Braillecast

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 please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page .

How many listeners remember Talks? The popular screen reader for Series 60 and other phones running the Symbian operating system. It first came to the market in the early 2000s, and perhaps its most well-known proponent in the UK was Steve Nutt, the man behind Computer Room Services . His expertise when it comes to mobile phones is unparalleled and, unphased by the slow demise of Symbian, he&#8217...

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 not an officially recognised code, it has a loyal following amongst long-time...

"Most of us who know braille were taught it." It sounds like such an obvious statement – so obvious, in fact, that it seems appropriate to conclude that the world has an abundance of braille teachers, and the methods and techniques that they use are mature, uniform and understood by everyone working in the field. Presumably, approaches that work well have been iterated over time, those that haven'...

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. There are lots of settings and we weren’t able to cover all of them in an hour, so...

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)

We're almost exactly a month away from the opening night of the BBC Proms , the world famous summer season of concerts of classical music founded in 1895. Since their infancy, they've championed the composition and performance of new works of music through various channels including, latterly, the BBC Young Composer competition . In 2018, one of the winners of this competition was blind composer X...

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 to quite literally hundreds of thousands of digita...

Parents reading with their children: it’s an experience common to many households in virtually every country of the world. It’s a uniquely special experience for both the parent and the child, remembered for years to come, and often relived as children become parents themselves, and parents become grandparents. For many blind people in the UK, it’s been facilitated for decades by...

This week’s Masterclass has a more low tech flavour as we take a wander into the heart of the household. If you’ve ever wondered how to read braille recipes without ruining them or what to do when the label is too big for the jar, this session is for you. Emma Williams led the session – teacher of Independent Living Skills at New College Worcester, and a familiar voice to many from our Cleve...

In this session, we covered: Rests: quaver, crotchet, minim, semibreve and dotted versions of the above Clef signs: treble (G) and bass (F) Octave signs and their use Interval signs and their use A mid-month clinic will take place on Monday 14 June at 8:00 PM in the UK and Ireland. The next teaching session will take place at the same time on Monday 28 June and cover hand signs, in accord, ties, s...

If you’re a blind Android user, you’re bound to have come across Steve Nutt at Computer Room Services . He’s blind himself, been in the accessible smartphone business for over 20 years, and has a vast amount of knowledge and experience when it comes to using smartphones with braille displays. We’re delighted that he joined us on Tuesday 18 May to present an introduction to using an Android device...

You don't have to have been in the blindness community very long to have come across HumanWare and their two flagship brands: Victor Reader and BrailleNote. Indeed, on the second episode of this podcast , we talked extensively about the BrailleNote Touch, which has since been succeeded by the BrailleNote Touch Plus. BrailleNote is not the company's only line of braille product, though. In 2003, th...

We’re starting to hear more and more about BRF files. They’re the default braille format on platforms such as RNIB Reading Services; they’re regularly used in the transcription industry to share braille versions of documents between producers; and notetaker users have used them to transfer files from one brand of braille device to another. But questions still prevail: What, exactly, is a BRF? Why...

Topics covered in this session: Debunking some myths Notes and note values - quavers, crotchets, minims, semibreves and dotted notes Sharp, flat and natural signs Time signatures and their placement - 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, common time, 6/8, 9/8 Key signatures and their placement - D major (2 sharps), A major (3 sharps), B major (5 sharps) and F sharp major (6 sharps) Resources of interest: RNIB Music Adv...

We were delighted to be joined by renowned braille display expert Jackie Brown. Jackie is a freelance writer, regular reviewer of braille technology, and author of “Braille On Display” (published by Mosen Consulting), a comprehensive comparison of braille displays and guide to choosing the right one. On Tuesday 20 April 2021, Jackie talked us through the process of choosing a braille display. She...

Based in Houston, Texas, Dr Robert Englebretson is widely recognised for his contribution to braille research. In 2008, his work on updating the Braille International Phonetic Alphabet was published by the International Council on English Braille , and in 2019 the Braille Authority of North America made him a recipient of the Darleen Bogart Braille Excellence Award in recognition of this work. Mor...

On Friday 28 August 2020, Everette Bacon joined a Braillists Foundation Stay Safe: Stay Connected call to talk about how the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) promotes braille literacy across the United States. Everette is a member of the Board of Directors of NFB and President of the Utah State Division. He told us how he has personally pushed to make assistive technology more widely availab...

If you've been following Braillists Foundation events recently, you'll be aware that we've been hosting a number of sessions thanks to a grant from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust . But why is the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust interested in the Braillists Foundation? In September 2017, Ed Rogers, Managing Director of Bristol Braille Technology CIC and himself a Fellow of WCMT, undertook a...

RNIB, which operates one of Europe’s largest braille lending libraries, has recently announced changes to the way books will be produced from April 2021. Since the announcement, there has naturally been much discussion about what these changes will mean for braille readers in the UK and around the world. The Braillists Foundation and colleagues from RNIB explored these changes and answered questio...

This session talked through advocacy strategies that you can use to facilitate access to braille in the wider world. This includes having healthcare and other personal communication sent to you in braille, as well as advocating for braille signage in public places. This session was recorded on Tuesday 16 March 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page .

This session covered how to obtain braille through the Access To Work and Disabled Students Allowance schemes. We talked about how to advocate for the braille you need and what options you have. We also looked at advocating for braille textbooks and braille signage in work or education. This session was recorded on Tuesday 9 March 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundatio...

Led by Holly Scott-Gardner, this session looked at how to take effective notes in braille for your own personal use. We covered increasing your speed when note taking, ways to organise your notes and the tools that you may wish to use. This session was recorded on Tuesday 2 March 2021. For further information please visit the Braillists Foundation Media Page .

If you are required to take notes as part of a team, whether that's in a meeting or for group projects, this session is for you! Led by Matthew Horspool, it guides you through using braille to take notes that are also visually accessible. We talked specifically about taking notes using a braille display, and writing Markdown in braille to format your notes. This session was recorded on Tuesday 23...

Led by Holly Scott-Gardner, this session guided participants through using braille to present more effectively, especially useful if you need to deliver speeches for work, school, or as part of one of your interests. We covered writing a presentation script, using cue cards and the best way to set up your braille display or hard copy braille when speaking. This session was recorded on Tuesday 16 F...