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.
Braillecast
Free Braille Translators: Biblos, Sao Mai Braille and Send to Braille (Extra 71)
Whether you’re new to braille or an experienced braillist, reading is an important and fundamental process. To fully appreciate the brilliance of braille for use in daily life, reading is something you should enjoy and feel comfortable with. But what can you do to improve your reading skills once you have learned all the letters and perhaps some contractions as well? How can you enhance your reading speed and accuracy even if you’ve been doing braille for a while?
On Tuesday 20 June 2023, Chantelle Griffiths, Co-Founder and CEO of New Zealand’s Tactile and Technology Literacy Centre, shared some practical tips and tricks to get you on the right track with your reading, no matter how much braille you’ve done or where you are on your braille journey. There is something here for everyone.
We learnt:
What actually happens when we read and how reading by touch is different — or not — from reading visually.
How to press the “reset button” for your fingers and brain when you’re just not feeling it. Literally.
The fundamental braille technique you didn’t know you knew and how it enhances your reading.
The three C’s of braille reading; what they are and how they work together to help you connect the dots between your brain and fingers.
How playing the viola relates to reading in a straight line and how you can experience something similar yourself, even if you’re not a musician.
How to start from exactly where you are and enjoy the process.
Lots more practical tips, ideas and experiments you can try on your own.
This was a very practical session. If you’d like to follow along with the recording, please have some hardcopy or electronic braille handy and a couple of random objects that feel nothing like braille.
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.
There are two well-known braille keyboards on the market today, the Orbit Writer and the Hable One. What are the similarities? What are the differences? Which one would suit your needs best?
On Tuesday 4 October 2022, we were joined by a user of each keyboard. They told us more about how their preferred keyboard works and why they like it, and we learnt how they compare against each other.
Connor Scott-Gardner is an avid reader, and on Tuesday 6 September 2022 he demonstrated how to download books from RNIB Reading Services, transfer them to a braille display and read them. He also explained how Reading Services differs from other offerings from RNIB and elsewhere.
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.
