Proposed Gurmukhi-to-Braille Mapping and Preprocessing Rules for Grade 1 Braille Conversion of Punjabi Text
Keywords:
: Braille conversion; Gurmukhi script; Punjabi accessibility; Bharati Braille; Grade 1 Braille; text preprocessing; non-Unicode font processing; visually impaired educationAbstract
The conversion of Punjabi text written in Gurmukhi script into Braille is an essential step toward ensuring educational accessibility for the visually impaired community. Existing Punjabi-to-Braille converters are limited in two important respects: they accept only Unicode-encoded input, and they rely on incomplete character mappings that do not address the practical disambiguation rules used by Braille production facilities. This paper proposes a comprehensive Grade 1 Braille mapping for Gurmukhi script and introduces a set of preprocessing rules that resolve ambiguities arising from the shared use of Braille codes across multiple characters. The proposed mapping covers independent vowels, consonants, dependent vowel signs (matras), conjunct characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and special symbols. Key contributions include: (i) a modified mapping for the retroflex nasal character ਣ to eliminate conflict with the numeric prefix code ⠼; (ii) context-based disambiguation rules for Braille codes shared by multiple characters; (iii) preprocessing rules for handling mixed numeric-alphabetic sequences, arithmetic operators, and conjunct consonants (Paar-ਰ); and (iv) an extended character encoding scheme for special symbols using a prefix convention. The paper also describes integration with an existing ASCII-to-Unicode font conversion module, enabling the system to process both Unicode and legacy ASCII-based Punjabi text. The proposed framework provides a principled foundation for automated Grade 1 Braille conversion of Punjabi and serves as a basis for future Grade 2 converter development.
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H. Samota and N. Joshi, "Exploring the landscape of Punjabi to Bharati Braille translation: A comprehensive examination of challenges and prospects," Int. J. Modern Res. Eng. Technol., vol. 8, no. 10, pp. 1–8, 2023. Available: www.ijmret.org
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