I wonder what documentation she is referring to. Whenever I try to get
documentation, I get put into the overall users guide. I never see any separate
documentation related just to voice view, let alone just braille. And so far in
the general help documentation, I haven't found it helpful at all. What am I
missing? I would love to see if I have the new braille support.
Mary
Sent from my iPhone
On Sep 28, 2017, at 6:26 AM, Russ Kiehne <russ94577@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Amazon Fire Braille Support: New, Improved, and Still Improving
Submitted by
seller
on Fri, 09/22/2017 - 08:40
Blog Date:
Friday, September 22, 2017
Author:
Amy Mason
Categories:
Access Technology
In our recent blog post, “
The State of Refreshable Braille Support — Summer 2017
,” the access technology team shared some of the most relevant findings from
our recent review of Braille support across a large number of different
devices, and at that time we noted that, “Of course, the pace of technology
is faster than most of us can keep up with for long.” Well, we certainly were
not wrong on that point.
A Few Quick Updates
Between editing and posting of the original post,
NVDA 2017.3
was released with the promised contracted Braille input. Shortly afterward,
VFO announced that the
public beta of JAWS 2018
included a newer version of Liblouis, which is the translation package that
drives Braille support in JAWS, and several other screen access packages.
This is great news as several problems with Braille translation should be
corrected with inclusion of this software update. Some errors of instant
translation will still exist in all packages, but this is a great step
forward for Braille accuracy in a heavily used screen reader and is most
gladly welcomed.
Furthermore, we are literally just getting our fingers on iOS 11’s Braille
support, and we can continue to expect to see another batch of improvements
from Windows Narrator in the next couple months. However, that is not why we
are here today…
A New Contender Appears
As you may have guessed from the title of this post, Braille on the Amazon
Fire tablets (formerly known as the Kindle Fire tablets) is a unique
experience that deserves its own review. This is a relatively new
advancement, as prior to spring of this year, Braille support for the Fire
tablet, which runs a heavily customized version of Android as FireOS, had
used Google’s BrailleBack to provide Braille support, and had to be
downloaded from the Amazon app store. Therefore when creating our testing
set, we chose not to review it on Amazon’s device.
At CSUN this year, while we were giving the initial presentation these blog
posts are based on, Amazon presented a change to the way it handled Braille.
It was no longer a separate download of BrailleBack, but instead was
incorporated directly into VoiceView on all Fire tablets going forward. The
initial release was read-only and was primarily intended for reading Kindle
titles on the Fire, but that’s not where the story ends.
As I write this, Amazon’s Fire team has been quietly dropping updates on to
sixth, seventh, and eighth generation Fire tablets that add the first round of
support for writing in Braille on the device
, so if we are lucky, once you have read this review, the update will have
made its way to a device near you.
Setup
Like most other mobile devices, connections are Bluetooth only, and it’s
simple to pair and get to connect, except for the addition of some extra
challenges when first connecting a VarioUltra, the actual process of pairing
a Braille display is to visit Accessibility> VoiceView > Braille > search for
devices, and select your display from the list that appears. Connectivity is
still sparse, with support for only a few displays at present, though chances
are good that this list will grow in the coming months.
Orbit Reader 20
APH Refreshabraille
HumanWare Brailliant
BAUM VarioUltra, SuperVario 2, and VarioConnect
Braille display preferences are currently fairly limited. For the most unique
of these options, it is important to note that unlike in iOS and Android’s
BrailleBack, VoiceView Braille support is not tied to the focus cursor for
the screen reader. It is possible to read beyond the active cursor, so there
is an option to highlight its location in Braille. The highlight consists of
dots seven and eight underneath all text in focus. I found the lack of
options for how to distinguish this cursor somewhat frustrating, as the
“highlighting” of a line of Braille with an underline of dots seven and eight
can make Braille nearly illegible for me. Other options including choosing
between UEB and older literary Braille as well as computer Braille for input
and output, and the ability to mute speech while using Braille are welcome
and seem to work correctly.
Functionality
Braille support on the Fire is still in its infancy. It is possible to see
potential here, and it is in many ways more competent than Android’s
BrailleBack, but writing is still quite difficult, and reading is hampered by
a lack of necessary formatting metadata which affects both speech and Braille
when using the tablet. Also, commands are extremely limited, or at least that
was what I was going to say before opening the documentation this morning and
finding that the number of available commands had tripled since I had last
reviewed them. Clearly this is a point where Amazon is placing some focus and
energy. This is great to see, and it’s going to be interesting to see how
Braille continues to develop.
Braille on the Fire looks to be coming up roses, so long as you remember that
roses have very sharp thorns. Several of which stung me hard during testing.
First, there are still some commands which are necessary for using a tablet
primarily from a Braille display which are not yet present, including turning
pages, and text selection. Second, I could not enter text in the body of an
email message. As soon as I began typing, my focus moved out of the editing
area and into the auto-completes above the onscreen keyboard. It is possible
that I missed something that would have helped with this, but I never found a
workaround. Third, and most problematically, when I switched into a “kids”
profile, Braille support was lost entirely. On initial load of the profile,
both speech and Braille are de-activated until they are turned on in
Settings, which is annoying, but can be overcome. Unfortunately, upon
re-pairing my Braille display, I found that although it was possible to use
some commands from the Braille keyboard to navigate the screen, none of the
text read by VoiceView is present on the display.
With all of that said, Braille on the Fire tablet can still be used for
reading the text of books and websites, and will be able to provide some
benefit in manipulating the tablet. I could not recommend this pairing for
someone who is dependent on the display for all input or output, but the
support already available is promising, especially considering the frequency
of improvement we have seen so far.
Conclusion
The Amazon Fire tablet’s Braille support is not yet a complete package, but
it is already useful, particularly for those using the Fire as a reading
device. If this pace of development is maintained, I expect we will see great
things in the next year. In the meantime, if you have the required equipment,
it’s worth giving it a spin for yourself. For only being about six months
old, the Fire’s Braille support has come quite a way, and I look forward to
seeing where it goes in future.