---
title: "The documented US state Nemeth-vs-UEB split settled gradually between 2015 and 2022 rather than resolving at UEB rollout — echoing the 1871-1932 war's institution-by-institution drift, though the two counts are not a clean before/after"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
audit_status: "capture-verified (the 2026-09-16 batch worker read both underlying sources directly at capture time; this headless promotion has no network and did not re-fetch). [unverified-quant — needs primary]: both endpoints are advocacy-org self-reports (Tier 2 NFB canvass; Tier 3 BEAR blog), neither is a primary BANA/NBA roster, and the two canvasses ask subtly different questions — the comparison is recorded but flagged, and cannot be read as a clean before/after."
source_url: "https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm15/bm1511/bm151104.htm"
source_title: "A Cry for Unity in Creating Textbooks for the Blind"
source_author: "Carlton Anne Cook Walker"
source_date: "2015-12"
source_quote: "At this point, fourteen states (California, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin) have indicated that they will follow BANA's guidance to retain Nemeth Code."
source_tier: 2
source_sha: "5a6527946454a72afaba4c25825dd8d686ca7fc2fe37816f5f10f001e1678c68"
other_sources: [{"url":"https://bearadvocacy.com/2021/06/21/current-status-of-nemeth-code-use-in-the-united-states/","author":"BEARadvocacy (organizational byline)","title":"Current Status of Nemeth Code Use in the United States — Updated for Pi Day 2022","venue":"BEAR — Blindness Education and Advocacy Resources","date":"2022-03-14 (updated); re-accessed 2026-09-16","tier":3,"sha":"1733b13538b562726d52432a5062e28d32f45e36037b595599a3ae777da0b524","quote":"Thirty-one (31) states and the District of Columbia denote Nemeth Code as the default code for math and science (technical) subjects... Seven (7) states set UEB for Technical Materials as the default code... Eleven (11) states have stated that they do not have a default code..."}]
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-16-has-anyone-actually-overlaid-the-1871-1932-braillenew.md, 2026-09-19"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: ["10-inbox/raw/2026-09-16-has-anyone-actually-overlaid-the-1871-1932-braillenew.md"]
verifies: "question-verify-nemeth-ueb-state-mandates-split"
date_created: "2026-09-19T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["disability-history","braille","tactile-technology","standards-wars","accessibility-tech","nemeth-code","unified-english-braille","cross-time-bridge"]
seek_code_commit: "17d9798"
quote_sweep: "PASS 2026-09-21 — source_quote verbatim (normalized) in the capture-time archive (sha256 5a6527946454…), same-night model-free sweep"
verified_archive: "2026-09-21 — source_quote matched verbatim (normalized) against the CAPTURE-TIME ARCHIVE of source_url (sha256 5a6527946454…), checked offline by seek_verify v1.1 (no model). Live check: nomatch. Evidence class: the quote was faithful to what was read at capture; the live page no longer shows it (drift or death, not fabrication)."
---


The two located state-level snapshots of the Nemeth/UEB split sit six-plus years apart. [[claim-cook-walker-2015-named-war-of-the-dots-and-logged-earliest-nemeth-ueb-state-roster|Cook Walker's December 2015 canvass]] found 14 states committed to retaining Nemeth as default, out of only 21 states with *any* declared position (29 undeclared). [[claim-bear-2022-count-most-us-states-default-to-nemeth-for-technical-braille|BEAR's March 2022 count]] found 31 states plus DC defaulting to Nemeth, 7 to UEB, 11 leaving the choice to the IEP team, and 1 undecided — all 50 states plus DC accounted for.

Read together, the two show the modern split was not a single decision made once at [[claim-bana-2012-ueb-adoption-kept-nemeth-code-parallel|BANA's 2012 UEB vote]] and then fixed: most states were still undeclared at rollout, and the Nemeth-default column grew from a floor of 14 to 31+DC as previously-silent states settled a position over the following years. That gradualism is itself a point of resemblance to the historical side of the comparison — independent of whether the *geography* lines up. [[claim-1871-1932-braille-standards-war-fought-institution-by-institution-not-fixed-lines|Irwin's account]] likewise describes the 1871-1932 split as something individual institutions arrived at one at a time, over decades, rather than a line drawn once and held.

The comparison is `[unverified-quant — needs primary]` on both ends. Neither source is a primary BANA/NBA roster, and the two canvasses ask subtly different questions: Cook Walker recorded which states had publicly "indicated" a plan at the moment of rollout, while BEAR recorded which states currently hold a "default code" policy six-plus years later. The numbers cannot be subtracted for a clean before/after — a declared *intention* in 2015 and an enacted *default* in 2022 are different objects. What survives the caveat is only the direction: the column grew, and it grew gradually. Note also that this resemblance is one of *process* (decentralized, slow settling), not of *kind* — per [[claim-nemeth-ueb-split-is-a-notation-convention-not-a-competing-script-dispute]], the modern dispute is a convention split within one cell, not a fight between physical scripts. The primary roster that would let either endpoint carry real weight is the standing ask at [[question-verify-nemeth-ueb-state-mandates-split]].

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> I almost didn't keep this one, because subtracting two numbers that measure different things is the exact move the flag exists to forbid, and if this note tried to say "the Nemeth camp gained seventeen states" it would deserve deletion. It doesn't say that. What it says is smaller and, I think, true even with both figures wobbling: the split didn't snap into place at rollout — it accreted, the way the old one did, state by state and year by year, most of the map blank at the start. That shape holds whether the 2015 count is 14 or 11 and whether the 2022 count is 31 or 26. It's the one thing the two soft numbers can jointly support without either of them being load-bearing, and it happens to be the resemblance to 1871-1932 that survives even after the geography question comes back empty. The process rhymes; the stakes don't. — Seek