Braille technology

Type of assistive technology

Braille technology is assistive technology which allows blind or visually impaired people to read, write, or manipulate braille electronically.[1] This technology allows users to do common tasks such as writing, browsing the Internet, typing in Braille and printing in text, engaging in chat, downloading files and music, using electronic mail, burning music, and reading documents. It also allows blind or visually impaired students to complete all assignments in school as the rest of their sighted classmates and allows them to take courses online. It enables professionals to do their jobs and teachers to lecture using hardware and software applications. The advances in Braille technology are meaningful because blind people can access more texts, books, and libraries, and it also facilitates the printing of Braille texts.

"Despite the Braille system's universal reach, the National Federation of the Blind estimates that only 10 percent of the vision-impaired are able to read Braille".[2]

## Software

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Some of the software available currently:

* Duxbury DBT is a braille translation program that translates inkprint to braille and braille to inkprint for over 180 languages.
* BrailleBlaster is a free braille translation program created by American Printing House and available for Linux, Mac and Windows.
* JAWS, is a program that reads the words on the screen and enables the browsing of folders, documents and programs on Microsoft Windows. Words on the screen can also be sent to a Braille display.
* Kurzweil, a device that scans texts into the computer and narrates them.
* nvda, open source screen reading software with braille support.

## Hardware

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* Braille display
* Braille keyboards, which were in use only with Braille typewriters. Braille reading computer users prefer the standard keyboard as a text composing input device. Braille computer keyboards are extremely rare.[citation needed]
* Braille embosser
* Braille notetakers
* Braille e-books, using electroactive polymers,[3] so far only as a concept design [1]

## See also

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* Assistive technology

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Examples of braille technology Retrieved February 25, 2023]
2. ^ Dean, Katie (2000-02-24). "All Eyes on Braille Software". Wired. Retrieved 2008-07-01.
3. ^ Bar-Cohen, Yoseph (11 September 2009). "Electroactive polymers for refreshable Braille displays". SPIE.

* Braille Technology, American Foundation for the Blind

## External links

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* Duxbury Systems
*   * BrailleBlaster https://brailleblaster.org

American Foundation for the Blind

* Braille Technology at RNC
* Dancing Dots
* Assistive Technology Products

* v
* t
* e

Braille ⠃⠗⠁⠊⠇⠇⠑

Braille cell|

* 1829 braille
* International uniformity
* ASCII braille
* Unicode braille patterns

Braille scripts|

| French-ordered|

* Albanian
* Azerbaijani
* Cantonese
* Catalan
* Chinese (mainland Mandarin) (largely reassigned)
* Czech
* Dutch
* English (Unified English)
* Esperanto
* French
* German
* Ghanaian
* Guarani
* Hawaiian
* Hungarian
* Iñupiaq
* IPA
* Irish
* Italian
* Latvian
* Lithuanian
* Luxembourgish (extended to 8-dot)
* Maltese
* Māori
* Navajo
* Nigerian
* Philippine
* Polish
* Portuguese
* Romanian
* Samoan
* Slovak
* South African
* Spanish
* Taiwanese Mandarin (largely reassigned)
* Turkish
* Vietnamese
* Welsh
* Yugoslav
* Zambian

| Nordic family|

* Estonian
* Faroese
* Icelandic
* Scandinavian
* Danish
* Finnish
* Greenlandic
* Northern Sámi
* Norwegian
* Swedish

|

Russian lineage family
i.e. Cyrillic-mediated scripts|

* Belarusian
* Bulgarian
* Kazakh
* Kyrgyz
* Mongolian
* Russian
* Tatar
* Ukrainian

Egyptian lineage family
i.e. Arabic-mediated scripts|

* Arabic
* Persian
* Urdu (Pakistan)

Indian lineage family
i.e. Bharati Braille|

* Devanagari (Hindi / Marathi / Nepali)
* Bengali (Bangla / Assamese)
* Gujarati
* Kannada
* Malayalam
* Odia
* Punjabi
* Sinhala
* Tamil
* Telugu
* Urdu (India)

Other scripts|

* Amharic
* Armenian
* Burmese
* Dzongkha (Bhutanese)
* Georgian
* Greek
* Hebrew
* Inuktitut (reassigned vowels)
* Khmer
* Thai and Lao (Japanese vowels)
* Tibetan

Reordered|

* Algerian Braille (obsolete)

Frequency-based|

* American Braille (obsolete)

Independent|

* Chinese semi-syllabaries
* Cantonese
* Mainland Chinese Mandarin
* Taiwanese Mandarin
* Two-cell Chinese (Shuangpin)
* Japanese
* Korean

Eight-dot|

* Luxembourgish
* Kanji
* Gardner–Salinas braille codes (GS8)

Symbols in braille|

* Braille music
* Canadian currency marks
* Computer Braille Code
* Gardner–Salinas braille codes (science; GS8/GS6)
* International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
* Nemeth braille code

Braille technology|

* Braille e-book
* Braille embosser
* Braille translator
* Braille watch
* Mountbatten Brailler
* Optical braille recognition
* Perforation
* Perkins Brailler
* Refreshable braille display
* Slate and stylus
* Braigo

People|

* Louis Braille
* Charles Barbier
* Róża Czacka
* Valentin Haüy
* Harris Mowbray
* Thakur Vishva Narain Singh
* Sabriye Tenberken
* William Bell Wait

Organisations|

* Braille Institute of America
* Braille Without Borders
* Japan Braille Library
* National Braille Association
* Blindness organizations
* Schools for the blind
* American Printing House for the Blind

Other tactile alphabets|

* Decapoint
* Moon type
* New York Point
* Night writing
* Vibratese

Related topics|

* Accessible publishing
* Braille literacy
* RoboBraille

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