ensuring that students across the country have access to the same things because there are good things happening; it's just that not all students have access to them.
That's essentially what I wanted to say. There are members of the Canadian Braille Authority board, Pierre Ferland is one, and he's actually from Quebec.... There are people who could give you probably a whole lot more detail, and probably even more statistics. I know this person in particular has worked on the standardization process, so definitely we are open to any questions you would want to ask. You can feel free to contact us at any time.
Thank you.
Merci. C'est tout.