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How to use AXBrailleMap and AXBrailleMapRenderer

By Tyflos Accessible Software, 16 March, 2023

Forum
App Development and Programming

Hello mates

I want to include in my apps a better experience for braille users.

I found AXBrailleMap and AXBrailleMapRenderer elements but I have problems to use them

I posted some messages in Apple developer forum and StackOverflow but I have not received any good answer.

Does anybody know how to use AXBrailleMap and AXBrailleMapRenderer with Swift or ObjectiveC?

Thanks in advance

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Comments

AXBrailleMap and AXBrailleMapRenderer

By emassey

1 week ago

I can't really answer how to incorporate these functions into a user interface, but from their description, it doesn't seem like these are what you're looking for. They are for representing and rendering two-dimensional grids of braille dots for braille displays that have multiple lines. The word map is not used in the sense of a geographical map of a place, but in a sense used more in math and computer science of a data structure representing something more complex than a list, in this case a grid of braille dots of different heights. Two-dimensional braille displays are very rare; the only one available to the public is the Orbit Slate, with either 3 lines of 40 cells or 5 lines of 20 cells. However, I don't think the Orbit Slate supports AXBrailleMap and it would not be big enough to display a geographical map anyway. The Dot Pad from Dot Incorporation is advertised to support this API, but there is no way to buy it right now. There are also the Graphiti and Graphiti Plus from Orbit Research, but there is no information on whether they support this API or not, and it does not seem to be possible to buy those either. All the other braille displays are only one line, so this API would not work for them. To make a map accessible in braille on iOS would probably be a very difficult task, because you would probably have to just have a big text area with characters meant to convey the structure of the map in braille, and then be able to adapt your representation for different sizes of braille displays (20 cells, 32 cells, 40 cells, ETC), and I am not sure it would be possible to represent a complex map in this fashion even if you let people zoom in and out and hide the smaller details in the larger view and let people display smaller areas with more detail. Apple makes its own maps kind of accessible with Voiceover, but to get an idea of the structure requires moving your finger around the touchscreen and cannot be done in braille.

Why do I want to use it

By Tyflos Accessible Software

1 week ago

Hello, I want to change the braille representation of some components. For example, a progress bar instead of a number with the percent character I want to draw an empty rectangle with 5 characters for width and I want to fill from left to right to represent the progress.

Could you not have five separate words that switch at every 20 %

By The Oliver Kennett

1 week ago

Could you not have five separate brail words that switch at every 20 % EG and sign x x x y sign, then for sign x x x y sign, then for sign for sign x x y sign and so on? This might be a simpler method, though less elegant.

Solution should be compatible with multiple languages and speech

By Tyflos Accessible Software

1 week ago

The problem is I want to use a solution that should be compatible with all languages: the braille character with 6 dots is different in braille table for English and Spanish.

The other problem is the text for the TextToSpeech using the VoiceOver's voice and the output in braille.

The attribute accessibilityLabel is spoken with the TTS and read in braille.

Can I separate braille and voice? I didn't find any way to do this and I hope AXBraille can be a solution

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