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. Items discussed: Indoor Games from RNIB ...
Dec 25, 2024•56 min
The latest in our occasional series showcasing historical braille shorthand codes which you might still find useful today: Braille, User-Oriented Code (BUOC) was a code written by the late Australian, Rebecca Maxwell, with the support of Australian Braille Literacy Action (ABLA), formerly the Australian Guild of Business and Professional Blind. It was last revised in 1998 and includes a number of useful devices for making braille shorter. We were delighted to be joined by Jordie Howell, a great ...
Nov 25, 2024•55 min
USB, or Universal Serial Bus, has been a feature of braille displays for over twenty years. Originally a standard for connectivity, it has evolved over time to also provide power and charging capabilities. However, if USB is supposed to be Universal, why are some chargers faster than others, and why won’t some chargers and cables work at all? On Tuesday 29 October 2024, we unravelled the answer to this far from straightforward question. Along the way, we covered: A brief history of USB Common US...
Nov 04, 2024•1 hr 30 min
Reading aloud is a skill that is both terrifying and liberating. Adding braille to the mix presents unique challenges that can often get in the way of recognising significant progress. Along with reading speed and fluency, the one question we hear most often is: “How can I improve my ability to read aloud?” Building on the topics from her popular masterclass, Revitalise Your Braille Reading Technique, Chantelle Griffiths returns to uncover some of the mystery and magic of reading aloud and to sh...
Oct 21, 2024•1 hr 12 min
We are excited to announce the launch of a new eBook! Whether you’re new to braille or you’ve been using braille technology for decades, choosing your braille display can be daunting. They’re so expensive, there’s so much to consider, and just when you thought you’d investigated all your options, you come across another one you hadn’t heard of before! Braille On Display has been helping prospective users choose the braille display which best meets their individual needs since 2016, and to celebr...
Oct 17, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 63
Braille Screen Input has been overhauled! iOS and iPad OS 18, released on Monday 16 September, include the biggest refresh of Braille Screen Input since the feature was first introduced in iOS 8. Although you can, for the most part, still use Braille Screen Input as you always have done, the new functionality in Apple's latest flagship operating systems is a source of much excitement throughout the blind community and will almost certainly take your Braille Screen Input experience to the next le...
Sep 23, 2024•1 hr 12 min
The Braillists Foundation prides itself on being a grass roots organisation; led by braille users, for braille users and, by extension, by blind people, for blind people. The Tactile and Technology Literacy Centre , based in Auckland, New Zealand, has a similar mission to the Braillists, and we find out more about them in this episode.
Aug 26, 2024•43 min•Ep. 62
We start this episode in conversation with Maria Stevens, Chair of the Braille Authority of New Zealand Aotearoa Trust . We find out more about the work of BANZAT, the standards it has created and how it is helping to promote braille across New Zealand. We also discover more about the relationship between BANZAT and the Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities . Afterwards, we catch up with Chantelle Griffiths, a familiar voice to many Braillecast listeners. She is al...
Aug 19, 2024•52 min•Ep. 61
Last time on Braillecast, we heard from Ben Clare about the challenges facing Pacific Island countries in terms of access to braille, and Ben's experiences of visiting those countries to deliver training. One of the larger Pacific Island countries is Samoa, and thanks to a substantial fundraising effort, the Samoa Blind Persons Association were able to send three observers to the eighth General Assembly of the International Council on English Braille , which took place in neighbouring New Zealan...
Aug 12, 2024•36 min•Ep. 60
Australia and New Zealand are the two most well-known countries in the Pacific Region, the area between Australia and Hawaii. The region also includes many other countries including Fiji and Samoa. Many of these countries are on small, remote islands in the Pacific Ocean. They are difficult and expensive to reach, with total populations often of 100,000 or fewer, and ensuring access to braille is very difficult. Over the next two episodes of Braillecast, we will be finding out more about braille...
Aug 05, 2024•42 min•Ep. 59
Braille isn’t just for books! It can also be found on household products and signs; in restaurants, museums and theatres; and your personal and confidential documents can also be sent to you in braille. So how do you find it? Who do you ask? And if you think the braille you’ve found could be improved, how do you make your case without upsetting people? In this special event for World Braille Day, we were joined by a panel of braille advocates to explore these questions and more. We examined when...
Jul 29, 2024•55 min•Ep. 58
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 fur...
Jul 22, 2024•1 hr 7 min
This session, presented by Saima Akhtar, is designed to give you a Whistlestop tour of the fundamentals of Arabic braille. Rest assured, it’s not nearly as complicated as you think. By the end of the session, you will have more insight into the following areas: The origins of Arabic braille Common misconceptions around the structure and layout of Arabic braille How the Arabic alphabet is constructed (here we will tackle the puzzling conundrum surrounding how to identify consonants and vowels) Ne...
Jul 15, 2024•52 min
Many braille displays include an SD or Micro SD card slot. However, when it comes to purchasing a suitable card, there are so many options! Which is best, and which work with your braille display? In this session, we were joined by friend of the Braillists Ben Mustill-Rose to help make sense of them. He covered: Technical terms – SD, Micro SD, SD HC, SD XC and card classes How much capacity you need Card readers and adapters Avoiding poor quality cards Unpacking and setting up your new card, inc...
Jul 08, 2024•58 min
According to its website, “ BrailleBlaster™ is a braille transcription program developed by the American Printing House for the Blind to help transcribers provide blind students with braille textbooks on the first day of class.” It uses markup from source documents to automate formatting, and provides “tools to make advanced tasks quicker and easier.” Although it is “Designed primarily for editing textbooks that meet the specifications published by the Braille Authority of North America ,” the a...
Jul 01, 2024•43 min
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, table...
Jun 24, 2024•57 min
Following our exploration of braille translators during National Braille Week, we were delighted to be joined by esteemed assistive technology pioneer Dean Martineau. Dean is a long term braille user and has spent many years developing his own personal braille shorthand system. In this Masterclass, Dean introduced us to the Biblos braille translator and demonstrated how he uses it to translate text into his personalised shorthand system. He also covered some more conventional uses of the program...
Jun 17, 2024•50 min
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 final stage of the tra...
Jun 10, 2024•58 min•Ep. 57
A message from our Chairman, Dave Williams, to thank our many volunteers this National Volunteers Week.
Jun 07, 2024•1 min
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 Transl...
Jun 03, 2024•1 hr 2 min
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...
May 27, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 56
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. In this episode, discover how making ...
May 20, 2024•1 hr 1 min
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, we unpack the rules and co...
May 13, 2024•58 min•Ep. 55
Supernova is a screen magnification and screen reading package from Dolphin Computer Access Ltd , based in Worcester in the UK. Braille display support is a core part of its offering, but we don't hear very much about it. In this session, we were joined by Aj Ahmed, proprietor of AAT Solutions , an independent provider of assistive technology training and support. Aj talked us through how to set up a braille display to work with Supernova, the various settings which are available, and the keystr...
May 06, 2024•52 min
If you have a new braille display and you’re struggling to connect it to your computer, iPhone or iPad, or you have a new computer, iPhone or iPad and you’re struggling to connect it to your braille display, this session is for you. We covered: The pros and cons of Bluetooth and USB Pairing and unpairing your braille display via Bluetooth Drivers and how to install them Screen reader setup Using braille without speech The session was presented by Matthew Horspool....
Apr 29, 2024•1 hr 1 min
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 L...
Apr 22, 2024•56 min
“What’s wrong with grade 2?” In many cases, nothing. It strikes a good balance between compactness, readability and lack of ambiguity. However, in some cases, a code which is even more compact than grade 2 is extremely advantageous, especially when information needs to be written down at speed. The Braille Shorthand Code was one attempt at creating such a system. Devised and used in the UK, it was last updated in 1959 and still has a loyal following. In this event, we were joined by Dr Norman Wa...
Apr 15, 2024•55 min
iOS 17 was released last September, bosting a number of significant braille enhancements. In this Masterclass, we were joined by Scott Davert to find out more. Scott is well regarded in the blind community as an expert in braille on iOS. He regularly contributes braille-related content to the AppleVis website, and presented a series of three Masterclasses introducing us to braille on iOS in 2022. This was an extensive presentation followed by your questions. We also covered some of the new brail...
Apr 08, 2024•1 hr 1 min
The 39th CSUN Assistive Technology Conference took place from 18 to 22 March in Anaheim, California, hosted by the Centre on Disabilities , Division of Student Affairs at California State University, Northridge . There were many exciting braille product announcements at the conference, and the latest prototypes of previously announced braille products were also exhibited. In this episode, we are joined by a panel of braille experts who attended the conference. They will help us unpack the announ...
Apr 01, 2024•56 min•Ep. 54
Getting tactile diagrams at University is often not as easy as it should be. However, the Open University has an excellent reputation for accessibility, and has developed robust processes for students to request diagrams and for those diagrams to be designed and produced. This session was presented jointly by Jeff Bashton, former Visual Impairment Adviser at the Open University; and Andrew Whitehead, Graphics Media Developer within the OU’s Learner and Discovery Services. It briefly outlined wha...
Mar 25, 2024•1 hr 4 min
