RICHMOND — As First Baptist Church in Richmond prepared to introduce its new hymnal, Celebrating Grace, to the congregation nearly two years ago, it realized there wasn’t a Braille application for the new hymnal or plans to produce one.
The church had a three-volume Braille edition of its previous hymnal, and First Baptist members Mark and Melody Roane, who are blind, had translated about 50 hymns into an electronic format for use in worship. The church wanted to continue to provide an option for sight-impaired members. So leaders asked, how do we create a Braille hymnal?
Without volunteers from the congregation, a Braille edition of the hymnal would not have been economically feasible for First Baptist Church (Photo by Janet Chase) |
First they needed an electronic format for all the hymns. Since that was unavailable through the publisher, they started from scratch.
Robbie Hott, another First Baptist member, designed a web-based program for entering the texts of all 707 hymns and readings. Mark Roane suggested formatting guidelines for the Braille translation. Thirty-four First Baptist volunteer typists entered all the texts in one week.
The next step was proofing, word by word and verse by verse. A smaller volunteer task force took on this focused and arduous process, making sure everything was spelled, numbered, punctuated and formatted correctly. On July 1, 2012, the church received the final, proofed, electronic master hymnal document.
Mark and Melody Roane, members at First Baptist, have experience in translating hymns into electronic formats.
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But there was more. In the past year Roane has been formatting the electronic document for translation into Braille. This has been a challenge and a learning experience for him. Braille, like American Sign Language, uses shorthand. Rather than spelling out an entire word, there may be a symbol or single letter to represent a word.
Additionally, moving from verse to verse, repeating refrains between verses and entering page breaks and numbers require specific formatting. Roane received guidance from the staff of Richmond’s Braille Circulating Library, and expects the process toward embossing the Braille edition of Celebrating Grace to be completed soon.
Without volunteers from the congregation, the Braille edition would not have been economically feasible. The Braille Circulating Library is printing the hymnal for the cost of materials, which is being contributed by the Roanes.
The hymnal will be available in two versions. The electronic version is available now in its entirety. The hard-copy Braille embossed version is in production and will be available in the church’s library when it is completed.
Susan Marshall is administrative assistant for Christian worship at First Baptist Church in Richmond and a member of Winfree Memorial Baptist Church in Midlothian, Va.