I am struggling to learn braille. Not so much learning the alphabet, but feeling the bumps correctly. I have got some of the way through the fingerprint course and I have a few labels around the house.
But I'm wondering - is tech a viable way to try to learn braille? I have never used a braille display but I did feel a couple at Sight Village last year. I liked the feel of the Orbit ones in particular as they felt much clearer than paper.
But it sounds like there may be a big learning curve to a braille display over and above the braille itself. Maybe the brailliant or mantis are good options because they have speech.
The qwerty versions also sound like they would remove a good chunk of the learning that would be needed. I'm not sure if getting to grips with the Perkins keyboard is a useful thing or not. I do have a Hable One which is a little different. I enjoy using it from time to time but I tend to jump back to the qwerty if I need to do anything substantial.
Is there a good option to use as a learning device?
Obviously the cost is a big issue as well and I am worried about spending a lot on something I never quite get my head around. But just curious.
In particular my long-term thought is that it might be something I could use alongside speech when I want to just check something for errors - in particular when coding it feels like it could be useful if I ever get fast enough. The thought of using a computer without audio feels like a bit of a fantasy that I am confident I could ever reach but it would be wonderful.
Comments
Absorbing Hobbies and Tactile Toys
I never thought of it that way, but of course my recent purchase of a tactile Rubiks cube is basically an absorbing and entertaining hobby and toy. It was supposed to improve my brain, somehow, but the only time it was actually solved was when I first got it out of the Amazon box. But I do love fidgeting with it and admiring its distinctive tactile faces. Amazing what's on the open market sometimes.
Following the traumatic loss of my dear feline friend Tab of seventeen years, which has totally gutted me, I think maybe I should fulfil a longstanding goal of learning the slate and stylus for myself in order to ground me a bit and maybe prepare me for the forthcoming nuclear winter, so I picked up a pair of them from Amazon and we'll see how it goes. They both appear to be of the traditional matrix type, but they get good reviews so I'm hopeful this will be a fun exercise for me. I already have a supply of Braille paper. I was somewhat surprised to find that the only option the RNIB offers for sale is the reusable plastic one from Versa with the optional embosser accessory and custom notebooks. They are more expensive though and I really don't like the idea of a dependency on custom notebooks, so I'll keep it traditional. I've never heard of this "magnetab".
And you're right, this is a terrific thread.
Sent from my iPhone, using Braille Screen Input, which though it can be annoying sometimes when it misregisters ghost dots, is more often worth it than not.
Got some new toys
So I now have an Orbit Reader 20. I was a bit worried when the youtube video started talking about going into menus and enabling bluetooth options, but I just ignored that - switched it on, went into VO Utility and added a bluetooth device and that was it, just worked. It's going to take a little while to orientate myself with it, but I can at least open up text documents and feel what it says. I was impressed how easy it was to setup. I will try pairing it to my phone later too. It's really interesting to see how this all works - simple things I din't really know like being able to feel where the cursor is. And the user guide was talking about dots 7 and 8 which were a surprise to learn about. I presume that's where the cursor is being shown. The noise doesn't bother me in the slightest and it is a lot faster at refreshing than I am at reading so the speed is also not a problem. It's a shame it's not usb-c but then maybe it's a little old to expect that. I'm looking forward to spending some more time with it. The braille is definitely quite a bit firmer and a little easier to read than print, although I have yet to read something that I don't already know what it says.
I also now have a couple of tactile toys. Firstly some weird oval things - there are 6 of them and they each have a different series of raised bits on them. Plus being blind-ready they all have lanyards. So I'm trying to just fiddle about with them in an evening. I had to swallow my pride a little bit when my wife gave them to me and said they were for 3 years and up.
I also have one of those tactile Rubik's cubes. I can't say I have even the slightest idea about how to solve it. But that was also the case when I could see. Sadly losing my sight hasn't suddenly made me really intelligent. I tried googling for tips but got a bit lost but maybe that's something to revisit.
My wife also found a company online that prints braille cards - so she gave me a braille birthday card that I am still trying to decipher. I think I've got most of it now but it's taken me a few goes.
Using Orbit on the Mac
I've found one thing with the Orbit - it seems that sometimes it will connect to the Mac fine and other times not. First time today I switched it on, then seemed to have to navigate to bluetooth and select it to make it work. I then switched it off and back on again and now that doesn't work. The manual says something about pressing select and right on the orbit to push it to bluetooth. I think this is the little d-pad between the 6 perkins buttons and the space bar - so right on that and the middle button together - but it doesn't seem to do anything.
Is there a correct way to do this?
The other thing that totally confused me - I had always presumed the first button in the Perkins keys would be 1. So I was pretty surprised to find it was 4. That will take a little time to wrap my head around.
I can't make any sense of the menus yet and I'm a bit scared of going anywhere near that for now. But I am liking the feel of the pins. They are much clearer than paper.
Perkins Keyboard
You probably have found by now the layout from left to right is:
7 3 2 1 space 4 5 6 8
The classic Perkins Brailler used 6 dots and was 3 2 1 space 4 5 6.
I am not sure of the reason, it likely had to do with mechanics for much the same reason we first ended up with QWERTY which intentionally slowed typists to keep manual typewriters and their flying arms from jamming.
Anyways when you hear Perkins keyboard layout, this is the standard.
Braille displays with speech
I'm beginning to understand why having speech in a braille display might be useful for learning. I think there is some information in the braille that isn't spoken. For example, I navigated in Bitbucket to a heading that said "Pipeline". There was quite a few characters that I struggled to make sense of, before I eventually found the word "Pipeline" at the end. Maybe it was trying to tell me about the heading markup.
Anyway, other than that I do like having a braille display for some reason. Maybe it just scratches that nerdy itch to have more tech for everything, but it's nice to turn it on for a couple of minutes here and there if I find myself waiting for something.
I just don't quite understand why it will connect first time, but if I turn it off and on again then it doesn't seem to want to reconnect to the Mac.
Tech Support
In case you need it, Orbit Research's tech support can be reached at [email protected]. They probably have more of an idea than anyone else.
They are pretty responsive. I have found some oddities with Orbit and Bluetooth. I don't have your display but just discovered the Reader Q40 doesn't seem to work with iOS despite the website and manual saying it does. Since I just bragged up their tech support I will also say: they've not solved this for me yet. If anyone else has it working let me know how!
Also, leave the display on all the time. Even when using speech I'll glance at it to verify something I heard like the spelling of a name.
Braille differences
I'm noticing a few differences with the Orbit and the braille I had (sort of) learned.
Punctuation in particular seems different. Is this because it is using computer braille? I seem to be finding numbers in the perkins keys that seem different the braille which I think is using the number identifier plus a, b, c etc.
Sorry if I'm being stupid again.
Thanks also for the orbit tech support email address. Bluetooth seems very hit and miss so I might give that a go. I do notice if I press select+right the display shows "bluetooth" so I think that key combination is right.
Re: Braille Differences
Without knowing your specific setup this is a hard question to answer. If I read your comments right you're using VoiceOver on the Mac? If you have done no configuration on VoiceOver, I think it defaults to computer braille. The letters are the letters, numbers are lowered, for instance 1 is dot 2. And there are no contractions.
Yes there are several Braille codes. Since we have 6 (or 8) dots for everything we don't have enough symbols to do everything. So different codes have been made for different purposes. Computer braille, grade 1, grade 2 liteary braille, Nemeth for math, music, now the new Unified Braille Code which is trying to be one code for everything... And I likely forgot something. And this is just English, of course other languages have codes as well.
braille codes
Thanks, Travis. You are right about my setup. I had another prod about VO Utility and found that it is set to "English (Eight dot) — System Input and Output:". I can see that I can also set it to UEB non-contracted or contracted. So presuming the default is Computer Braille, I guess I will stick with that for now as it's presumably the most efficient for this purpose, but handy I can change it if I want to try standard UEB down the line.
Orbit
I'm finding a couple of things a bit confusing.
Firstly, I think sometimes there are characters on the display that aren't spoken by VoiceOver. I think one time I read "hd" for heading but quite often I'm not sure what this is. I presume there is no way to get clarification about what is on the display at any given moment? Maybe this is where the brailliant with speech becomes useful.
I re-downloaded an app called Braille Scan. I had tried it before when I was using the fingerprint course. It just sat and plinky plonked for ages until my hand got tired of holding the camera straight and I gave up. I started it again yesterday and it told me it only worked with paper, but I tried it anyway and it just did the same thing as before. Shame - that would be quite useful.
The other thing is the panning controls seem a bit random. For example, I was looking at the build status on a web page and it said the first few words, but when I when I press right it just displays the same thing again. One time it did give me the rest but usually not. Is this normal or maybe a Mac bug?
I did get a response from Orbit about the bluetooth issues. They say I should turn the Orbit on before the Mac. This isn't really helpful but I've tried disabling bluetooth on the Mac, then turning on the Orbit, then enabling bluetooth again. It's worked both times but probably now I've said that it will stop again.
Braille and VoiceOver
Braille will be showing you more information than just the text of the line at times. The same way in speech you hear "button" or "link" or "heading level 3". This information is presented in Braille.
For example a heading level 1 of "AppleVis" will look like on the display: "AppleVis 1 hd".
Other common abbreviations that are appended are: btn button, lnk link, vlnk visited link sch search field, ed edit field. VoiceOver also seems to like to append "actions available" and "dropdown available" a lot, some of those rotor messages.
I suspect this is what you're finding confusing. Keep practicing the Braille symbol recognition and the rest of this will come to be natural.