Skip to content

Liblouis

The Liblouis software suite provides an open-source braille translator, back-translator and formatter for a large number of languages and braille codes. It is a set of libraries designed for use in any of a number of applications, both free and commercial. It is written in C so that it does not require a runtime environment and hence can be used in applications written in high-level languages such as Java and Python.

News

04 Mar 2024 Liblouis Release 3.29.0

A lot of hard work by Andrey, Anthony, Attila, Bert, Bue and James went into this release. We have many improvements for UEB, better support for Belarusian and Ukrainian literary braille, a major upgrade for Turkish and miscellaneous enhancements for Kannada, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto and Malay. There is also a brand new table for classical Greek for Spanish braille readers.

04 Dec 2023 Liblouis Release 3.28.0

This release manages to bring as many new features, table improvements and bug fixes as we haven’t seen in a long time. There are a number of major bug fixes that Bert worked on that fix bugs and inconsistencies. On the table side there is a new table for Filipino contracted braille, James has tirelessly been working on UEB improvements and (as usual) Attila worked on the Hungarian tables.

02 Nov 2023 Liblouisutdml Release 2.12.0

This Liblouisutdml release brings major improvements to Nemeth Math handling thanks to Attila Hammer and Norbert Markus. It also adds support for liblouis 3.27.

Braille translator and back-translator

Liblouis is an open-source braille translator and back-translator named in honor of Louis Braille. It features support for computer and literary braille, supports contracted and uncontracted translation for many languages and has support for hyphenation. New languages can easily be added through tables that support a rule- or dictionary based approach. Tools for testing and debugging tables are also included. Liblouis also supports math braille (Nemeth and Marburg).

Liblouis has features to support screen-reading programs. This has led to its use in numerous open-source and proprietary screenreaders such as NVDA, Orca, BrailleBack and JAWS. It is also used in some commercial assistive technology applications for example by ViewPlus.

Liblouis is the translator of choice for Benetech’s Bookshare, providing braille access to more than 350,000 books to members worldwide. Bookshare currently offers titles in braille in more than a dozen languages, with the ability to quickly add new languages as translation tables become available.

Liblouis is based on the translation routines in the BRLTTY screenreader for Linux. It has, however, gone far beyond these routines. In Linux and Mac OSX it is a shared library, and in Windows it is a DLL.

Liblouis is free software licensed under the GNU Lesser GPL.

Language bindings

The software has interfaces to a number of programming languages. There are known bindings to C, Python, Java and Javascript.

Braille formatter

Liblouisutdml is an open-source braille formatter. The formatting can be configured via a style sheet. By incorporating Liblouis it provides the capability of translating any XML or plain text file into properly transcribed, embosser-ready braille. This includes translation into grade two, mathematical codes, etc.

Liblouisutdml is free software licensed under the GNU Lesser GPL.

Braille production

There are several braille production systems based on Liblouis and/or Liblouisutdml.

BrailleBlaster, a joint project between ViewPlus Technologies, American Printing House for the Blind and Abilitiessoft, is aimed at hands-on production where every detail of the Braille is controlled via a graphical user interface.

DAISY Pipeline, backed by the DAISY Consortium, is aimed at automated, hands-off, high-volume production on the server.

Sao Mai Braille, a rich text editing and Braille translation software for Windows, is developed by Sao Mai Center for the Blind, a non-profit organization based in Vietnam.