Speaker: Michael

Untangling the Wires: Why Connecting and Charging your Braille Display with USB Doesn’t Always Work (Extra 79)

USB, or Universal Serial Bus, has been a feature of braille displays for over twenty years. Originally a standard for connectivity, it has evolved over time to also provide power and charging capabilities. However, if USB is supposed to be Universal, why are some chargers faster than others, and why won’t some chargers and cables work at all?

On Tuesday 29 October 2024, we unravelled the answer to this far from straightforward question. Along the way, we covered:

  • A brief history of USB
  • Common USB connecters and how to tell the difference between them
  • How and when the USB cable you use may impact performance
  • What happens behind the scenes when you connect your braille display to a USB charger
  • What to look for when buying replacement cables and chargers
  • Whether or not a power bank is a viable solution for charging your braille display on the go
  • Things to try if your braille display won’t charge

The session was presented by Mobeen Iqbal from Taira Technology, an independent provider of bespoke and specialist hardware, software and support solutions. Mo has over fifteen years’ experience working with hardware of all shapes and sizes, from custom-built desktop and laptop computers to TV set top boxes and remote controls, and has a passion for improving the ease of use of technology for blind and partially sighted people.

Links from Mo

Comments in the Chat from Andrew Flatres

There are trade offs with having replacements batteries. In addition most braille displays have to have a medical certification which also plays a big role on deciding a replacement battery.

EU parliament has voted on a law that will require User replaceable batteries. I believe this should be in force by 2027. From a HumanWare perspective, we want to ensure products have a good life battery span and made light. An approach like the BI 20x where the battery is replaceable but held with two Phillips screw. We also have to consider battery collaboration. To respond to the medical certification, I will try and get a response from our team on this. This is a really good discussion.

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Free Braille Translators: Biblos, Sao Mai Braille and Send to Braille (Extra 71)

Following our exploration of braille translators during National Braille Week, we were delighted to be joined by esteemed assistive technology pioneer Dean Martineau. Dean is a long term braille user and has spent many years developing his own personal braille shorthand system.

In this Masterclass, Dean introduced us to the Biblos braille translator and demonstrated how he uses it to translate text into his personalised shorthand system. He also covered some more conventional uses of the program and compared it with other free translators on the market, including Send to Braille and Sao Mai Braille.

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Braille in the Technology Industry (Episode 43)

On Tuesday 15 November 2022, we hosted an incredibly informative panel discussion around writing software and working in the technology industry in general when using a braille display.

We heard from people in a variety of different IT rolls about the techniques they use, when they use braille and when they use speech, and left plenty of time for audience questions.

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Braille Without a Braille Display: Braille Screen Input and More (Extra 44)

If you have an iPhone, iPad or Android device, it’s highly likely that you can braille in grade 2 directly on the touch screen and have it back translated instantly – a perfect replacement for the on screen keyboard. In this episode, Matthew Horspool and special guest Chris Norman demonstrate how this works on both iOS and Android.

We also briefly explored other ways of entering braille without a braille display, including the popular Perky Duck program from Duxbury Systems.

This session was recorded on Tuesday 5 July 2022. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.

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Formatting Your Braille (Extra 43)

It’s often said in the industry that garbage in = garbage out, but what does this mean in practice?

On 17 May 2022, our Chairman Dave Williams held a conversation with Kawal Gucukoglu, who worked for many years as a braille transcriber at RNIB. They discussed the principals of effective braille layout – headings, paragraphs, lists, tables and so on – and how to implement them in electronic file formats to achieve optimum quality.

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Using Braille on the Internet (Extra 31)

Dave Williams, Chairman of the Braillists, explored how to use braille displays with various combinations of screen reader and web browser, unpicked some of the jargon that appears on the display, and explained how to navigate without a QWERTY keyboard or touch screen.

This session was recorded on Tuesday 7 September 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.



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JAWS and Braille: A Closer Look (Extra 29)

In Using Braille on Windows, we introduced you to the basics of making a braille display work with various screen readers. In this session, we took this to the next level in the first of an occasional series of Masterclasses looking at the braille settings of a particular screen reader.

This time it was JAWS. There are lots of settings and we weren’t able to cover all of them in an hour, so instead we reviewed some of the most common questions we’re asked, found the settings that relate to them, and explained what they do.

We covered:

  • Adding and selecting your braille display
  • Choosing your braille code and grade
  • Status cells and their use in structured mode
  • Reversing panning buttons and panning by paragraph
  • Using JAWS Braille In ™

This session was recorded on Tuesday 6 July 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.



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Notetaking: Making Notes for Others (Extra 15)

If you are required to take notes as part of a team, whether that’s in a meeting or for group projects, this session is for you! Led by Matthew Horspool, it guides you through using braille to take notes that are also visually accessible. We talked specifically about taking notes using a braille display, and writing Markdown in braille to format your notes.

This session was recorded on Tuesday 23 February 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.

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