Credits and licences

We built this site on other people's work. Each part below names who made it, its licence and where to get its source.

This page records what we ship and why we believe it meets each licence. It isn't legal advice.

liblouis, the braille engine

The liblouis README says liblouis is free software licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 2.1 or later. Its command-line tools, which this site does not use, are under the GNU GPL, version 3 or later.

We ship two parts of liblouis 3.39.0: the library compiled to WebAssembly (liblouis.bf110e1a6899.wasm, loaded by liblouis.mjs) and 9 table files. Our build script compiles the library from the release source without changes and copies the tables from the release byte for byte. The accuracy page lists their hashes.

The licence text ships beside the engine: GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 (plain text).

Copyright notices in the table files

Each table file names its copyright holders in its header, and every one says it may be used under the GNU LGPL, version 2.1 or (at your option) any later version. Our build reads these lines from the served files, so the list below matches what your browser loads, word for word.

Getting the source

Section 4 of the LGPL 2.1 allows the library to be distributed in compiled form as long as its complete corresponding source comes with it or can be copied from the same place. To rebuild the engine we serve, you need:

To rebuild, download the source, check its SHA-256 and run build.sh. The script installs Emscripten 6.0.10 inside the project's engine/ folder, compiles the library with the listed flags, and copies the tables named in tables.list with every file they include.

If the release link stops working, email us at support@uebtranslator.com and we'll send you the same source file.

Using your own build of liblouis

Section 6 of the LGPL 2.1 lets a program that uses the library be distributed on its own terms when it uses a copy of the library at run time and would work with a modified, interface-compatible version of it.

Our own code doesn't contain the engine. Pages load it at run time as separate files from /engine/liblouis-3.39.0-1271f81ab0/. To run the tools on a modified liblouis, build it with the recipe above and serve your .wasm and liblouis.mjs in place of ours. You can do that from a saved copy of the site, or by setting your browser's developer tools to override those two files.

Emscripten

The loader liblouis.mjs and the runtime code compiled into the .wasm come from Emscripten 6.0.10. Its LICENSE file offers Emscripten under two licences: the MIT License and the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License.

Fonts

We set our text in Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, and dot numbers, Braille ASCII and hashes in Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono. Google Fonts lists the designers of both as the Braille Institute, Applied Design Works, Elliott Scott, Megan Eiswerth and Letters From Sweden. Headings are set in Bricolage Grotesque, which Google Fonts lists as designed by Mathieu Triay.

The two Atkinson Hyperlegible fonts are licensed under the SIL Open Font License, version 1.1, as the licence files for Atkinson Hyperlegible Next and Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono state. So is Bricolage Grotesque, as its licence file states.

• Copyright 2020-2024 The Atkinson Hyperlegible Next Project Authors
• Copyright 2020-2024 The Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono Project Authors
• Copyright 2022 The Bricolage Grotesque Project Authors

We serve the font files ourselves, so Google doesn't see your visit. The licence text is at openfontlicense.org.

Our code

We wrote our own code for this site, including the glue that passes text to the engine and reads its output. We release it under the MIT License.

Our code doesn't use or copy liblouis-js, the liblouis project's JavaScript wrapper. The liblouis-js README says the wrapper's own code, the part that is not liblouis or Emscripten, is licensed under GPL-3.0.

Braille cell drawings

Our own code draws every braille cell from data, on screen and in any SVG, PNG or PDF file you save, the printable charts included. You may reuse the drawings under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0). The CC BY 4.0 licence lets anyone copy, share and adapt the material for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as they give credit.

Credit them like this:

Braille cell drawing: UEB Translator (uebtranslator.com), CC BY 4.0

The licence covers the drawings. Which cells a piece of text becomes is the output of liblouis, under its own licence above.

The UEB rules

Rule statements follow the ICEB Rules of Unified English Braille, Third Edition 2024, written in our own words with a section reference. We don't reproduce ICEB's text or diagrams. ICEB offers the Rules as free electronic files that may be printed or embossed for personal use, from its UEB publications page.

Word list used for testing

The common-words check on the accuracy page runs 10,714 everyday English words through the translator. They are sizes 10 and 20 of SCOWL (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists) version 2020.12.07, by Kevin Atkinson. We keep the list, with SCOWL's full copyright file, in our test data and don't serve it to your browser. Here is the notice for the word lists:

Copyright 2000-2018 by Kevin Atkinson

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell these word lists, the associated scripts, the output created from the scripts, and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. Kevin Atkinson makes no representations about the suitability of this array for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

SCOWL's copyright file says these two sizes come from the Moby Words II package and Brian Kelk's “UK English Wordlist with Frequency Classification”, and that both are in the public domain.

The sources page records when each licence and document on this page was last checked.