One of the primary goals of this type of software is to produce a text file that resembles the print copy. While the document may appear as an accurate representation of the original, there may be important differences in the OCR document file. These differences will affect the format of the Braille document and must be checked at this stage in the translation process. Some obvious errors in formatting are easily edited, other are more difficult to see. While these hard returns are not seen in the word processor document, they may be very apparent in the Braille document.
Hard returns are one of the most powerful Braille formatting commands.
A Braille document is only 40 characters wide and the Braille translation software shortens and abbreviates combinations of letters. Unwanted hard returns will begin a new line of text where it is not required and will confuse the reader. Braille documents with unwanted formatting commands will force the Braille reader to guess the correct meaning of the text unless the problems are corrected at this step in the Braille conversion process. This distinction may appear to be trivial, but documents that are haphazard in presentaion will not meet the adademic institution's responsibilities for maandated accomodations under section 504 of the Rehabiitaion Act or the Americans with Disbilities Act. The obvious way to check for these errors is to use the command in the word processor to show the formatting commands and then to go through the document looking for these errors in formatting.