The first of a series of recordings from the recent Six Dots to Success conference held in collaboration with Sight and Sound Technology Ltd.
This episode includes:
Linux: it powers everything from laptops to toasters, braille displays to coasters. You may have heard of the world’s most popular operating system if you follow technology related news, but what is it and how do you get started exactly?
In the second of our computer science themed Masterclasses, we explored how to get started using Linux with technologies that you’ll already be familiar with. We started by getting access to a test system to experiment with, then introduced everyone to a few basic commands that allowed us to perform some basic tasks.
For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page.
The blind community is not without its fair share of innovators: Louis Braille himself, of course, alongside many others who brought us the braille code we know and love today. Elsewhere, the blind community has invented talking book players, screen readers, notetakers and so much more.
For blind musicians, many of the most notable technological innovations in the past thirty years or so have come from Dancing Dots, makers of the Goodfeel braille music translator, Cake Talking scripts for the Sonar Digital Audio Workstation, and Sibelius Speaking.
In this episode, we catch up with its founder, Bill McCann. We talk about how he came to found Dancing Dots and what his products do, before discussing the advantages of his favourite braille displays – the QBraille XL and Canute 360 – and the mechanics of reading music using refreshable braille.
The Braillists Foundation recently held its first face-to-face event since the Coronavirus pandemic. In this episode, we catch up with some of the people who attended, and we also hear recordings of the three presentations which took place:
George Bell has been at the helm of Techno-Vision Systems for at least 35 years. In that time, he has brought many blindness products to the UK market, repaired numerous machines which would have otherwise been condemned, and provided countless hours of technical support. He is particularly well-known for his involvement with the Duxbury Braille Translator, not only as UK sales and support but also through his tireless oversight of the documentation. He also enjoyed a very fruitful relationship with Dancing Dots, and imported many of their products including the Goodfeel braille music translator.
As we approach the end of George’s long and established career, we thought it would be fitting to spend some time in conversation with him, picking out the highlights of the past three and a half decades and thinking about what the future might look like.
In our last Masterclass before the Christmas break, we’re delighted that Kim Charlson, Executive Director of the Perkins Library (part of Perkins School for the Blind), was able to join us again. Kim is author of the book “Drawing with your Perkins Brailler”, which includes step-by-step directions for creating 36 different drawings including shapes, animals and subjects with holiday and transportation themes.
In this session, she used Christmas-themed drawings to explain the concepts behind using braille cells to create pictures. Bring a Perkins and some paper and follow along and, by the end of the session, you will have your very own festive pictures made entirely of braille dots!
And don’t worry: if you heard Kim’s excellent session last year, this year’s pictures are brand new!
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.
We are delighted to be collaborating with Sight and Sound Technology for our inaugural online conference to mark World Braille Day. Find out more in this episode, and register for the conference here.
Find out all about the Braillists Foundation’s new Braille for Beginners On-Demand programme in this archive of the launch event which took place on Monday 10 October 2022.
