Re: braille output hardware (jf)(long post)

[Dave Mielke <dave@mielke.cc>]

[quoted lines by emc.er on March 9, 2002, at 05:11]

Here are answers to some of your questions.

>1. Is a keyboard with scrolling braille 'home' keys available anywhere
>today?

Not that I'm aware of.

>2. Will speech output displace the braille tty completely?

No. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Deaf-blind people cannot use
speech. Braille provides random access whereas speech provides sequential
access.

>2a. Is braille reading speed faster than listening to audio?

Yes for some, and no for some. The one big advantage of braille insofar as
speed is concerned is the ability to jump to any place on the screen at will.

>3. Do all braille tty's cost many many thousands of dollars?

Yes (almost). There's an eight-cell display made by Handy Tech Elektronik
(Germany), brand-named the Bookworm, which isn't too expensive. There's also a
prototype display made by NIST (National Institute for Standards in
Technology), a division of the US government, which, if manufactured, should be
fairly cheap; you can check it out at:

    http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/isis/projects/brailleproject.html

>3a. If they were one tenth the cost would they become more prolific?

Yes, if sufficiently functional.

>5b.  Is it easier or necessary to use 2 or more fingers to read???

Braille can be read with one finger, but it's more reliably read with two. Each
can spare the other during moments of fatigue, the extra redundancy increases
error correction, and no time is wasted when ending one line and starting the
next.

>6. Do the graphic output grids work? There is a 64 by 64? grid for sale.

They're useful when non-text is encountered, but braille is much easier to read
than print. A graphic display would be most useful if it were able to
automatically (with an override) switch to braille when on text.

>7. Is there any braille tty that even scrolls the characters past your
>fingers?

See above regarding the NIST prototype. It uses a rotating wheel with several
braille cells around its perimeter. The top half (roughly) is exposed for
reading, and there's a single pin-repositioning mechanism at the bottom.

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