Studies have suggested that smaller print sizes may be read at faster reading speeds when using video magnifiers compared with traditional magnifiers, but that users may be slower at initially finding the text they are looking for. Braille Input for Smart Devices: Braille input options are available as third-party accessories or add-ons for smartphones and tablets. These devices can connect via USB or Bluetooth, enabling users to type Braille on their touchscreen devices. World Blind Union. "Press Release: The importance of Braille Literacy". The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. Archived from the original on 1 December 2021 . Retrieved 1 December 2021.

Embossers can be noisy; if an embosser is going to be used regularly and cannot be kept in a room away from people, an acoustic hood or soundproof case is recommended. Before purchasing a Braille embosser consider issues such as the noise, the speed the embosser is capable of printing at, and whether you need the printer to be portable.Braille, Louis (1829). Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them. The braille alphabet, numbers and symbols are comprised of up to six raised dots. Each character is contained in a braille cell, and you can create 64 different characters by configuring the raised dots in different ways. Alternatively, for users who have a PC with speech output software, it may be a cheaper alternative to buy a scanner and some optical character recognition software (OCR). However, this requires setting up and tends to be slower to use than the purpose built machines. There is also software which can be added to certain mobile phones to give them a reading aid function. The software uses the phone's built-in camera to capture an image of text and then converts it to synthetic speech. In India there are instances where the parliament acts have been published in braille, such as The Right to Information Act. [41] Sylheti Braille is used in Northeast India. [42]

Despite the Braille system's universal reach, the National Federation of the Blind estimates that only 10 percent of the vision-impaired are able to read Braille". [2] Software [ edit ] In 1960 Robert Mann, a teacher in MIT, wrote DOTSYS, a software that allowed automatic braille translation, and another group created an embossing device called "M.I.T. Braillemboss". The Mitre Corporation team of Robert Gildea, Jonathan Millen, Reid Gerhart and Joseph Sullivan (now president of Duxbury Systems) developed DOTSYS III, the first braille translator written in a portable programming language. DOTSYS III was developed for the Atlanta Public Schools as a public domain program. [16] [17] Another study by Lowenfield & Abel [38] shows that braille can be read "the fastest and best... by students who read using the index fingers of both hands". Another important reading skill emphasized in this study is to finish reading the end of a line with the right hand and to find the beginning of the next line with the left hand simultaneously.Braille contractions are words and affixes that are shortened so that they take up fewer cells. In English Braille, for example, the word afternoon is written with just three letters, ⠁ ⠋ ⠝ ⟨afn⟩, much like stenoscript. There are also several abbreviation marks that create what are effectively logograms. [10] The most common of these is dot 5, which combines with the first letter of words. With the letter ⠍ m, the resulting word is ⠐ ⠍ mother. There are also ligatures ("contracted" letters), which are single letters in braille but correspond to more than one letter in print. The letter ⠯ and, for example, is used to write words with the sequence a-n-d in them, such as ⠓ ⠯ hand. This article contains Unicode Braille characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbolsinstead of Braille characters. Riles, Ruby (2004), "Research Study: Early Braille Education Vital", Future Reflections, archived from the original on 29 August 2008 , retrieved 15 April 2009