Permitted Printing

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What can I print?

KPU Library users may use the Braille printer to print personal documents and material within Fair Dealing. This could be documents such as your own notes or assignments. Instructors could use the embosser to print things such as course notes, presentation slide text, and other class material they've created. This service is not meant to support the printing of textbooks or full publications. 

Fair Dealing is a term from the Canadian Copyright Act, and it encompasses a set of parameters in which copies can be made. Our Copyright LibGuide describes Fair Dealing in detail. It says:  

Fair Dealing allows you to make copies for yourself for the purposes of education, private study, research, review, criticism, parody, satire, or news reporting, so long as your dealing is fair. 

and that

Under Fair Dealing you can copy and communicate in paper or digital format up to 10% of the work or:

• one chapter from a book
• one article from a journal issue
• one article or page from a newspaper issue
• one entry from a reference work (e.g. encyclopedia, dictionary)

Please visit the Copyright LibGuide for further details.

While we recognize that within the Canadian Copyright Act there are further exceptions provided to people with visual disabilities, our Braille embosser is not suitable for large scale print jobs. The implementation of this service is meant to provide equity in printing services for Braille users at KPU Library. Allowing printing within Fair Dealing means the library can support universal access to this service.

There are services—both non-profit and commercial—that have the infrastructure and capabilities to provide larger-scale Braille printing and access to Braille books and other material. KPU students may contact KPU Accessibility Services to inquire about educational supports available to them. 

Types of Documents

Microsoft Word documents (.docx) and plain text documents (.txt) are the formats best suited to use in BrailleBlaster. BrailleBlaster does not support printing directly from PDFs. 

Images, charts, and tables will not be printed by the embosser.  Formatting features, such as text size, font style (bold, italic, underline) are not always retained when you open your document in BrailleBlaster.  

The documents that produce the best print outs are simple Microsoft Word and plain text files with minimal formatting. Line breaks are maintained.  The first image below is an image of a MS Word document that will produce a good result (with use of line breaks, consistent font size and no formatting) and the second image is a MS Word document whose formatting (highlights, font styles, block quote, and images/figure) will not be maintained in the final result:

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BrailleBlaster, the program used to translate text, is designed to translate text into UEB (Unified English Braille), but please be aware there may be a margin of error in the translation.