Many listeners to this podcast will already be familiar with the Orbit Reader, which has been available in the UK since around 2018. Orbit Research have since expanded their product portfolio to include a range of other braille input and output devices. However, RNIB recently took the decision to discontinue Orbit products, leaving many customers anxious and disappointed.
One company which has stepped into the breach is Aspire Consultancy, and in this episode, we’re joined by its proprietor, Graham Longley.
Braillecast
World Braille Day 2025: Aspire Consultancy (Episode 71)
Bristol Braille Technology CIC is a not-for-profit organisation and the inventor of the Canute 360, designed in close collaboration with the Braillists’ community as the original affordable multi-line Braille display.
Their latest product, the Canute Console Premium, is a tactile workstation for viewing and editing text, tables, charts, vectors, maps and code over nine lines—or 360 cells—of refreshable Braille.
In early 2024 we featured a candid conversation with Ed Rogers, Managing Director of BBT, about Canute 360, and as one of our World Braille Day conference sponsors, we are pleased to invite him back to talk more about Canute Console now.
We also discussed BBT’s role in shaping the Braillists and how this might develop in the future.
You might be familiar with many functions of the Canute 360 from Bristol Braille Technology, but did you know it can work seamlessly with the widely popular Duxbury Braille Translator? When connected to a Windows machine, the Canute can output Braille text in real-time using Duxbury’s six-key Braille entry, or display any translated text loaded into the application.
This added functionality can significantly enhance the usability of the Canute 360, particularly for those who need to quickly navigate content in a multi-line environment. If you already have Duxbury and the Canute 360, you’re set to go!
Join Bristol Braille Technology’s Ed Rogers and Sight and Sound Technology’s Stuart Lawler to learn not only how to set up this integration but also explore a variety of use cases. Don’t miss this opportunity to maximize your Canute 360 experience!
The 40th Assistive Technology Conference from the Centre on Disabilities at California State University, Northridge took place in Anaheim, California from Monday 10 to Friday 14 March 2025, bringing together manufacturers, distributors, educators, researchers and users from all over the world. As ever, a wide variety of braille products was on show at the exhibit hall, and the conference programme featured several braille-related presentations including research on how the length of a braille display affects reading speed, reflections on 200 years of tactile literacy, and the candidate release of the new EBraille specification from the DAISY Consortium and the American Printing House for the Blind (APH).
In this session, recorded on Tuesday 18 March, we were excited to be joined by the team from Double Tap, the popular technology show from Accessible Media Inc. (AMI). Steven Scott and Shaun Preece both attended CSUN for the first time this year. They told us about the braille products they saw and shared their perspectives on how CSUN compares with exhibitions like Sight Village in the UK, Sight City in Germany, and more mainstream events such as the Zero Project Conference and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
We were also joined by Australian assistive technology expert and braille enthusiast Scott Erichsen. Scott has been at the forefront of the development of braille technology for over twenty years as a user, a private beta tester and a distributor, and told us about the new and improved products in the exhibit hall. He also shared his insights into how the braille technology industry is evolving and the part that CSUN plays in driving innovation forwards.
You’re invited to pull up a chair at the Braillists’ Christmas party, where a friendly cast of characters discuss the games they play after Christmas dinner.
Card games, board games, dice games and everything in between, we’ve got you covered. We discuss where to buy specially adapted games and how to adapt your own.
And because it’s Christmas, the whole cast is in the same room!
Grab a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine and celebrate Christmas with us.
Do you need an easy way to identify your shampoo from your hair removal cream? Do you want to avoid accidentally feeding dog food to your dinner guests—again? Does your granddaughter complain that you’ve covered up the print label on her favourite midnight snack with your “special dots”?
Our sense of touch can give us much more information about our environment than we may think. Naturally, there’s braille, but how else can we use this powerful tactile sense to make things easier at home and further afield?
In this Masterclass, Matthew Horspool and Chantelle Griffiths joined forces to take you on a tactile journey to help you master your sense of touch for the simple, yet powerful purpose of identification and marking.
They covered:
How everyday office stationery can save your sanity when travelling.
How a simple rubber band can turn nightmare neighbours into amicable allies.
How to use braille in fun and creative ways, even if you’re not yet a confident braillist.
Why you need to own hair ties, even if you have no hair to tie.
How texture and orientation work together to create a customisable system for identification that anyone can use.
And so much more!
Whether you’re newer to sight loss or blind since birth, there’s something here for everyone. Join us to learn how to level up your tactile marking skills, and create unforgettable experiences for yourself and others, for all the right reasons.
Braillecast
Beyond Bump-Ons: Creative Approaches to Tactile Marking (Extra 76)
Sometimes, you just need a BRF file with no fuss, even though you know it might have the occasional error or won’t be formatted quite as you’d like.
RoboBraille is one solution to this problem. It works with a large variety of file formats including PDF, Microsoft Word and plain text, and converts them to braille within a matter of minutes. Best of all, it’s entirely online, so you don’t need to install anything. You can use it on computers even if you don’t have admin rights, smartphones, tablets and even braille notetakers.
Join us in this episode to find out:
When is fully automated translation appropriate (and when is it not)?
Translating files through the robobraille.org website
Translating files by emailing RoboBraille
How to evaluate the output
Where to find help
Braillecast
Fully Automated Braille Translation with RoboBraille (Extra 72)
For many years now, Sight Scotland have championed National Braille Week, an opportunity to celebrate braille usage and raise awareness of the importance and value of braille. It runs in the second week of October, to coincide with World Sight Day.
In 2023, we celebrated National Braille Week at the Braillists by running five Masterclasses, one each day, following the journey “From Print to Braille”. These episodes are the recordings of these Masterclasses.
This week: The Duxbury Braille Translator is used in braille production facilities all over the world. We will explore how templates can be used to produce braille according to virtually any international standard, and how styles and codes can be used to control the finer points of the braille output. The presenter is James Bowden.
Braillecast
From Print To Braille: A Deeper Dive Into Duxbury (Extra 69)
For many years now, Sight Scotland have championed National Braille Week, an opportunity to celebrate braille usage and raise awareness of the importance and value of braille. It runs in the second week of October, to coincide with World Sight Day.
In 2023, we celebrated National Braille Week at the Braillists by running five Masterclasses, one each day, following the journey “From Print to Braille”. These episodes are the recordings of these Masterclasses.
This week: Microsoft Word knows about typography and layout, but it doesn’t know about braille contractions. That’s why we need a braille translation package. There are a number of packages on the market to suit a variety of budgets and complexities, and we’ll help you decide which one is the right one for you, in conversation with Christo de Klerk.
Braillecast
From Print To Braille: Choosing the Right Braille Translator for the Job (Episode 56)
Many screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA, make use of the popular, open source Liblouis braille translation engine as part of their braille display support. In this session, we explained and demonstrated how to harness the power of Liblouis braille tables to implement additional contractions in your screen reader of choice.
If you use a long word regularly and find it is taking up too much space on your braille display, this is the session for you! It also serves as a brief introduction to Liblouis translation tables in general.
The session was presented by James Bowden. In addition to his work as Braille Technical Officer at RNIB, James is also the Chair of the Braille Technology Committee of the International Council on English Braille, and is the primary developer of the default UEB translation table in Liblouis. Over many years, he has not only added new symbols to the UEB tables, but has also corrected numerous errors with existing contractions, and he actively contributes to discussions about the future development of Liblouis.
Please note: although we did our best to present the concepts in this session in as simple and straightforward a way as possible, modifying Liblouis tables involves advanced file and folder manipulation, administration rights and working with computer code in a text editor. You do not need to be a computer programmer in order to benefit from this session, but it is best suited to people with intermediate to advanced computer knowledge.
Braillecast
Adding Your Own Contractions to Your Screen Reader Using Liblouis (Extra 65)
