Tips on Buying a Braille Display

How do you select the Braille display that is right for you? Susan Stageberg from The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) wrote an article on her experience and her tips for future buyers of Braille displays.

A Braille display is an expensive but important buy and the selection of one should be done with care. AccessWorld from AFB gave several important tips in their November 2004 edition.

A Braille display is a refreshable Braille output for the computer screen information. It works with a screenreader and is made of an eight-dot refreshable Braille cell. The Braille cell is made of eight dots – one through six are used for English Braille and traditional Braille and dots seven and eight are used by screenreaders to show the cursor position or used in some European countries where they use eight dot Braille.

Braille displays are equipped with quick access buttons that allow you to perform many tasks without moving your hands from the display. Depending on the brand and screenreader support, these buttons can be used as a right of left mouse click or tab-key. The quick access buttons can go the previous or next line of the document or Web page and can be freely programmed on some Braille displays.

Stageberg says: “Status cells are a feature provided by some displays. Depending on the model of display and the screen reader you are using, three, four, or five of the refreshable Braille cells display information about which cursor is active; attributes, such as underlined or bold text; and so on. In many cases, the status cells can be placed where you want them on the display or turned off altogether. Note that JAWS supports status cells, but Window-Eyes does not.”

She also mentions some indications where the use of a Braille display is recommended: “You are deaf-blind and cannot use speech output, your job requires telephone work, you do a lot of proofreading and when your job requires a great deal of work on the World Wide Web.”

Please continue to read the article on AccessWorld