News

American Printing House – Thursday, May 22, 2025

Working together to create a new functionality of the JAWS screen reader program, Vispero, APH, and HumanWare are excited to announce an enhanced experience for users of multi-line braille displays, starting with Monarch. The beta version is set to release later this summer.

“For the first time in history, the Monarch offers a tactile array capable of displaying both braille characters and tactile graphics using equidistant pins, along with touch sensors for a user to route an editing cursor within multiple lines of text,” says APH’s Head of Global Technology and Innovation, Greg Stilson. “This partnership with HumanWare and Vispero brings JAWS to the multiline braille experiences for apps such as Excel, PowerPoint, Word and so much more. We’re just scratching the surface of what will be possible.”

Making PCs accessible to users who are blind or low vision for over three decades, JAWS screen reader reads aloud the text on the screen, allowing users to navigate and interact with applications and websites. This access to braille information helped users have a clearer picture of the content, including access to punctuation, spelling of text, and minimal spatial content. However, anything beyond one line on a braille display was read by panning forward and refreshing the content.

The vision for JAWS and multiline braille was to bring a spatial understanding of text and graphical information to a user’s fingertips in real-time. “Whether a user is browsing a file manager, navigating a spreadsheet, or browsing the web, we wanted them to have access to more information than ever before, while at the same time using different methods of getting the information they desire quickly from this larger collection of text and data,” says Stilson.

“Many blind or low vision people have their dreams about what features JAWS will support,” says Stilson. “We wanted to provide two initial, tangible features that Vispero is offering out of the gate: Wrapped Mode and Cropped Mode. These two elements will provide two clear ways for users to get information in a tactile fashion out of their JAWS screen reader.”

Historically, screen reader users navigated through tables with tabs without spatial understanding, but cropped mode allows for reading formatted tables with JAWS. Optimized for tables in Word, Google Docs, Excel, and tables on the web, Cropped Mode allows all table content to be aligned in correct table form. It spatially allows a user to navigate a table and see the full picture.

“My favorite feature initially is cropped mode as I think the way this vertically aligns table content will be a huge benefit for users to visualize data tables and other such structures,” says Stilson. “Blind or low vision users are used to seeing tables in a linear fashion, but this will be the first dynamic way a user can see both rows and columns at the same time.”

“I look forward to having multiline braille with JAWS on my multiline braille devices,” says Danielle Burton, Communications Accessibility Editor at APH. “Being able to see tables and spreadsheets tactilely would make interpreting and comprehending tabular data much easier.”

Wrapped mode optimizes the content to wrap around from line to line, ensuring no content is cut off, and optimizing the content for the available space, while Cropped Mode is optimized for vertical alignment. “This is specifically useful when viewing spreadsheets, tables, or any content that needs to be vertically aligned. All things that were never possible on a single line display,” says Stilson. Wrapped mode eliminates unnecessary empty space on the Monarch when reading documents and uses the same user experience that Monarch users are familiar with when reading a document in the Monarch’s word processor app. It optimizes the content for the 10 line by 32 cell display.

The goal is to provide all information from the Monarch to the screen readers so HumanWare can innovate with their respective software and the access to multiline braille features continues to grow and become more useful. “I see a world where blind or low vision people can see a tactile graphic of how their desktop is laid out,” says Stilson. “I see a world where formatting is respected and displayed, headings are centered, tables are aligned, and charts and graphics are simply available in logical ways. This results in blind or low vision people being interested in data science, architecture, art, computer science, etc.”

Pneuma Solutions – Monday, June 16, 2025

You’ve no doubt been down this road before. You receive a brand-new assignment from the teacher at the last minute, with the need for a hardcopy Braille conversion near non-negotiable. Being the morning of, you haven’t the time to give it the once-over within your Braille translation software, since you already have to convert it from PDF to Word with another application beforehand anyhow. You do a quick conversion, run it through your smaller embosser at home, and rush it to the student for their first-hour class in which it’s needed and…what’s this? Parts of lines spilling over onto other lines? Oddly inconsistent page numbers? You take a quick look, reprint it on your large embosser and, just as you thought, the software had been set to fit the document to the wrong paper dimensions. But this really isn’t user error, particularly when dealing with a time-sensitive emergency such as this. Most traditional Braille translation software is great at what it does, but one of the things it was never truly designed to do is to handle a just-in-time Braille conversion gracefully. And while last-minute surprises are far from ideal, they are unfortunately inevitable, thus the need for a software package that will maximize simplicity while not at all compromising on quality.

Just-in-Time Braille Remediation, with Fine-tuning Made Easy!

Making documents accessible should be straight-forward and simple, the way a well-designed kitchen appliance is simple. With easy-access dials and buttons, a clear and logical user-experience flow, and help available when needed, Scribe’s workflow has been designed to make document conversion as easy as 1, 2, 3. As such, we are proud to bring this signature user-experience simplicity to Braille remediation!

When you convert an inaccessible document into Braille, you will be presented with some useful formatting options. In addition to the standard language and Braille translation table settings, the following controls are now available:

Cells-per-line: Not near your big production-grade embosser, but need Braille in a pinch? No problem! Set your paper width to a smaller value, and get instant peace of mind knowing that your student will be able to read the material without issue.

Page-Splitting: In situations where your document will benefit from hard-fast page rules, Scribe will now allow you to split the Braille file into pages. You can further choose how many lines should be on each page.

The End Result…

Ready-made Braille in minutes! Now that Scribe has saved you precious time by converting the document into Braille and taking care of the page-sizing for you, you can spend the time that you do have proofing the Braille for its content, rather than tangling with a complex beast of an application. In other words, Scribe allows you to work smarter, not harder. Why not take it for a test-drive today?!

Read the original article here

Chantelle gave this presentation to SPEVI NZ several weeks ago. Catch the recording here.

The Unmute podcast periodically features a segment called At Your Fingertips, which focusses exclusively on braille. Here is a sample episode.

Check out this episode of the APH Change Makers Podcast.

From RNIB.

Be part of the conversation, share your ideas…

We’re reaching out to invite you to be part of an important conversation about the future of our personal transcription service. Personal transcription is a request by a customer to have a personal document transcribed into an accessible format of their choice. As someone with lived experience or a close connection to sight loss, you can help us to understand what people need and how we can best support them. We want your help to shape what comes next.

We want to explore:

• What people need from transcription services today.
• How people are navigating their needs outside of our service.
• What role we should play in the future.

When will I be needed?

We’re holding three virtual meetings each month in July, August and September and ideally you would be able to attend all meetings.

How to get involved:

Please complete this form by Wednesday 2nd July. We want to ensure we have as representative a group of people as possible, as well as those who are able to think long term and in the interests of all blind and partially sighted people. Following review of all respondents, we will let you know if you’ve been selected to take part.

Thank you.

We are pleased to announce that we will be returning to Sight Village Central this year, and this time with a special visitor! Chantelle Griffiths, who many of you know either from our Braille for Beginners course or as a moderator of our other events, is visiting us from New Zealand and would love to meet you in person over the two-day exhibition.

You can find Chantelle, Matthew and others from the Braillists team at Table 56, Isle 5, Affinity Suite.

On the stand, we will have our usual assortment of braille and tactile items, Braille for Beginners resource packs and flyers in both braille and print. Like last year, we will also have some braille bookmarks to give away, and new for this year, we will be offering you the chance to take home your very own reset object! (Don’t know what a reset object is? Check out this podcast.)

Sight Village takes place on Monday 7 July (10:00 AM-4:00 PM) and Tuesday 8 July (9:30 AM-3:30 PM). Find out more and book your free tickets here.

Full address: Eastside Rooms Conference Centre, Woodcock Street, Birmingham, B7 4BL

Monday at 1:35 PM & Tuesday at 1:45 PM, Seminar Room 1
Presenter: Chantelle Griffiths

Whether you are new to braille or a seasoned professional, join us to explore some practical, tangible ways to hone in on your sense of touch. In this workshop we will dive deeper into some of the fundamental principles we need to improve our tactile and braille technique, including the surprising intricacies of hand scanning, the power of reset objects and the principle of context versus code. Learn in real time alongside readers of all abilities and ask any questions you may have about the art and science of braille reading. With lots of practical, actionable tips, tricks, exercises and techniques, there’s something here for everyone.

Monday at 2:15 PM and Tuesday at 9:45 AM, Seminar Room 1
Presenter: Stuart Lawler, Head of Digital Content and Braille Specialist, Sight and Sound Technology Ltd

As we mark two centuries since the invention of braille, we’re excited here at Sight and Sound Technology and are taking a moment to reflect—and to look ahead to the future. Braille has revolutionised access to information for blind and visually impaired people, and its impact continues to grow. When paired with the assistive technologies we’re passionate about, the potential is truly limitless. Join Stuart Lawler, who will take us on a journey through the history of Refreshable braille technology, explore today’s innovations in both single and multi-line braille displays, and offer a glimpse into what the future may hold.

Hosted by Bristol Braille Technology:

Location: Sacks of Potatoes, 10 Gosta Green, Birmingham B4 7ER (just a 4-minute walk from the Sight Village venue)

This informal gathering is the perfect way to unwind after the first day of the exhibition. You’ll have the chance to meet fellow Braille users, connect with innovators in the field, and experience the joy of Braille in a fun and relaxed atmosphere over your favourite drink.

And we have two subjects in particular that we want to have a discussion about, so we especially hope you can join us if they interest you: the future of tactile maps, and creative writing using Braille. These are both areas that Bristol Braille is going to be running projects within and we welcome inventive minds to share their experiences.

If you can’t make it to Braille and Beer, but would like to discuss your ideas with Ed or Steph during Sight Village, you can book a one-to-one session here.

We very much look forward to seeing you at Braille and Beer and sharing everything new from Bristol Braille Technology!