RE: Your Experience with Braille Displays
- From: <Nick.Adamson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:06:56 +0100
Hi Kerneels.
Glad to see your still looking in to this.
As I recommended I would try to see if you can borrow a display for a
month or so to find out if you get on with it. As I said to you I find
mine invaluable but I no some who can take or leave them.
In terms of size my personal preference is as big as you can get. IMO it
allows you to see as much of the code in one go as you can but it all
depends on money.
In terms of make I've used an Alva, focus and Tieman. The one I liked
most was the Tieman, it was a comby Braille 80. the controls were nice
and the Braille cells were lovely and clear. I don't know if you can
still get these. The Alva I've got is ok, it's a bit basic in terms of
controls but it does me ok. I use the focus 80 at work and its so. The
controls are nice and its generally a smaller bit of kit. It doesn't
seem as robust as the Alva, I've been using it from new for the last 5
years and some dots have already stopped working. The Alva I've had for
7 years and it was second hand then and all but 1 dot is still working
fine. I also find the display on the focus a little mushy, I'm not sure
how else to describe it.
In terms of screen reader support many people on this list will know I'm
a fan of Hal. IMO the Braille support in Hal is wonderful. I know there
are many users in Europe which don't use the speech at all with Hal,
just Braille. In comparison the last time I used Braille with jaws it
did seem a bit primitive but that was on jaws 7 so I would hope things
have moved on since then. I've never tried Braille with WE so someone
else may have some experience with it.
HTH.
Nick.
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kerneels
Roos
Sent: 22 July 2010 16:15
To: programmingblind
Subject: Your Experience with Braille Displays
Hi everyone,
In a recent conversation with a fellow member of this list, I got a
strong impression that, with the aid of a Braille display one would be
able to be a lot more productive when coding, especially if the display
is sufficiently large (80 cells for example).
I myself have never used a Braille display and have been learning
Braille for the last year and a half with reasonable success. As a
programmer who has been in the industry for about 10 years now I can
totally understand how a Braille display could assist you, especially
with those long lines of object upon object ending in some deep down
function call. Or some of those heavily nested conditional C-style
expressions:
result = (condition1 || condition2) && condition3 ? value1 :
(condition4 ? value4 : value5)
or something similar and more complex -- the above one is quite trivial
:-).
But how have you experienced programming with a Braille display at your
service?
Has there been any particular model / make / design which you can
recommend above others?
Are there any models you absolutely could not get along with, or which
were unreliable and broke all the time?
And how about screen reader compattibility? In your opinion, does screen
reader X stand out at working the best with a Braille display while
screen reader Y failed you dismally.
And lastly, has there been any particular language you absolutely could
not get any joy with while trying to read code with a Braille display?
Many questions, I know, but feel free to respond with anything you feel
strongly about regarding this topic.
Eager to hear your responses,
K
--
Kerneels Roos
Cell/SMS: +27 (0)82 309 1998
Skype: cornelis.roos
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