Hi all, I’m a Vision Specialist for a K-12 school district and my Middle Schooler is ready to learn the refreshable Braille display. For those who teach and/or have learned on this technology, how was it introduced? What activities did you do to practice using it?

Thanks for the insight!

Can anyone explain to me why refreshable Braille displays are so costly? It's a terribly important tool for those who need to read/write in Braille, and I would love to design something that is more economical. Cheers!

in Daredevil, there are multiple scenes where Matt Murdock clicks through a refreshable braille display at breakneck speeds, and always lands on the line he needs to read. furthermore, that one line clues him into far more information than could possibly fit into such a small line of text. this, obviously, seemed strange; until I realized that's really just what he wants people to think.

Daredevil's sole superpower is essentially an ultra precise rader, somewhat similar to a bat. the refreshable braille display makes a slight clicking noise every single time it refreshes. it follows than, that every time the braille display refreshes, Matt can read it, using his senses, without ever touching the display, or even pausing to dwell on a line.

the fact that he touches the display at all is just a habit he's built up as a formality. if he habitually touches the display right after he finishes reading it, no one will question the preconceived notion that he reads it via physical contact. no one, that is, except those of us who already know how he sees the world.

Hi. I was wondering if anyone knows of or tried any low cost refreshable braille displays? Has anyone tried the Orbit or Dot Mini? Thank you to those who respond.

Greeting, I am looking for online survey tools that is compatible with Refreshing Braille Display devices. I am developing a senior thesis centered on accessibility for DeafBlind, I am hoping to use the survey tools that DeafBlind can use RBD with it. My friend, who is DeafBlind Interpreter, informed me that not all survey tools is compatible with the devices which I am seeking for someone who have the knowledge of which survey tools have a full compatibility with RBD. You know what tools works that RBD can translate the form?

To clarify, do you use one? Why or why not? If you do use one, which one do you prefer? And any other thoughts on the topic? Are refreshable braille displays worth it? Are they fast enough? etcetera.

This is a project I'm currently working on for my degree. The idea is to move the bars on the side to control the individual Braille pins ( see link). The problem that I'm running into is that the little coils I'm using aren't quite strong enough to move the row/column select bars. Right now the plan is to scale up and use bigger solenoids but that kinda kills the real world usability. Is there some kind of stronger actuation method that I could use to avoid scaling up? Braille Board operation

Hello, /r/blind! I'm a sighted music professor, and I'm working to try to make my online utility, Braille Music Notator, as functional for as many users as possible. Though the utility is designed primarily to allow sighted music teachers to create, edit, and use braille music scores, it seems like a no-brainer to make the utility work well with assistive devices.

Anyway, the utility has a spreadsheet-style interface, and it is currently configured to send information about the currently selected braille cell to the screenreader. The information is descriptive: something like "Line 2, character 4: E quarter note."

For braille display users, I have a switch which instead sends the entire current line of braille. I don't have a refreshable braille display, but I have things working somewhat using Mac OS X VoiceOver's virtual braille display.

So my question is this: do any of you use text-to-speech and braille displays simultaneously? If so, are you aware of any programs that send one thing to text-to-speech and something else to the braille display? When my utility is in braille display mode, the entire line is also read by the text-to-speech software, which — since it's braille music — doesn't make a lot of sense. My utility uses ARIA tags to do this, and it doesn't look like ARIA has much control over it; my hunch is that the limitation is deeper in the system software than that.

Anyway, I appreciate any insight any of you can provide. Thanks so much for your help!

I'm a disability... enthusiast? How do you say that? I like studying and working with disabilities. As such. I LOVE braille, and I've been reading/basically transcribing for a while. (I fizzled out on the actual course for now, but I still love to read and write.)

I'm aware many people use text to speech, but I'm interested in finding a simple, relatively cheaper braille interface device. For reasons. I'm a physical learner besides, so writing/reading physically has actually been a great learning and note-taking tool, as a student. Also, it's really cool to me. If that's not somehow weird or insensitive...?

I can really only find personal organizers and PDA's online, but all I want is something to hook up to my laptop and phone. Ideally, that should also mean it's cheaper, correct?

What kind of product might you suggest? What might the price range, and any other access concerns you can think of be? Is there a way to find a used one, somewhere?

Any thoughts and multiple responses are greatly appreciated.

...also, please don't just not answer me. I don't know what to do with that.

I'm trying to source 5 electronically refreshable braille cells for a capstone project. The only supplier i've found that meets our requirements is http://metec-ag.de but they won't sell the parts in lots smaller than 50.

So i was wondering if anyone around here has any braille cells they would like to sell. I'll take as many as i can get.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a 40 cell refreshable Braille device?

I was using an Orbit Reader 20, but it was having quite a lot of issues and I only had it for a year and a half (and yes am sending it in for repair). I was wanting a 40 cell and was thinking of going with a different brand.

I will be using it mostly for reading BRF files, i don’t use Bluetooth or care about that really.

I have been trying to make a refreshable multi-line braille display, but to make it cost-effective, say around $200-$300, the refresh rate that I calculated to achieve was so slow, it takes around 1min for refreshing a 40cell, 25line braille display.

Will this speed be used for reading? If not suggest some applications for this display that won't need much refreshing.

I have a serious question regarding a refreshable Braille display. I found one that can be 3D Printed from the Website Thingiverse.com.

For people who are able to read Braille, would it be possible for you to read Braille if it were fed to your finger, instead of your finger sliding across the refreshable Braille display?

By that I mean, think of the Braille moving along a guide underneath your finger, while you hold your finger still.

Would this be far too unnatural and pointless?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/26/tech/mobile/first-braille-smartphone/index.html?c=mobile

TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F2ZQU07UJXA

>A mass-market version of the phone will have a screen which is composed of a grid of pins.

This has amazing applications for tactile feedback.

Even if it's 'just a razer hydra' imagine it's surface changing in your hands to match the object you're holding

This could add a whole new dimension to HUD replacement, when the player can literally feel how much ammo or health they have left

As a deafblind user that uses a braille display, I'm looking for advice for creating formatted documents on my iPhone. I've tried MS Word 365 but it seems that it doesn't capture everything typed and formatting things is time consuming because it doesn't recognize UEB type form characters for bold, italics, etc. I've considered using Markdown but there are a few characters I don't know how to create with UEB like back tick and the pipe symbol. I've also tried Textastic but that seems to be really slow to respond to input and misses a lot of the input too. I'm using an iPhone 13 mini with the latest iOS updates.

Hello, I am new to NVDA but noticed that my Braille display shows checkboxes differently than when I use Jaws. Is there a standard checkbox? It seems there should be!

Is using a braille display for the Russian language just as easy as English providing that you know Russian?

Does the German letter ß and ä show up on a braille display when using UEB and if so what does it show up as?

Dia Duit. (Hi) This might be a stupid question but does anyone here know what the cheapest Braille display that can be bought would be? I don’t need it to have a Braille keyboard or all the smart features that allow them to be used independently from another device. I live in Ireland and the option available to me are limited, extremely expensive, and have many of the features I see myself never using. I don’t qualify to get them through the NCBI as I am not legally blind but I am visually impaired and don’t use Braille very much in my everyday life however I really want to keep my Braille up just in case. Go raibh mile maith agaibh. (Thank you in advance).

I'll be having a blind coworker joining my team very soon, and I'll be onboarding them to our team. This is their first job out of college, so they don't yet have experience with the software we use in our business day-to-day. I know they're very intelligent and perceptive, but, everyone sometimes find this software challenging. (I'm often in the role of 'tech support' for my team.)

I am a sighted person who only uses JAWS/NVDA when doing software quality testing, so I am really worried about making our new hire feel welcome, and empowering them to be as effective as possible.

We use the following software heavily:

• Zoom
• JIRA
• Confluence
• Sharepoint

Is there any advice that experienced professionals who use JAWS and/or braille displays can offer me for helping to onboard the new team member?

Are there any essential plugins that might make things easier for them when using assistive technology to navigate those sites? Or tutorials for using those packages as a visually impaired user that I could potentially leverage to try to create a better onboarding experience for them?

We often require that people are 'on camera' for Zoom meetings so that we can see facial expressions and reactions to discussions, or when someone has 'raised their hand' to ask a question. Are there any practices that will help us to make sure that an visually impaired person is fully included in our calls and meetings?

Any advice would be appreciated. If there are things I can do ahead of their start date that might be helpful, I'm glad to invest the time!

Hello, i've been thinking of alternative/cheapest ways to make a braille display and i thought i would ask you as i personally don't know braille and don't know anyone that does as maybe someone attempted same thing as me? Im doing this mostly cuz of challenge and boredom

There are few methods i've thought of, i've not tried them yet but i thought someone who uses/used braille could see if it's feasible just cause the low cost? Most of these will be larger than standard braille as making it as tiny would increase the difficulty of manufacturing significantly or simply be a pain in the ass to use

1. Simply.. buttons

A device rows of buttons as small as possible (possibly touch buttons) with any kind of feedback (a sound, vibration whatever) that activates if the dot is present or not

This would be simple enough for making, especially in higher quantities and maybe touch buttons would reduce the cost with larger number of buttons aka larger displays, although im not an electronic engineer so i would have to check that

2. Even cheaper, using a computer keyboard

Basically use a normal computer keyboard with custom device, phone, tablet, laptop computer, etc .. and again some kind of feedback to signify if the dot is present

The phone or tablet is probably the easiest as it has everything builtin

3. A smartphone / tablet

This one is by far the simplest as it just requires a smartphone, it has builtin vibration motor, speaker, memory, processor so i just need to find some material that i could layer on top of the screen that will not impede the functionality of the touchscreen

The idea is to use the touchscreen as buttons as in first idea and make them how large you want and then yet again the feedback when it's touched, this would of course suck on a phone as it's quite small but on a tablet would probably be okay?

There was two crazier ideas of basically heating up the dots that are present but that is quite dangerous and hard to do, and to basically give you tiny tiny shock that you will feel when you touch a dot that is present but that is also quite dangerous if done incorrectly and also increases complexity without adding any benefits i can see

Im interested in your opinion, if i posted this in completely wrong place im sorry but i really dont know where to ask

I'll have a visually impaired coworker joining my team next week, and I've never had the chance to work directly with someone who is blind before. They will be using a refreshable braille display as well as JAWS screen reader software in order to work with us.

Our team tradition is to play games over Zoom on Fridays as a social team-building event; does anyone have suggestions of games that might work well, or be something we can adapt? It's very important that everyone on the team feel welcome and included. It is an optional event so the new hire might choose to opt-out, but, I want to make sure that they are always able to hop in and have a game that will work for them as an option. I'll of course be asking the new hire about what they prefer, but, would love to have ideas in case they go with, "Oh, whatever you all want to do is fine." (Which I'd totally sympathize with them being the new person on the team - often new people don't want to rock the boat!)

Are there gaming sites or games that are particularly accessible for those who are visually impaired and use a braille display or screen reader? Suggestions would be tremendously appreciated! I suspect any game sites that might use screensharing will be a nonstarter for them since I doubt that JAWS will be able to 'see' the content of the screen to read it aloud.

I'm guessing that our current favorite, GeoGuesser, is not going to work for them. Geoguesser shows an image of somewhere in the world and you have to figure out where. We could try to visually narrate what we're seeing, which might add some comedy and give us practice on alt-text, but, ultimately, might be super-boring for someone who can't see the picture.

We've previously played an adapted version of the party game, Mad Gab. I was thinking that might work since it uses the sounds of words and I could send our new coworker the card text over a private message to their braille display. Are there other party games that leap to mind as things I might be able to adapt?

For blind or visually impaired folks that work from home, have there been any team-building activities that were fun for you? Or at least gave you a good laugh?

Hi everyone. I am fully sighted and I am an engineer. I have some spare time in this pandemic and want to revive a shelved project.

I have a feasible concept of creating an electronic refreshable Braille display, weighs about 1 pound and costs about 50 dollars. It will also be about 5 milimeters thick. All materials can be easily bought except for some 3D printed chassis. I'm also planning to make it open source.

It will be 20 characters per line, 2 lines, so that would be 40 characters total.

I have read reviews of sorts from the past that blind people don't think Braille displays as useful and I was wondering if this project is worthwhile.

My question is how important is refreshable electronic display to the visually impaired? Please share some experience or any advice. Thanks.

Edit: spelling and words

Edit number 2: Click this link to my hackaday project

Can blind people that have to use a screen reader or braille display still navigate the file manager on their PC, Android or iOS device and can they move, edit, rename, compress/archive, files and folders?

So far I've tried Apple Books and Voice Dream Reader with varying success. They both seem to have quirks about jumping around unexpectedly. Scroll back a screen and you sometimes end up miles away from where you were.

What's your favorite and a little about why you like your choice over other options would be very helpful.

I'm blind with unexpected periods of complete deafness due to tinnitus so I use Braille more often than audio for reading.

I'm trying to source 5 electronically refreshable braille cells for a capstone project. The only supplier i've found that meets our requirements is http://metec-ag.de but they won't sell the parts in lots smaller than 50.

So i was wondering if anyone around here knew of any good suppliers of braille cells or want to combine orders.