The Baum Vario Ultra Smart Braille Device

Braille is Awesome! and I’m not only saying that because I am Deafblind! Even when I could hear well enough to use speech readers, I always felt like the audio just slipped into the air, falling away into oblivion, and only barely caught for an instant by my consciousness. Audio books put me to sleep no matter how compelling the prose and when I finished, I only felt like I half-read the book. Ironically, I was probably a visual learner, and that transferred not to audio but to tactile as I lost my vision. Braille feels real and engaging and like I am really a part of reading the book. Also, I like to “see” the printed word on the “page”–the grammar, the spelling, the commas, parentheses and semicolons. That is part of the reading experience.

But it can be a little tricky to get access to a wide selection of braille books. One of the few sources is the National Library Service for the Blind, which will send hard copy Braille Books upon request. But the selection is limited and time consuming to mail books back and forth, and they take up a ton of space. So that is where ebooks and braille displays come in. through electronic files  offered through the National Library Service and Bookshare, access to braille books is almost as fast and complete as the availability of ebooks for sighted readers.

We have found, however, that there are a lot of questions about how to access braille ebooks with a braille display. Braille display devices and operating systems are diverse, so I cannot give you step-by-step instructions on how to access ebooks that you can read in Braille on every specific device. But I hope to offer enough information to get you started.

Terminology

National Library Service for the Blind: A service for blind patrons which allows you to check out audio and braille books. Audio books come in USB cartridges which you can play on a player that they provide, or you can connect to a USB port in your computer or other device with an adapter cord. You can also use their app called BARD to instantly access books on your mobile device. Most NLS audio books are an actual human reading the book and are indexed nicely. You need to provide proof of disability and set up an account to use the National Library Service for the Blind. All services are free.

Bookshare: This is a partially crowdsourced, private ebook service for people with disabilities. They have a mostly up-to-date and wide selection of ebooks free for download in a variety of formats. You must provide documentation of disability and set up an account with them to use bookshare. Cost of membership is $50/year. But if you are a student or an active VR client, those fees can be waived. Bookshare books can vary in quality because (especially in their early years) many of them were “homemade” scans of hard copy books that members contributed. The quality has risen dramatically as many more books come formatted straight from the publisher. Bookshare books can be very nicely indexed (you can navigate with chapter headings, etc.) or they can be one long file with no navigational aids. Bookshare books are not human-read audio files. They come in DAISY, EPUB or BRF formats.

There are other sources for ebooks that can be read in Braille, but these are the two main ones I will focus on today.

Braille Display: A braille display is an electronic device that can pair via bluetooth or a USB cord to a source device like a computer, mobile phone or tablet. They use the capabilities of a screen reader (such as JAWS, VoiceOver or Navigator) to convert the visual information on the screen to braille. They use a set of pins that rise and fall to form braille symbols.

Braille Notetaker: A braille notetaker is like a braille display but with more capabilities. It is like a all-in-one computer and braille display that can email, surf the net, word process, etc. just like a computer. They can also be paired to a traditional computer and be used as a braille display for that device.

Formats: eBooks that can be read in braille come in different formats. Audio files or MP3s cannot be read in braille. But EPUB, DAISY, or BRF formats can be read in braille on certain apps.

VoiceDream

I first started accessing braille books via VoiceDream on my iPad. VoiceDream is an app which reads several different formats of books from several different sources, including Bookshare. Bookshare books can be downloaded directly into VoiceDream from bookshare within the app itself and download in DAISY format. VoiceDream then lets you choose between reading large print, using their built in voice reader, or braille to read the book. For people with low vision, it has a lot of clever settings to customize the font, background, etc. It’s flagship purpose, though, is to turn digital ebooks into audio by reading the text. VoiceDream uses its own screen reading functions and you can choose your own voices and speed, etc. This, however, makes it hard to use with a braille display because braille displays only work with the universal device speech reader (i.e. VoiceOver, JAWS, Navigator) and not an individual app’s reader. Since the app uses its own proprietary reader to navigate through the book and keep your place, if you are using a braille display with VoiceOver, for example, you will be out of sync with where the app thinks you are in the book. It is only able to keep your place via the voice reader. So, if you aren’t using it at all, it can often throw you back to the beginning of the book if you close the app, or if your  device shuts down. Then you have to go back and find your place. If you touch the screen, it can suddenly switch you to that spot, instead of where you are actually reading in braille. You CAN get through a braille book with VoiceDream, but it can be a bit of a chore, especially if you get interrupted a lot.

Kindle

I was frustrated pretty quickly by VoiceDream, so my next step was Kindle. Amazon’s Kindle app can be accessed to read Braille books. However, they need to be in Kindle’s format. So you either have to purchase the books from Amazon Kindle, or you can join Kindle Unlimited for a free selection of Kindle books. Also, many public libraries that now offer ebook check out enable you to download free books on loan into Kindle. Library ebook loan apps like Libby have a Kindle option that can make reading more accessible than reading in the app itself, which is problematically barely accessible. But if you can get books out of Libby to Kindle, then it goes much smoother. Kindle’s ability to read braille books is okay but can be a little wacky. They are readable but often you may find strange braille symbols and punctuation that really shouldn’t be there. It isn’t too distracting, but it is still slightly annoying at times.

Apple’s Books

It took me a while to figure this out, but I finally figured out how to download Bookshare books into Apple’s Books app (formerly called iBooks). The key is to go to the website for Bookshare and download from there. You must download the EPUB version of a book. Once it downloads (you will see it on your book history page) it will have a link that says “available.” When you click on this link, it will ask whether you want to read it on Bookshare’s web-based reader (not recommended) or open in “Books.” Books does a really nice job of reading EPUB books, either from its own bookstore, Bookshare or other sources. Also, EPUB books are usually (but not always) formatted very nicely so you can look in the table of contents, search and find text, etc. The only issue I have with the Books app is that although it will keep you on the page you were last reading, you will have to start over at the top of the page to find your place should you get interrupted. If your device get a notification or pop up message, it can sometimes lose your place as well. If your device gets bumped and turns itself from portrait to landscape or vice versa, you will also lose your place. You can lock your screen orientation and set the font (in the appearance setting) to as large as possible to help with this problem. A large font means that there are less words per page and thus less text to search through if you lose your place. As for the braille, the font size won’t make a difference because it will turn pages automatically as you pan and it is not very noticeable.

NLS and BARD

The National Library Service’s BARD app does a nice job with braille, and you may wonder why I didn’t go straight to BARD to read braille books. Part of the answer is that when I first started reading braille books, I only knew uncontracted (grade 1) braille, and NLS BARD books only come in BRF format that is in contracted (Grade 2) braille. And the other reason was every time I looked for a  BRF book in BARD, I couldn’t find it and I had much more luck with Bookshare. Books on NLS tend to not be the ones that just dropped last Tuesday, it seems to take several months to a year for a book to show up on BARD. I sometimes like to read the book that everyone else is reading and talking about, so this was frustrating. But BARD BRF books read very nicely on the BARD app with Braille display. And the best part about it is that BARD keeps your exact spot you left off at all the time. If you are interrupted, you will not lose your line. You can go back to exactly where you left off, within a few words.

To read braille books with BARD, you need to make sure a couple of settings are set correctly. First, you need to match your braille display’s number of cells with the settings in BARD. Within the BARD app, go to Settings -> Display Settings -> Braille Display Length. There you will select the number of cells your braille display contains. For example, if you have a Focus 40 and have 40 cells on your display, choose 40. If you have a Polaris 32, choose 32. This sets the panning to match your display.

You also need to set the settings on your device’s input and output to “UNCONTRACTED 8-DOT BRAILLE.” for both input and output. How to do this depends on your device, but in an iOS device, it is found in Settings-> Accessibility -> VoiceOver -> Braille -> Input/Output. (Depending on your braille display, there is also chords you can use to toggle this as well.) Weirdly, this is necessary to read NLS BARD books, even though they will still appear in contracted 6-dot braille. Keep in mind that many NLS books still use American Braille rather than Unified English Braille, but it is usually not a problem to read these files if you are unfamiliar with the older American Braille. A good way to get started with BARD and braille is to go into the HELP file and read Chapter 7 of their HELP document. It’s all about Braille files and BARD.

Bookshare and BARD

But let me tell you of my recent discovery! (Maybe some of you knew this, but I didn’t!) You can download Bookshare BRF files into BARD…AND read them in either uncontracted or contracted Braille. You use basically the same method as is needed to download EPUB files into the Books app. You have to go directly to the Bookshare webpage, download a book into BRF format, then click on the available link and instead of choosing to open in “Books,” choose BARD. (you may have to make sure BARD is an option in your settings.) Then, go to BARD and look in the Braille books tab in your bookshelf. You should see your book. Now, here is where it gets weirder, though. You may have to play around with your braille output and input settings to get these files to read nicely. Choosing UNCONTRACTED 8-DOT BRAILLE may now give you a bunch of gibberish. But CONTRACTED 6-DOT or UNCONTRACTED 6-DOT will work for these BRF files that come from other sources than NLS itself. But the advantage of this is that unlike NLS sourced books which you can only read in contracted braille,  you can choose whether you would like to read in contracted or uncontracted braille.

This is great because we have many clients who are just starting out with uncontracted braille and would like to read more than just the braille textbook to practice, but it has been hard to source uncontracted braille books. But with a braille display, you can have access to a variety of braille books and get up to speed with uncontracted braille. (the way I started was by reading easy children’s books. The content was so easy that it let me concentrate on the braille. Then I went up to young people chapter books and then YA novels. The easy content gives a lot of context cues to make the braille go faster.)

Like any adaptive tech, reading ebooks in braille takes a lot of patience, especially at first. There are always funky bugs and weird things that don’t quite work as they should. It takes a while to build up tolerance for that and to build a toolkit for workarounds. So, if it doesn’t go great for you right away, keep trying new things and don’t give up. Try to work on it just a few minutes a day to start. But it is possible to lay back, relax your eyes and ears, and simply enjoy a nice braille book on a sunny afternoon.

Tech changes all the time and this article is likely to be outdated by next week. So feel free to add corrections, tips, ideas, questions or other feedback in the comments.