Category: Uncategorised

How might you use braille at university, and what funding is available to help you get it? Join Connor Scott-Gardner to find out!

Connor has experience as an advocate, DSA assessor and university student. IN this session, he will share:

• How he used braille in his own studies, and how you might use it in yours
• Where braille technology works well in a university environment (and where it doesn’t)
• What options are available for transcription, both for hard copy braille and electronic formats for use on braille displays
• What support is available and who is responsible for providing it
• Advice on navigating Disabled Students Allowance, and what to ask for at a DSA assessment

This session will be particularly relevant if you are about to start a university course, but much of the information will still apply if you are part-way through your studies. There will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the session.

Register for Braille at University

To join by phone, please use these details:

• Phone number: 0131 460 1196
• Meeting ID: 844 5048 9979
• Passcode: 123456

The ICEB Executive Committee has recently approved a significant update to the choice and placement of grade 1 indicators, section 1.7 of the Guidelines for Technical Material (GTM). The new guidance clarifies when it is appropriate to use a grade 1 symbol, word or passage indicator and will be of particular interest to those working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.

The updated guidance gives a consistent approach to selecting which kind of grade 1 indicator to use, removing confusion where the same mathematical expression could be written in multiple ways.

ICEB is delighted to invite you to a special town hall event, taking place at 20:00 UTC, on Thursday June 4th, where we will explain these changes in detail, provide examples and most importantly, answer your questions.

If you are a transcriber, a teacher, or a braille reader (especially working with Mathematics or scientific notation), this session will most certainly be of interest.

Please register here to attend. We look forward to your company!

On Tuesday 16 June 2026, Louis Braille Campus will be hosting their second ever Demo Day. This year’s event will focus on universal design and international collaboration.

Demo Day is an event for discovering and testing advancements in accessibility innovations that allow people with disabilities to live more independently.

All talks will be available in both English and French, with subtitles and translations.

Registration is free, and the event will take place on Tuesday 16 June 2026, at 9am, at the Louis Braille Campus in Paris, France.

Find out more & Register Here.

“HELP! I can’t use my braille device on the internet because I don’t know how to braille the login details!”

This is a common challenge for braille display users. Whether it’s connecting a braille display to wi-fi, adding an email account to a braille notetaker, typing a password in Braille Screen Input on an iPhone or using your braille display to log back into your computer after it’s fallen asleep, the question of which braille code to use and how to braille the increasingly complex sequences of letters, numbers and special characters we often use still catches even the most seasoned braille user out.

“Do I need to use computer braille? I don’t know that.”

“I’m using UEB: can I use contractions?”

“How do I braille an ‘at’ sign?”

“Can I still use dot 6 for capitals? What about if there’s a mix of upper case and lower case?”

In this session, Matthew Horspool will answer all of these questions and more, covering topics including:

• The differences between literary and computer braille
• Why computer braille isn’t as “standard” as you might think
• Things to watch out for when using UEB
• How to work out which code to use
• A quick rundown of the most common symbols in the most common codes

This session is likely to be quite fast-paced. There will be plenty of time for questions, but we encourage you to take your own notes relevant to your specific devices and credentials.

Register for Entering Usernames, Passwords and Other Technical Details on a Braille Keyboard

To join by phone, please use these details:

• Phone number: 0131 460 1196
• Meeting ID: 839 8313 2413
• Passcode: 123456

Join Dave Williams and Timothy Hornik from Dot Inc. for a practical webinar exploring reading with Dot Book and Dolphin EasyReader on the Dot Pad.

We’ll show how braille readers can access books, navigate content, and make the most of multiline braille for a richer tactile reading experience.

About this webinar:

• Ideal for braille users, teachers, parents, assistive technology professionals and anyone interested in accessible reading.
• Featuring a live demonstration of reading on Dot Pad X.
• Q&A with our expert panel.

Register to attend the live event or receive the recording.

You are welcome to attend this event, featuring a presentation from our own Dave Williams at 7:00 PM.

View the full announcement

Register for the Symposium

From Hable:

We are absolutely thrilled to share our biggest news of the year. Stactiles have officially launched. We are so incredibly excited to bring these amazing tactile stickers to our wonderful community. The best part is that we are packing and fulfilling orders worldwide starting right now.

What are Stactiles?

They are entirely unique high-quality tactile stickers. We specifically designed them to make the world around you much more accessible. They feature bright, high-contrast colors and incredibly sharp raised textures.

Every single sticker goes through a unique manufacturing process. Each sticker is 3D printed, which can take over 7 hours per sheet, making each sticker shape unique and super easy to feel. With a special coating process, we make sure they are super strong and durable. We manufacture these in the Netherlands.

Unlike bump dots where every dot feels the same, you can now label each setting, button or appliance differently to immediately identify what it is, just by touch. You can use Stactiles to mark your household appliances and organize your daily items. They even can be used on touchscreens. The pressure from your finger goes right through the sticker to the screen beneath it.

Do you want to learn more about Stactiles and where to get them? Read our full in-depth Stactiles launch article here.

Where to order your Stactiles

Are you ready to transform your daily routine today? You can be one of the very first people in the world to get your hands on them. We have stock in the USA and in the Netherlands and ship globally.

Shop the complete Stactiles collection right here.

Thank you so much for your wonderful support over the past few months. We absolutely cannot wait to see how you use your new stickers to make your world accessible.

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Sao Mai Center for the Blind is pleased to officially release SM BungSang, the first native and free Braille music translation app for macOS. The app converts MusicXML files into high-quality, accurately formatted Braille scores.

SM BungSang is developed based on the BANA Music Braille Code 2015 and the New International Manual for Braille Music Notation. It also incorporates additional features based on advice from experienced Braille music transcribers.

The software supports translation for single instruments, solo with accompaniment, as well as chamber and full orchestral scores. It offers multiple formatting styles, including bar-over-bar, line-over-line, and section-by-section. In addition, it provides a wide range of translation options to help create Braille scores in different formats and layouts, tailored to various readers’ needs and country-specific conventions.

For sighted transcribers, the software includes an option to show or hide the original print music view, making it easier to compare the Braille score with the original notation.

For more information and to download the DMG file, please visit the SM BungSang homepage; or find it on the Apple App Store.

If you’re looking for a Braille translation solution for Windows, you can try our Sao Mai Braille software.

We’re truly grateful to the Elizabeth Eagle Bott Memorial Fund, administered by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), for awarding us a £5,000 grant to support the development of SM BungSang in the first quarter of 2026.

We are a small non-profit organization based in Vietnam, primarily relying on project grants to carry out activities that support people with visual impairments. If you find our work useful, please consider supporting us through a donation or by referring us to potential funding opportunities where we can apply for project grants.

We’d love to hear from you. For any inquiries, please email us at: [email protected]

We hope you enjoy the app, and would appreciate it if you could help spread the word to your network.

Many thanks and best regards, SM Support Team

NV Access is pleased to announce that version 2026.1 of NVDA, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. We encourage all users to upgrade to this version.

Braille Highlights

This release includes support for reading math content with MathCAT, which is now built-in to NVDA.

Braille support now continues to work when switching to a secure screen, like the sign-in screen or User Account Control dialog.

NVDA messages from the local computer are now shown in braille when controlling a computer via Remote Access.

Spelling and grammar errors, as well as the number of items in a list in browse mode, can now be shown in braille.

Other braille bug fixes, including in Microsoft Outlook and LibreOffice Writer, have also been added.

Liblouis has been updated. Added tables for English Grade 3, Japanese (Rokuten Kanji), and Macedonian uncontracted braille. Improved the Biblical Hebrew, Unified English Braille, Greek International, Hungarian, Norwegian, Portuguese 8-dot and Slovakian braille tables.

Visit the NV Access website to download NVDA

If you’ve been playing my Whack A Braille app, version 1.2.0 just went live! You can now set up custom moles to whack for each round, or build your own mole invasion army that you want to battle! Perfect for teachers using this for #Braille students, folks wanting to practice or refresh their skills, or for anyone who just has particular grudges against specific moles. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/whack-a-braille/id6760976367