A Brailler on a Flat Screen From: Stanford ME News - Summer 2015 - page 6 By: Adrian Lew Do you have an iPhone or an iPad? If so, then skip to the end of the article to learn how a blind or visually impaired person would type in it before you continue reading, and time how long it takes you to type your name. The five minutes or so I once spent waiting for a blind friend to type a password on an iPad cauterized my impression of how much a blind-friendly way to type on a touchscreen device was needed. This was the state of affairs back in May 2011, when Dr. Sohan Dharmaraja (who was then an engineering doctoral candidate) and I sat down in a campus coffee shop to choose a project for an intern to the summer program of the Army High-Performance Computing Research Center. The labyrinth ian pathways of a brainstorming session took us to the Office of Accessible Education at Stanford, where we were introduced to a Brailler: a device with ten keys to type Braille. At that time, there was no Brailler available on a touchscreen device. For people who learned to read and write Braille as children, less than 10% of all visually impaired people in the US, typing on a Brailler is second nature, attaining typing speeds that are often faster than on standard keyboards. Similar to a typewriter, a Brailler indents a page to form up to six raised dots per Braille cell, which can then be "read" by sensing them with the fingers. An electronic Brailler stores the sequence of Braille cells, which can then be sent to an embosser or "Braille printer." Alternatively, the Braille cells can be translated to text. For example, some formation of Braille cells indicate the words "and" and "for" in contracted Braille. The translation of the same cells is different under other Braille codes, such as for Spanish or mathematics. "How do they find the keys?" This is the question most frequently asked about a Brailier on an iPad: it's a flat screen after all. For us, the answer was evident: let’s put the keys under the fingertips of the users, so they do not need to search for them. Users simply hold their fingertips anywhere on the glass surface of an iPad and the software then draws the keys around them. If the user loses track of the keys. the hands can be lifted and then replaced on the glass to reset the keys to the fingertips. This idea received an Honorable Mention in the 2012 Chairman's Awards for Advancement in Accessibility of the Federal Communication Commission, and was echoed by the press around the world. Since the introduction of iOS 8, it is now offered in every iPad and iPhone as a feature called "Braille Input." Typing long texts requires additional functionality, like navigating around the text, and utilizing copy, cut, paste, undo, and redo. Blending these functionalities in a way that is friendly to a visually impaired user requires designing an app with such users in mind. Recently, we did this with "iBrailler Notes," combining the adaptive keyboard with text editing functionalities, and it can now be found in the App Store. Over time, we expect iBrailler Notes will incorporate all of the functionalities found in traditional Brailler devices. For now, we are pleased that the basic version of iBrailler Notes is available to potentially millions of sight impaired people. How to type with Apple's VoiceOver: From Settings, select "General," then "Accessibility," scroll to the bottom and choose "Accessibility Shortcut." Choose "VoiceOver" among the options present. Hereafter, triple clicking the home button will activate / deactivate "VoiceOver," Apple's main technologv to make touchscreen devices and computers accessible to people who are visually impaired. To get a feel for how to use it, open, for example, the “Notes” app and choose to create a new note. This will bring up a keyboard for you to type. Make sure that your device is not muted, and then triple click the home button: you should hear the device saying "VoiceOver On." Now touch any of the keys in the keyboard. This will select the key and you will hear the letter's name, but it will not be typed. To type, make sure the letter is selected, and then double tap the screen. Now, close your eyes, type your name, and time how long it takes you to do it. When you are done, triple click the home button to deactivate "VoiceOver." The PDF of this article should be posted soon at: http://me.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/me2015newsletter.pdf Link: iBrailler Notes http://www.ibrailler.com Related: MBraille https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mbraille/id639199558 Braille Touch (video 1:39) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIEO1bUFHsI Braille Touch Tablet (video 4:25) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUhR6VFl3i8 Ground breaking technology lends vision to the blind (design concepts video 4:31) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAlHTgGCqYk Gregg Vanderheiden comments: Interesting except that that is the slow way to use VoiceOver. You an also just slide your finger around on the keyboard. As soon as you hear the letter you want, leaving your finger in place and tap on the screen anywhere once with another finger. SlideToKey - tapOtherFinger - slideToNext - tapOtherFinger - slideToNext - tapOtherFinger You can type 1 or more characters per second with practice. Gregg Vanderheiden gregg@raisingthefloor.org