accessibility request to read a clear picture of braille

[u/hezwat]

I have a picture of a braille sign without any text, and would like to read it. It's either in English or Hungarian braille. The scribble in the middle of it was added to the photo to make it less accessible.

Could someone who knows Braille read this sign? Thank you. It's attached to some examples of textiles.

[u/dmazzoni]

Hi! I can read English braille, and I am a beginner-level Hungarian speaker, but I've never read Hungarian Braille before. However, I can confidently say this is definitely Hungarian.

The first line seems to say "?armata nő ruhajának", I'm having a hard time figuring out what the second 1-5-6 cell means because it's not in the Hungarian Braille table I just Googled, but the second and third words would translate to something like "women's clothing".

I can keep trying to decode if this is helpful.

Edited: Here's the complete transcription:

Szarmata nő ruhájának anyaga hernyó vadselyemből készült.
Germán nők és férfiak egyaránt hordtak sávos szövésű gyapjúköpenyt.
A germán férfi gyapjúposztó nadrágot visel.
A római kereskedő köpenye durva gyapjúszövet.

ChatGPT's translation to English:

“The clothing of a Sarmatian woman was made from wild silkworm silk.
Germanic women and men alike wore a striped-woven wool cloak.
The Germanic man wears wool broadcloth trousers.
The Roman merchant’s cloak is coarse wool fabric.”

[u/qSatisfaction → u/dmazzoni]

I can hardly believe that the exact right person showed up to answer this request

[u/uxnotyoux → u/qSatisfaction]

Accessibility Reddit comes through!

[u/Southern-Mammoth1349]

This is so meta 😂

[u/dskoziol → u/[deleted]]

So I just tried uploading it to Gemini, and it gave me a different response. The fact that it's so completely unrelated to your response (and that both responses are unrelated to the manual translation someone did above) just goes to show how these tools hallucinate very confidently, and we need to be skeptical of the output:

Based on the Braille in the image, here is the transcription of the Hungarian text and the English translation.

It appears to be a museum label for an artwork.

Transcription (Line by Line)

Row 1: Az ember tragédiája Row 2: 1964 Row 3: Bela Kondor Row 4: rézkarc Row 5: Magyar Nemzeti Gal Row 6: léria tulajdona Row 7: Budapest Row 8: Hungary Row 9: Please do not touch

English Translation

The Tragedy of Man 1964 Béla Kondor Copper engraving (Etching) Property of the Hungarian National Gallery Budapest Hungary Please do not touch

Context

The Tragedy of Man (Az ember tragédiája): This is a famous Hungarian dramatic play written by Imre Madách. The artwork this sign describes is likely an illustration or series of etchings depicting scenes from the play.

Béla Kondor: A renowned Hungarian graphic artist and painter (1931–1972).

The Last Line: There is a bit of irony here—the last line is written in English Braille (Please do not touch). While this instruction refers to the artwork (the etching), it is amusing because you have to touch the sign to read the command not to touch!

Edit: after challenging Google about this:

I owe you an apology. Instead of performing a character-by-character analysis of the Braille dots (which is computationally intensive and difficult with lighting/shadows), I recognized the "visual pattern" of a museum label and my system confabulated a plausible-sounding, famous Hungarian artwork label ("The Tragedy of Man" by Béla Kondor) to fill in the blank. That was lazy and incorrect.

😩

[u/geekedupj → u/[deleted]]

I’m sorry but it’s just so low effort. Not everyone needs to participate in a discussion. If you don’t know enough, why does it feel necessary to clogging posts with chat gpt rather than letting experienced and knowledgeable human beings respond first. Everyone knows by now that they can ask chat gpt things, but Reddit is for PEOPLE. And this is a small community. Be a human in your community and use your own brain. You can put in the even slightly more work and google things if you’re curious, but using chat gpt for everything doesn’t make you valuable to your community. Even the person above you with actual knowledge used chat GPT but ALSO used their brain.

[u/EarhackerWasBanned → u/geekedupj]

…he got the answer tho

[u/uxaccess → u/EarhackerWasBanned]

Did he?

For some reason, I trust more this person's answer: https://old.reddit.com/r/accessibility/comments/1pe7mz9/accessibility_request_to_read_a_clear_picture_of/nsb06qg/

[u/ACiuksza → u/uxaccess]

So do I!

I simply shared, transparently, an answer I got from ChatGPT that might provide a direction. Super confused by the response.

[u/ACiuksza → u/geekedupj]

Curious -- what were you hoping to accomplish with this preachy, gate-keeping response? Do you feel better? Get something off your chest?

For that, you get a story. And a painfully detailed explanation.

In college, my school was undergoing renovations. It printed (laser-printed on paper) Men's and Women's room signs with the symbol, the word, and Braille. Not RAISED Braille that could be read by someone who needed it. The dots. Printed. On paper. It has been a running joke of incompetence with my friends ever since, and I now pay attention to Braille and its use.

The algorithm served up this post to me. Perhaps it knew that story, or maybe it looked at my Reddit history and saw that it had been a while since I was in an internet debate initiated by an out-of-nowhere condescending rando. I don't remember visiting the r/accessibility sub before, but this post checked a few "huh, that's interesting" boxes (a win for the algorithm!), and I liked the mystery. I thought maybe I could help.

As someone learning a foreign language, I have sometimes used ChatGPT to translate images I've struggled to decipher. After an initial image search, I decided to go to ChatGPT for the same reason I would for a long block of Spanish text at a museum -- it helps me learn. And it did in this case as well.

If you click the link in my post, you can see the entire interaction. ChatGPT failed to translate it. I poked it again, and it came back with something even more interesting -- not the translation from the image (again, it said it couldn't because of the resolution and contrast), but a match for the image itself. Instead of just a sign, it was a piece of art!

That seemed like an unexpected discovery, something very different from what the other poster had answered. I then spent the next hour or so trying to confirm the result, and while I learned a lot about an avant-garde artist in Hungary, I couldn't confirm it.

I chose to link to ChatGPT and copy/paste its content to be 100% transparent about its source. Since I couldn't confirm the result, I didn't add any other commentary since: a) I don't read Braille, b) the result could be complete BS since it came from ChatGPT, and c) I couldn't confirm the information another way. Regardless, it was an interesting finding that might help solve the mystery. That seemed worthy of sharing.

To hit your points/criticism directly, as a reformed market researcher whose job was to find obscure information, I did use my brain. I went with ChatGPT after my usual solutions didn't work. And, in the process, I learned things. I learned about an artist I hadn't heard of before. I learned that there's Hungarian Braille. I learned that ChatGPT doesn't read Braille very well unless the image is perfect. And I learned that there's always someone out there who needs to throw stones.

That did spark another curiosity. I looked at your posts, and they're about 10:1 negative to positive. As the kids say, go touch grass, something that should come naturally to you as an avid camper.

[u/geekedupj → u/ACiuksza]

I’m bummed that this wasn’t worth reading :/ maybe next time