Braillecast Extra

Happy Christmas! In this special episode, James Bowden talks us through drawing some stars. The instructions are provided in written form below: Star 1 Line 1: ow sign (Dots 246); comma (dot 2) Star 2 Line 1: o (dots 135; k (dots 13) Star 3 Line 1: capital sign (dot 6); ar sign (dots 345); ... Read more

We were delighted to be joined by Kim Charlson, Executive Director of the Perkins Library (part of Perkins School for the Blind). 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, ... Read more

We were delighted to have been joined by Sean Randall for the second in a two-part series. Sean is something of a computing and IT mastermind and now works at New College Worcester, training many of their students in the use of assistive technology including screen readers and braille displays. This session covered sources of ... Read more

We were delighted to have been joined by Sean Randall for the first in a two-part series. Sean is something of a computing and IT mastermind and now works at New College Worcester, training many of their students in the use of assistive technology including screen readers and braille displays. This session primarily discuss the ... Read more

What is computer braille? Are there different flavours? What are all the signs? Why would you want to use it? Is it still relevant now that we have UEB? The latest occasional Masterclass from RNIB’s braille expert James Bowden answered all of these questions and more. This session was recorded on Tuesday 21 September 2021. ... Read more

Dave Williams, Chairman of the Braillists, explored how to use braille displays with various combinations of screen reader and web browser, unpicked some of the jargon that appears on the display, and explained how to navigate without a QWERTY keyboard or touch screen. This session was recorded on Tuesday 7 September 2021. For further information ... Read more

Most of us know about grade 2, of course, with its 180 contractions designed to make braille quicker to read and write and occupy less space. Grade 3 extends this concept still further with over 300 additional contractions, rules to allow vowels to be omitted, and provisions for reducing spaces and new lines. Whilst it’s ... Read more

In Using Braille on Windows, we introduced you to the basics of making a braille display work with various screen readers. In this session, we took this to the next level in the first of an occasional series of Masterclasses looking at the braille settings of a particular screen reader. This time it was JAWS. ... Read more

After a recap of octave signs and intervals, this session covered: Word signs Ties and slurs Phrase marks You can follow Stuart on Twittre (@stuartlawler)

Over the years, blind people have benefitted from incredible enhancements in the fields of electronic braille and accessibility in general. In fact, it’s now possible to purchase a fully accessible Amazon Fire tablet for under £50 which, pared with an inexpensive braille display such as an Orbit Reader, and Amazons Kindle store which offers access ... Read more