Welcome to another article here on the tech blog. Today, we’re going to cover how to set up Braille2000 for speech use. I want to let people know that Jaws 2018, 2019, and 2020 will work with
Braille2000, as long as you are in:
- ? Print view
- ? Braille view with a braille display
My web site talks at great length the difficulties of using Jaws with no braille display, as part of teaching you how to use this program.
Lets start with the launching of Braille2000. When it launches, you’re presented with a dialogue with multiple tabs. If you want to evaluate the program, it is best to control tab between the tabs to find the evaluate option. You can evaluate the different versions which include direct entry, document
processing, and talking. Each version will work equally, but do not save your file! Doing so will sprinkle “demo across your file, and will ruin it if you are using it for production.
Whether you use the demo, or the full program, you’ll need to do some things that will help Jaws, whether you have a Braille Display or not. It will also help when you’re viewing without the display because Jaws will not read anything else. The talking edition is not effected by some of these changes,
but we’ll step through this anyhow.
First, lets talk about the “control panel” that is on by default. There is a menu called panel, and some of the options we may want to use will be included in there. The panel is a clickable portion of Braille2000 that allows the sighted transcriber to select different options like math, paragraph style,
options for creating and opening files, and much more. Most of the time, the blind transcriber will use normal windows commands to do a lot of the things the panel allows the sighted transcriber to do.
Some of the other aspects of the program you’ll need to turn off include the line numbers, paragraph markers, and the view selector. I found in my testing that the paragraph markers do not have any effect with Jaws as I had mine on. The line numbers will show the line number and my testing indicates that
these are two digit numbers that Jaws will read.
Lets talk about NVDA. NVDA will read the menus, and dialogues of the program. It will not read anything else in the braille reading window. The Talking Edition is going to be the only way you will be able to get anything out of this program. I’ve reached out to NVDA support with a data dump of what is
happening within B2K and have not heard anything else on how we can have it fixed through scripting or anything else. This will make it difficult for the blind transcriber that works with Braille2000 to utilize it without using the Talking Edition.
Lets talk now about how to turn off these options that I talked about above that will help you get the best out of Braille2000.
- * Press tab and find options to turn off “show control panel all the time” “line numbers” and “view tabs” as the main three options.
- * Finally, hit enter to save and close the dialogue.
Optionally, find the “paragraph marks” and press space bar on all of these options.
After you’ve done all of these things, Braille 2000 is ready to go for basic use.
The menus
The menus are very straight forward. If everything is set up correctly, Jaws and NVDA will speak them as you press the alt key and navigate using your up and down arrow keys. This program’s submenus are utilized by using the right and left arrow key. Feel free to explore, the menus and look at various
options. Some of the options you’ll need is adjusting paragraph styles, what to do with new paragraphs, setting running heads, and setting page numbering. All of these options are in the do menu and the options you need have mnemonics associated to each option. Instead of giving you each particular
command, you are free to explore and find these options. The accessibility department will be here to assist while you learn the program.
The speak menu
The speak menu is going to be your friend whether you use Jaws or NVDA. To access it, press alt+k and you’ll find various types of settings for what you need right now, and other options for speaking specific things as words, cells, dots, explicitly, and much more. The Talking Edition Documentation gives
complete access to all of the details on this powerful program, and continued write ups on the blog will talk about percent codes, lesson material examples, and how I’ve used the Talking Edition to allow me to complete an assignment pretty much on my own. The blog also has a complete history of the talking
edition from the beginning when it started talking to today. This guide is not going to cover everything, but some basic setup instructions to get you started.
Registration
Registering the program is quite easy. Braille2000 will give you a license number. This license number and a password of your choosing will allow you to access the program with no restrictions over the Internet. There are other types of license options that you can use, and Braille2000 will be happy to help
you throughout the process of your journey. Once you select which option you want, the registration is easy. For example, when opening the program, select the internet log on section and fill in the license number and the password of your choice. Once you do this, you’ll need to tab to select the log on
button. It will register itself and allow you to use the program with no restrictions.
If you have any questions, Braille2000 is just a phone call away! Here is the link to the Braille2000 web site and here is the liink to Talking Edition Specific stuff including audio, write ups, and a link to the category of the blog where this article will also go. Thanks so much for reading, and make it a great day!