A new Internet service offered by a Danish organization provides conversion of print text to MP3 audio files or electronic Braille in a matter of minutes. RoboBraille, the Danish company, now has partners in five European countries, and has received £500,000 (about US$985,000) from the European Commission for the initial testing phase of the service. It is offered to users free of charge.

RoboBraille currently converts files that come in plain text, rich text, html, and MSWord formats. PDF documents will soon be accommodated as well.  

According to the BBC News Website, the RoboBraille service was processing about 400 requests per day in April, but the system can handle up to 14,000 requests per day. With the second phase of testing about to begin, RoboBraille’s developers hope more people will try the service, which will aid their tests. Official launch of the service is planned for sometime next year.

For more information, visit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6542441.stm http://www1.robobraille.org/websites/acj/robobraille.nsf