Braille 2000 V2.274 take 2: we’re getting better from blog The Technology blog and podcast

Braille 2000 V2.274 take 2: we’re getting better

Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of the blog, this time, a much improved Braille 2000. NVDA users, you’ll be in luck, I think we’ve got the speech the way i think we need it. You can turn on telling options to read lines, paragraphs, etc. and they actually do as they’re supposed to do. For you as an NVDA user, I could say that you can do some editing with the speech controls, I.E. in braille view, removing characters if you make a mistake, but this is done with the constant press of arrow keys. I’ve successfully looked at a lot of the issues I’ve reported, and it is working pretty well.

One thing that we’re adding, is speed braille keys accessibility whereby if you didn’t have the pause key, we now can have our own key which is alt+x to stop the recording process. I’ve set up three of them, one to read the paragraph, one to tell me the line, page, and cell positioning of the file, and one just for the line.

Jaws and NVDA give different results when going through the speed braille keys setup process. Jaws will read the field in which you are to define the key, I.E. f1. NVDA will read the entire dialogue box. NVDA also reads the entire edit box for describing the macro, and the box that tells you you’re ready to go. JFW seems to have mixed results, only fully reading the ready to record dialogue box itself. NVDA and JFW somewhat read the final box by itself, although once you tab to the radio buttons that ask for file or system specific, NVDA will read the accompanying text, whereby JFW reads only the radio buttons.

The way this dialogue is configured, according to Bob, is a set of static text, with the controls for the key to be used, description, and the like. He did a cursory lookup on why static text wasn’t reading, and things came up that he’s not too clear on, although I did tell him about the third dialogue being a read only whereby, I was using my arrow keys to read the text.

By default, speech will tell you the version of braille 2000 is running, and then it won’t talk without you asking it to. You can change this in the speech voice submenu portion of the program. You can also adjust some main settings in speech, engine settings, or adjust speech. If you turn on telling for example, it’ll tell you that its on, and its settings are used, i.e. word, paragraph, cell, and even where am I settings can be set. This is a big step forward and definitely a welcome change.

One of the bugs I’ve experienced is also fixed, where it didn’t maximize itself by default. The program definitely does a lot better maximized, and I’m glad Bob was able to fix this, as we need the window maximized by default to get the best value.

I am confident that the speech component as an assistant will be valuable no matter what reader you use. For example, the read command will act like the read to end options in both screen readers. By default, it uses the SAPI voices installed on your computer. I’ve got the two that comes with windows 10, but you may have others that are available to you. The new speech settings dialogue box has a multitude of options to set what you want speaking, the voice, and even the speed.

One of the highlights which I just tested deal with the speaking of keyboard events. In 6 key entry, Bob has given it the treatment of inside information. If you hit 5-6, it says its a grade 1 indicator. It won’t do back translation in this mode, just what you type. I could see that very valuable when using 6 key entry.

The speech does not read simulated braille, generated from wordpad or another program that you need to use to simulate braille. Simulated braille was used heavily for assignment 14, which isn’t even ready yet. It was typed out, but a lot still needs to be done before I can see a first draft to determine if I’ve done it correctly. That is because I used the RTF importer which can import simulated braille, but no screen reader can read it because it only appears in the text. It won’t even read it in braille view either, but I’m sure that can be worked on. A hardcopy or BRF may need to be gotten to get this to work for now. I’m not overly concerned about it for the moment, the speech options are working for straight text, and math improvements are coming soon.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact Bob (Robert) Stepp through the braille 2000 web site. You can learn more about Braille 2000, download a demo of the 2.273 release, read the literature, a guide for how to get braille 2000 to work in full screen mode, and more. To contact me, please use my web site. and select the contact and bug reporting form.

I’m sure when 2.275 is released, we’ll have a great release for all! Thanks for reading!

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Braille 2000 V2.274 take 2: we’re getting better was released on May 27, 2019 at 2:00 pm by tech in Braille 2000.
Last modified: May 27, 2019.

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