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Welcome to Changemakers a podcast from APH.
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We're talking to people from around the world who are creating positive change in the lives of people who are blind or visually impaired.
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Here's your host.
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Hello, and welcome to Change Makers I'm APH's Public Relations Manager, Sara Brown.
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And today we're celebrating braille history with the look at some of our high tech braille devices that feature the latest of braille technology.
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We'll look at a brand new product that's in the works.
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Learn a new feature that's coming to Chameleon 20 and go way back and learn about the history of braile devices.
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We'll also have a check-in with Partners with Paul.
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Up, first we have APH's Early Childhood Product Manager, Donna McClure-Rogers.
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Hello, Donna and welcome to Change Makers.
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Hi Sara, it's nice to be here.
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Great.
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So can you tell us about this brand new product that's coming soon?
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Sure.
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This product goes by the name of Polly.
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Uh, it was developed in partnership with Thinkerbell Labs out of India, and Polly is an independent braille learning device, complete with a curriculum for both contracted and uncontracted brail.
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It also includes an online parent-teacher portal that allows the device to be customized, to fit the child's needs.
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And talk about Helios.
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I understand that's the learning management system that comes with Polly.
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Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
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Helios is the online portal.
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Um, it is basically a web site that provides information about use data.
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Uh, you know, how much the child has been online, what lessons they've mastered, where they're struggling, that type of thing.
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It, has a lot of graphs and just data that can really help doing, IEP reporting and providing that information to the classroom teachers or the parents just wanting to know, you know, where is the child,"where's the child at right now?
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How are they doing?
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Um, you know, what real characters do they know?
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Are they master spelling that type of thing?"
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So the product is Poly.
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Now tell me how is poly different from other APH products?
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Well, Polly has a lot of really exciting features, um, as a former TVI and a braille reader, myself.
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The first thing that I noticed when I picked this device up was the electronic slate.
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I really enjoyed being able to erase when I was working on those slate and stylus skills, a, uh, there's also a jumbo display, which there's two cells for the jumbo display and then six standard cells on this device and these work in conjunction, but the jumbo display is used for not only for input on the device, but also for output.
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So it kind of takes the place of, of how a teacher might introduce a braille character to a young child using the tennis balls and muffin tin.
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Remote braille instruction that this device provides is extremely helpful, especially now, as we're all dealing with this ping pong effect of,"are we virtual today?""Are we in person today?" That type of thing.
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Um, when this all started, the field did a great job stepping up and making it possible to continue teaching our students that needed that hands on instruction so much.
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But with this device, teachers can remotely make assignments to their students and push those through as long as their students are connected, um, to the internet.
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And they can do that using either the Bluetooth with Wi- Fi for this device, or they can also plug in, um, with a hard wire ethernet port, whatever the students have available.
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It'll make it possible for them to receive those assignments.
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And then for the teacher to be able to receive feedback on how the child is doing, and this device is created in a game like format.
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So it's very similar to those commercial beginning reading programs that cited kids have in an abundance of choices.
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Um, but those are just not really accessible to our braille readers.
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And this device has everything right there for the student.
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They can navigate independently, they can get all the feedback they need and they can even get their instructions, repeated.
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Everything is, is perfectly accessible for both the teacher and the student.
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I really enjoy, um, the Helios website because even the graphs are accessible.
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Um, this company has done such a wonderful job, making sure that even our teachers that need that accessibility feature are able to access all the information that is provided to the side users.
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Okay and what's the target demographic for Polly?
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Um, we are looking at this device working best for children between the ages of probably five and nine or 10.
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Um, this would be, you know, your beginning braille readers and, uh, the, the it's because the feedback on the device is geared for a younger child.
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Uh, we have taken the time to have the voice for this device recorded within the studio at APH.
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So you're not getting this computerized screen reader voice, um, talking to the child.
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We want them to be able to make that personal connection with the device and feel like, um, they're actually receiving feedback from a person.
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And so a lot of times if they give a correct answer, they'll hear, um, children clapping and saying yay, or, um, the narrator might say you got that right.
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You know, and that might be some that an older child might not necessarily need that much feedback.
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Um, you know, it's not to say that an older child or even an adult couldn't use this device.
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Um, but again, you know, at the moment we do kind of have it geared more for those younger kids.
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Now, what was the motivation behind the development of Polly and what brought about this need?
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Uh, this one actually came about, uh, one when the team at Thinkerbell Labs was, uh, working together on a graduate school product.
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They, um, they had noticed that a lot of sighted children have apps that are available, um, like maybe on their iPad that will sing the alphabet song.
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And then the alphabet letters appear on the screen.
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So the sighted child can see the letters, but there wasn't anything that worked, um, in conjunction with a braille display for their blind students.
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So they took an iPad and one braille cell, and they created, um, an app that would be able to, uh, show the alphabet letter as the song was going through, uh, singing the alphabet.
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So it began with just the simple iPad and one brail cell.
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And it has turned into this fabulous device that teaches contracted braille, provides games for the children, gives that feedback for the teachers online.
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And then, you know, again, my favorite thing, they can, they can work with that electronic slate.
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So, so they can build those skills to have the most portable braille experience that, that they can be provided with.
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And when will poly be available for people to purchase?
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Uh, we are looking at spring of 2022.
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And is there anything else you would like to say regarding Polly?
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I do.
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Um, this device is really geared to allow our students to be able to practice when the, um, when their TVI is not present.
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Um, we all know that it's great for students that are beginning braille to have that five days a week with that TVI.
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I, but sometimes that's just not possible and we don't want our children to only have braille instruction for one day a week.
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Um, and we know that does happen.
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So, um, you know, if, if you're thinking about getting this device for one of your students, please make sure that your district knows that this device is intended to go home with the student it's intended to be used in the classroom without the TVI present.
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And so, you know, that may need to be added into the IEP just to make sure that everybody's on the same page.
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Um, you know, the parents can walk through and learn braille alongside their child with this device.
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And it would just create that holistic approach that we're looking for so that we can, uh, help everyone in the field to implement braille into this child's general ed classroom as quickly as possible.
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All right, Donna, thank you so much for joining me today on Change Makers.
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You are so very welcome
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And Polly is only available inside the United States.
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For those outside the U.S.
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who are interested, we encourage you to contact Thinkerbell Labs directly to get Polly's sister product,"Annie." We've put a link to Thinkerbell Labs in the show notes.
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Up next, we're gonna learn about an update in the works for Chameleon 20.
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Here to talk about Chameleon 20's new update is APH's Product Manager, Educational Product Innovation William Freeman.
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Hello William, and welcome to Change Makers.
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Hello.
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Thanks for having me.
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I'm excited to be here.
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So tell us what's new with Chameleon 20?
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Uh, there's a lot new with the Chameleon.
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Uh, we've recently added Spanish language support, which is great shows the menus in Spanish and also adds support for, uh, Spanish braille codes.
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We've all also added a one handed mode that makes it easier for folks to use the device one handed and the most exciting thing coming to the Chameleon right now is text to speech which will be coming in our 1.3 update.
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What was the motivation behind adding text to speech to Chameleon and how will it improve?
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Well, uh, text to speech is a great way to reinforce braille literacy while also giving folks an easier path to learning how to use their Chameleon.
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So as a person is reading braille on their Chameleon, uh, they can use the speech to learn new braille words and contractions, and even choose to rely on the speech if they need a short break from the somewhat task of reading braille, uh, uh, something also that I've realized, uh, that I didn't think of was TTS(text to speech), makes it possible for someone that can't read braille to interact with the device, which will be great for parents and teachers that have otherwise never used a braille display.
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And maybe aren't that proficient with reading braille
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And speech engines.
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What, what speech engine will TTS use?
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It's gonna use Acapella
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And how will the student access speech?
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Multiple ways?
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So there's the speaker on the unit, but also a headphone jack.
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If they want more privacy, another thing is they could plug it into a speaker or even into their computer.
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If they wanted to share their speech with someone else, like if you plug it into your computer, you could share it over a video call.
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Okay.
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What are the different options for text to speak?
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Does it do more than just say what's currently displayed?
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Yes.
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So there's, uh, of course a say all function that will start reading from the current cursor position.
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There's also read current line, read text under cursor, as well as a typing echo and delete echo functions.
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It's cool because you can turn each feature off and on as needed.
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So you don't necessarily have to use all of those features.
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You can just pick the ones you want to use.
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So if someone doesn't wanna be bothered with speech very often, maybe they turn off all the other options and just leave, read text under cursor turned on, and then that way, if they come across some brow that they're not familiar with, they can just move the cursor using outer buttons, and then hear that unfamiliar word, read aloud.
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Um, users of course, users will also be able to increase and decrease the speech rate, which we know is a must have feature.
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No one wants to sit around listening to a voice that's either too slow or too fast for their personal tastes.
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What's what, what the advantage to a student for Chameleon to have speech?
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There's tons of advantages.
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Uh, like we've talked about, it's a great way to learn new braille words by using read text under cursor.
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Uh, but it can also just generally help build their confidence.
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Like the typing echo can be used for letters, words, or both.
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And that means while the student is typing, they can be sure that they're making the characters and words that they think they are initially they'll build their confidence as they continue to become fluent braille readers and writers.
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Overall, it's just another way to get students reading braille learning braille is hard.
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It takes so much time.
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So anything we can do to make that process easier and more fun, we want to do it.
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Now.
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I understand chameleon has different voices.
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Why put that option in there?
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Why the choice?
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Choice is what the Chameleon is all about.
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Uh, we really wanted a braille display that students could customize and know belongs to them.
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When we first introduced this product and part of that was the, uh, different colored cases.
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Now we've extended that to the voice selection.
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So students can pick a voice that they are comfortable hearing at launch users will be limited to two voices per language with English, getting"Sharon" and will and Spanish getting"Rosa" and will.
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However, with our next release, we will introduce the ability for users to download a whole range of voices, including non-American English, voices, fun, children's voices, and also bilingual voices that can competently speak both English and Spanish.
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One aspect of this that is really interesting is that users will be able to select both a primary and secondary voice.
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The primary voice will read menus and system messages, and the secondary voice will read content.
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So you could pick, say a British voice to read your menus and system messages, you know, make it very proper and then a more American voice for your content.
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Um, and with the addition of all these features it'll mean that every chameleon really is unique to the person as everyone's gonna have their own preferences.
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When will this release be available?
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Uh, it'll be coming out early this year.
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William, is there anything else you would like to add?
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Uh, main thing, uh, the main message I wanna get out to folks with both the Chameleon and the Mantis is update your units.
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Uh, I've been really trying to make a big deal outta this lately, and it's because we're finding out some folks aren't updating their units.
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So make sure you update your units.
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We're listening to your feedback.
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Everything we're putting into these devices is based on stuff you've asked for.
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And we just want folks to be able to take advantage edge of all the cool stuff that we're bringing.
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All right, William, thank you so much for joining us today on Change Makers.
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Yeah.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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It's been great.
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Up next.
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We're gonna check in with partners with Paul.
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Thanks, Sara and welcome back to Partners with Paul.
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Glad to have you with us today on the show we have Kim and Chris Nova from Mystic Access.
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Chris is the founder of Mystic Access and Kim is the Director of Product Development.
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Welcome into the show.
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How are you today?
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Great, Paul, Thanks for having us.
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A lot of things we wanna talk about today.
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So for folks who may not know Chris, what is Mystic Access?
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Mystic Access, is a company that I founded back in 2013.
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And, uh, our mainstay is audio documentation for mainstream and or blindness related products.
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Great.
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Can you tell us more about some of the products on your site?
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Sure.
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We have tutorial for the Amazon echo, for example, everybody's favorite a person Google home, uh, iOS, Android, and we even have an APH tutorial up there as well.
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Yep.
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That's definitely something we wanna cover here in just a bit.
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Kim, is there any new products or offerings we should know about?
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We do have a few cool new things, Paul, in terms of the actual audio that we offer, which can be downloaded digitally or purchased on physical media, like an SD card or an NLS cartridge.
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We have a cool new class on podcast listening that people may find fascinating since we're sitting here actually recording a podcast all about the various ways you can do it, whether that be on an app via iOS or Android via your Victor stream or another player that might need you to manually download a podcast feed.
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We talk about all these things.
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I like what podcast feeds, what are episodes?
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What do you need to know to get your feed downloaded onto a player?
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For instance, if it doesn't allow you the capacity to do it magically through the beauty of electronics, you know, through the player itself.
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So it's a very comprehensive class that starts with foundational concepts and moves all the way through to more advanced concepts.
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And it's three sessions of powerful information over three hours in links.
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So that's a cool class for people who are kind of looking for alternative ways or just perhaps some new ways to check out their podcasts.
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We also have a couple new hardware products that we're carrying.
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One is a desk caddy.
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That's really cool.
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So if you have some goodies that you just want to make sure always at hand, it's a nice spinning metal desk caddy with a lot of compartments and we have some really cool magnetic cable ties too.
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So these are kind of fun things we got in for the holidays and they're great gifts for time of year.
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Really.
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The other thing we, the other thing we have is a partnership with guidelines and edges, where we have talking medical products, blood pressure, monitor oximeter, and a infrared thermometer.
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So definitely a range of products.
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Let's get back to the audio for a moment.
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Uh, those are something that you completed in partnership with APH.
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Can you tell us more about that, Kim?
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Absolutely.
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We were really excited to work with APH in creating and compiling a tutorial on the Mantis Q40.
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And since the Mantis is such an innovative little product, we were really excited to get involved with working on this with you guys and making this really comprehensive again, audio that takes you from again and the more foundational concepts of what's the mantis.
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"Why do you want one?""How do you orient yourself to this device?""What does it do all the way through all the different applications?" So you can learn about how to write documents and make calculations and of course use terminal modes.
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So there's a ton of great information in there that hopefully will make using your mantis a less stressful and more fun experience.
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There is a lot, it is comprehensive.
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No question about it.
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So if you're an audio learner, by all means, uh, we're gonna talk to you about how you can get to that here in just a bit.
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So let me end with this.
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Is there anything else going on you'd like to talk to us about?
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Well, We do have on our site of bunch of paid products, but we also have a bunch of free downloads.
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We have a biweekly Mystic Access podcast that comes out every a couple weeks.
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It's Kim and I, so you get to listen to us.
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We also have a free downloads page where there's literally hundreds of hours of audio for you to download and listen to for free.
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That's fantastic.
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And we appreciate the opportunity to have you on today.
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Thank you very much for joining us.
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Thanks, Paul.
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We appreciate the opportunity.
00:21:05.380 --> 00:21:10.470
So at the, in the show notes, you're going to find a link to the Mystic Access site.
00:21:10.789 --> 00:21:17.869
We're also going to include a link to the Mantis tutorial, have a look around, I'm sure you can find something useful there.
00:21:18.450 --> 00:21:19.470
Thanks for listening.
00:21:19.650 --> 00:21:20.950
And now back to you, Sara,
00:21:22.650 --> 00:21:23.549
Thanks so much, Paul.
00:21:24.009 --> 00:21:25.869
And now we're back to the beginning.
00:21:26.130 --> 00:21:31.500
We have APH's Museum Director, Michael Hudson, and he's here to talk about early braille devices.
00:21:31.009 --> 00:21:33.740
Hello Michael, and welcome to Change Makers.
00:21:34.289 --> 00:21:35.460
Good morning, Sara.
00:21:36.039 --> 00:21:45.539
Now I've just discussed the new APH product that's coming soon, which is called Polly and the, and updates to Chameleon 20 both high tech braille devices.
00:21:45.839 --> 00:21:49.250
Can you talk about some of the early braille tablets and devices?
00:21:50.680 --> 00:21:50.970
Sure.
00:21:51.109 --> 00:21:58.160
So Louis(Braille) publishes his code for the first time in 1829.
00:21:59.380 --> 00:22:13.789
And, uh, one of the things that made braille so superior to raised letters, which was the system they were using before, that was that you could write braille pretty easily.
00:22:15.029 --> 00:22:19.069
Um, and today, you know, if you go in the APH catalog, you'll find, um, slight stylus'.
00:22:20.430 --> 00:22:47.140
Um, what Louis came up with was called a Braille Tablet, which is really kind of a desk slate, but if you think of a clipboard size board, um, and then, um, it had, uh, holes pierced down the side of the frame and then a little metal writing flame frame with the little windows that guided your stylist to create the six dot cells, right?
00:22:47.740 --> 00:22:58.009
And so you would write one line at a time and then you would lift that writing guide out, slide it down, one set of holes, click it in and then write your next line.
00:22:58.230 --> 00:23:02.329
And another thing that was different about it was, uh, today, uh, slight and stylus.
00:23:02.330 --> 00:23:19.839
It has these recessed, uh, pits on the bottom side of the frame and that, so when you, when you push your sty into it, it goes into that, that, that recessed hole makes a nice rounded dot, uh, Louis's braille tablet had grooved lines.
00:23:21.059 --> 00:23:32.710
And so its braille is not quite as, as, uh, well formed and neat as a modern slate and stylus, but it was still, uh, a quick and easy way to write with.
00:23:32.730 --> 00:23:38.630
So you could sit and take notes in class, and that was just a, a vast improvement over, over raised letters.
00:23:39.700 --> 00:23:43.109
What was technology like in those early devices?
00:23:43.619 --> 00:23:58.720
Well, I mean, they're made out, you know, uh, they're made out of wood and brass, um, and, um, and then they start being made out of cheaper metals.
00:23:59.640 --> 00:24:08.309
Um, and, and also nickel, uh, you, you start seeing, even though they're still made out of brass, they start being nickel plated so that they wouldn't tarnish.
00:24:09.230 --> 00:24:12.150
Um, and, and, you know, get your, get your fingers dirty when you were using them.
00:24:12.529 --> 00:24:23.910
The, the stylus come in, all kinds of shapes, you know, everybody that had one thought of a different way to, to carve the knob on the stylist to make it more comfortable for your hands.
00:24:24.009 --> 00:24:35.339
So you see things that look like wooden tops, um, uh, things that look like chess pieces, um, you see the made out of all kinds of materials.
00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:51.329
So, you know, wood obviously is common, but then, uh, as early plastics come along, you start seeing a made out of plastic, you know, APH for the longest time had one called a saddle stylist, which was supposed to fit nicely in your hand, but it also was flat on the edges so that it wouldn't roll.
00:24:52.349 --> 00:24:58.730
Um, and, and that's, that's helpful, you know, so you're not constantly knocking your stylist and then, you know, it falls on the ground.
00:24:58.730 --> 00:24:59.450
You can't find it.
00:24:59.509 --> 00:25:06.759
So, um, yeah, everybody who, who, whoever saw a slate in stylus and their entire life thought of a different to make them.
00:25:07.660 --> 00:25:15.319
So, you know, they come in, they come in pocket size, they come in desk slates, they come in upward writing and downward writing.
00:25:15.420 --> 00:25:29.150
You know, one of the, one of the things that's always been seen of as a challenge for stylus is that when you press the, the stylus into the paper, you have, you know, the dot appears on the bottom side of the page.
00:25:30.170 --> 00:25:32.349
So you have to know two braille codes.
00:25:32.351 --> 00:25:38.950
You have to know the braille code to write with, which is basically everything is as if you're looking in a mirror.
00:25:39.970 --> 00:25:44.150
Um, and then you have to know the way to read it, you know, um, um, left to right.
00:25:44.630 --> 00:25:45.750
Um, as you might normally read.
00:25:46.390 --> 00:25:51.900
Um, and so, so there's all these inventors who come with upward writing slates, like, so they would take the stylus.
00:25:52.960 --> 00:25:57.019
And instead of it being a sharp point, it would be a hollow tip.
00:25:57.880 --> 00:26:06.500
And then on the bottom frame of the slate, instead of it being a recessed pit, it would be a raised pin, right?
00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:15.410
So the, the hollow tip of your stylist would fit over the top of that raised pin and make an upward dot.
00:26:16.569 --> 00:26:20.970
Um, so we, we, you know, and APH has sold several models like that.
00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:31.119
They never their problem with all of those upward writing slates is they tend to make ghosts dots, meaning that at, because there's a raised pin on that bottom slate.
00:26:31.579 --> 00:26:40.319
If you, if you don't get the stylist really super, perfectly aligned right down on it, sometimes you'll get ghost dos.
00:26:40.320 --> 00:26:41.960
And so your braille is not very clean.
00:26:42.559 --> 00:26:53.079
Um, but that didn't keep people from trying to lick that, that design problem, but still, you know, there's nothing like having something you can stick right in your pocket, just like a pencil and paper.
00:26:53.700 --> 00:26:59.720
And, um, and you know, if you just wanna write down a note or a phone number or something like that, still something that is very handy.
00:27:01.660 --> 00:27:04.470
Wow! The fact that you had to learn two types of braille codes...
00:27:05.230 --> 00:27:05.470
mm-hmm,
00:27:05.550 --> 00:27:08.390
...Just to do that is insane.
00:27:08.391 --> 00:27:13.549
So when you're writing, you're thinking about how this is going to almost translate on the other side.
00:27:13.259 --> 00:27:13.549
..
00:27:13.809 --> 00:27:14.670
Yes, that's right.
00:27:14.930 --> 00:27:19.789
But, but think about this, when you're six years old, this is a piece of cake, right?
00:27:19.819 --> 00:27:27.460
It's not that big a deal cause your brain is plastic and it's nimble and yes, and you're, it's easy to learn new things.
00:27:27.519 --> 00:27:31.500
And the idea that, well, you have to write this way and you have to read this way.
00:27:31.690 --> 00:27:58.650
It's not a big deal for your six now for people that lose their vision later in life, you know, uh, a slight and stylist maybe is gonna be a, you know, is not something necessarily that they're gonna be all that interested in using, but, but you know, really that whole, uh, upside down and backwards, the way of, of writing with the slate and stylus, is a big reason why the braille writer, the brail writer was invented, right?
00:27:58.651 --> 00:27:59.890
The mechanical braille writer.
00:27:59.910 --> 00:28:05.839
We think of the Perkins Braille Writer as the, as the, kind of the gold standard today, uh, for, for reading braille.
00:28:06.460 --> 00:28:24.930
And, and it, the original braille, a mechanical braille writer was invented by a guy named Frank Hall, who was the principal at the Illinois Institution for the Education of Blind in, um, Jacksonville, Illinois, and the Illinois school didn't even use braille.
00:28:25.880 --> 00:28:30.009
They used a competing code called New York point that we've talked about before, right.
00:28:30.130 --> 00:28:32.690
A dot code that was like braille, but not braille.
00:28:33.789 --> 00:28:41.849
And so, uh, Frank Hall wanted to invent a mechanical writer to kind of overcome that whole, the whole writing with a slate problem.
00:28:42.390 --> 00:28:50.519
But when he started trying to mechanize New York Point, he, he ran into some problems because New York Point did not always take up the same amount of space.
00:28:50.660 --> 00:28:52.599
It was of a variable width.
00:28:53.099 --> 00:29:06.990
And so what he ended up doing was coming up with a mechanical braille writer, we call it the Hall Braille Writer and the first, um, commercial models for the hall brail rider came around 1892 or so.
00:29:08.009 --> 00:29:12.710
And, and it basically had seven keys, right?
00:29:12.711 --> 00:29:16.990
It had six keys for the six dots in the braille cell, and then it had a space key.
00:29:16.990 --> 00:29:22.349
That's all it had, but that braille that it was, it, it was a brilliant little machine.
00:29:23.170 --> 00:29:29.700
And everybody who wrote braille that, you know, was using a slate stylus that got their hands on a brail writer, like, oh my gosh, this is awesome.
00:29:30.680 --> 00:29:31.500
So much faster.
00:29:32.079 --> 00:29:36.579
You didn't need to know, you know, two different, a way to write a different way to write a different way to read.
00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:45.440
And, uh, once you got, you know, adept at the typing part of it, um, you're sitting there banging out braille much, much quicker than, than doing it by hand with a SL and stylus.
00:29:46.500 --> 00:30:02.190
And, um, every braille writer that we use today, including the Perkins, you know, owes its technological roots to Frank Hall and a, and a gunsmith that was a buddy of his named GU Seber, um, who helped him kind of figure out the mechanics of it.
00:30:02.690 --> 00:30:08.509
And then, uh, also there was this, uh, typewriter company in Chicago called the Munson Typewriter Company.
00:30:08.569 --> 00:30:10.829
And they're the ones who kind of helped him mass produce it.
00:30:12.349 --> 00:30:12.349
Okay.
00:30:12.970 --> 00:30:24.099
Now tell me about braille printing and mass production, because I'm sure with this new braille, the mechanical braille opened up a, all the doors for printing as production.
00:30:24.279 --> 00:30:34.779
So, so, so now, you know, Hall's got his Hall Braille Writer and you can, you can quickly, you know, take notes in class or write a paper in braille or, or write a letter in braille.
00:30:34.780 --> 00:30:34.980
Right.
00:30:36.279 --> 00:30:43.970
But how do you, how do you make, you know, lots of copies of say the same book, a fourth grade spelling book in braille, right.
00:30:44.630 --> 00:30:47.529
So, and it, and it's, and it's our boy Frank again.
00:30:47.789 --> 00:31:08.640
So, so, you know, right now he's got a, a machine that writes on paper, but he starts thinking what I, what I, what I also would like to do is invent a, a bigger heavier duty machine that writes on brass hinged, brass plates plates that can be loaded into a clam shell style printing, press.
00:31:08.700 --> 00:31:10.039
It opens its jaws.
00:31:10.460 --> 00:31:19.039
It spreads that printing plate, an operator puts a piece of paper in it, slams its jaw shut and, and, and the dots get pushed onto the page.
00:31:19.140 --> 00:31:22.359
So he invents this machine called the Hall Stenograph machine.
00:31:24.769 --> 00:31:29.029
So it's a big tabletop, uh, size machine, maybe about four feet wide.
00:31:29.609 --> 00:31:34.029
And it has a big foot, a foot pedal at the bottom and the same six keys.
00:31:34.200 --> 00:31:34.549
Right?
00:31:34.849 --> 00:31:40.950
So you type your, uh, the, the Le the, you push the keys down that correspond to the pins.
00:31:40.951 --> 00:31:49.660
You want to make the, the braille character say, say, you're trying to make an E so you're gonna press"one in five", and then you slam down that pedal.
00:31:50.359 --> 00:31:59.299
And that's what forces gives you the kind of the mechanical advantage to, to, to punch those, those, uh, dots into the, to the, the brass plate.
00:32:00.039 --> 00:32:03.339
And, uh, so you, you sit there with your book in front of you, the print book.
00:32:03.789 --> 00:32:10.250
And so the operator then will, in their mind translate the print characters into the braille, type them onto the page.
00:32:10.450 --> 00:32:17.490
And now you've got one page, you've got page one of your fourth grade, you know, geography book or spelling book.
00:32:17.670 --> 00:32:21.089
So you gotta make a plate for each page of the book.
00:32:21.619 --> 00:32:21.970
Right.
00:32:22.789 --> 00:32:29.640
And at first, uh, the whole paragraph machine just puts braille on one side of the page, right.
00:32:31.579 --> 00:32:38.920
But in the 19's and 20's, uh, people start experimenting with this idea called inner pointing.
00:32:39.829 --> 00:32:40.119
Okay.
00:32:40.220 --> 00:32:49.200
And in inter pointing, uh, you, you've got dots on the brass plates on one side, on both sides of it.
00:32:49.230 --> 00:32:49.519
Okay.
00:32:49.520 --> 00:32:55.799
And they slightly offset those dots between the characters on one side and those on the back.
00:32:56.019 --> 00:32:57.400
So they don't cancel each other out.
00:32:57.401 --> 00:32:59.509
They actually fit inside of each other.
00:32:59.680 --> 00:33:00.029
Right.
00:33:00.299 --> 00:33:04.069
There's just enough space between the dots, uh, to do that.
00:33:04.609 --> 00:33:14.109
And so now you can prepare these embossing plates, uh, so that you're producing brail with, uh, pages with brail on both sides.
00:33:14.111 --> 00:33:15.950
And now it's a lot less bulky, right?
00:33:15.951 --> 00:33:17.509
Takes up half the amount of space.
00:33:18.509 --> 00:33:22.099
Um, you, and, um, so inter pointing becomes very popular.
00:33:22.359 --> 00:33:31.339
And, you know, even today, although we're using much different, more modern presses, uh, digital presses, we're, you know, inter pointing is still a part of, of most braille production.
00:33:32.240 --> 00:33:35.900
And, and, and by the way, Sara, uh, them printing us didn't wanna do it.
00:33:36.890 --> 00:33:56.569
They didn't want to inter point, um, um, they, uh, uh, they didn't really want to change, you know, our, our, our people, you know, we were pumping out the braille doing it one, you know, on one sided pages, they didn't wanna have to think about how are we going to invent a sterograph machine that will put the dots on both sides of those brass plates cause halls, machine wouldn't do it.
00:33:57.069 --> 00:34:01.880
But the pressure from the field was so great that our, a board eventually decided to do it.
00:34:01.881 --> 00:34:09.519
And so we invented our own, we worked with the American Foundation for the Blind and invented a new sterograph machine that would, that would do that.
00:34:09.619 --> 00:34:12.719
Uh, two-sided uh, uh, plate preparation.
00:34:13.780 --> 00:34:15.679
And so just to bring it on up to the future.
00:34:15.860 --> 00:34:24.710
So, so you're still talk, even though you've got a machine, right, that makes, that makes your brail plates, and you've got machines that mass produce your braille.
00:34:25.369 --> 00:34:28.469
You, um, it's still slow.
00:34:30.210 --> 00:34:34.389
And your, your stereo machine operator needs to be really highly trained, right?
00:34:34.489 --> 00:34:37.869
So if, if you, you, you get a woman she's, she's highly trained.
00:34:37.889 --> 00:34:42.780
And then she decides to leave the workforce and go, you know, uh, have a family.
00:34:43.679 --> 00:34:50.300
Now you've gotta train somebody else in this, this very unique thing that, uh, braille braille presses do.
00:34:51.480 --> 00:34:55.300
So the, you know, the idea is how could we computerize this whole deal?
00:34:55.630 --> 00:34:55.980
Right?
00:34:56.079 --> 00:35:04.489
And so in the 1950s and sixties, the center of computer technology is, is IBM.
00:35:05.449 --> 00:35:07.010
Um, International Business Machines.
00:35:07.630 --> 00:35:13.730
So APH collaborates with IBM, uh, to figure out how to, how to compute this whole thing.
00:35:13.730 --> 00:35:16.690
And back then computers, you know, data entry is done.
00:35:16.710 --> 00:35:23.440
You, you do, you do data entry on this machine that punches holes into these, into these punch cards.
00:35:24.780 --> 00:35:29.000
And then you load a stack of punch cards into a, a feeder.
00:35:29.001 --> 00:35:38.559
And it, it feeds them into the computer and it shines light and wherever you've punched a hole light shines through, and, and the computer reads that.
00:35:38.561 --> 00:35:38.880
Right?
00:35:39.019 --> 00:35:47.599
And so we figure out a way to have a, a, the transcription is done by, uh, someone typing on, uh, punching these cards.
00:35:48.099 --> 00:35:55.400
And then we would ship the cards up to, uh, New York and they would load'em into a machine, and it would it'd feed'em in the computer.
00:35:55.400 --> 00:36:03.789
And then computer would be programmed to translate the print characters into braille, and then punch, punch, punch, punch, punch.
00:36:03.809 --> 00:36:09.070
It would punch a bunch of card, big, another big stack of cards out that now that's the braille translation.
00:36:09.170 --> 00:36:10.590
They'd ship that back to us.
00:36:11.099 --> 00:36:19.739
We'd put that into a card reader that was connected to a special machine, a stereograph machine, a computer stereograph machine, and then it would, it would punch the plates.
00:36:19.740 --> 00:36:21.300
It would, emboss the zinc.
00:36:21.320 --> 00:36:23.019
By that time, we weren't using copper anymore.
00:36:23.320 --> 00:36:25.820
We were using zinc plates and it would, emboss the plates.
00:36:25.820 --> 00:36:32.659
Then you would take those and put them into the, into the, uh, the press, right to mass, produce them today.
00:36:33.050 --> 00:36:36.619
That whole process can happen on your cell phone, right?
00:36:37.599 --> 00:36:42.610
Your cell phone, we, you could use a, you know, software package called like braille blaster from the(American) Printing House.
00:36:43.550 --> 00:36:50.369
And, um, you know, you could load just about any publication, any print publication into, into that program and it'll translate it.
00:36:50.371 --> 00:36:55.489
And that, you know, you've got the computing power of, of a mainframe computer in your pocket.
00:36:56.690 --> 00:37:06.559
Um, and today a transcription occurs, uh, just using a desktop computer, you know, here at APH, we have a, a Braille Translation Department that does that.
00:37:07.440 --> 00:37:10.880
Um, and, and there are also braille translation programs at lots of prisons.
00:37:10.880 --> 00:37:14.639
You know, we work with a lot of prison, braille programs, get all the textbooks translated.
00:37:15.599 --> 00:37:19.670
Um, and then a lot of times you don't even use those bossing plates anymore.
00:37:19.869 --> 00:37:24.949
Although we, we have some presses that still use the Bo in bossing plates for publications.
00:37:24.951 --> 00:37:29.590
You wanna make lots of copies of like, say the McDonald's menu, right.
00:37:30.030 --> 00:37:33.909
Um, every now and then we'll, we'll, we'll bid and get the contract for the McDonald's menu.
00:37:33.911 --> 00:37:38.949
And we'll make a million copies of that, that you need still need the, the embossing plates.
00:37:39.920 --> 00:37:45.940
But a lot of times we make one book for one kid somewhere out there in the United States.
00:37:46.519 --> 00:37:52.980
And so that you use, uh, a digital press, like a Brailo 650, or an Interpoint NV 55.
00:37:52.740 --> 00:37:55.420
The Brailos come from Norway.
00:37:56.260 --> 00:38:05.929
Uh, the Interpoints come from Belgium and we, you know, have adapt a little bit, but, um, so a lot of, a lot of embossing now is done...
00:38:06.480 --> 00:38:07.289
It's all digital.
00:38:08.570 --> 00:38:15.329
Um, and then your next question is gonna probably be what about paperless brail, right?
00:38:16.550 --> 00:38:17.170
Yes, yes.
00:38:17.239 --> 00:38:17.530
Yeah.
00:38:17.909 --> 00:38:40.840
So, because you got that's, what you've been talking about is the, the Chameleon and other, uh, refreshable braille devices, little computer note takers, and you can just sit there and bob...bobby..bob, in your class, or in your, in, in the grocery store, or while you're talking to your mom on the phone and take notes, um, and then it's got the refreshable braille display where it raises the pins electronically.
00:38:40.840 --> 00:38:44.679
Well, that all starts in the late 1960s.
00:38:44.681 --> 00:38:55.349
They start, uh, you know, a number of inventors start working with pretty complicated little devices like that used some sometimes use rubber, uh, belts.
00:38:56.090 --> 00:39:03.869
And, uh, the, the, the dots would, would, would, it would kind of a, like a memory, uh, foam material, the belt was.
00:39:03.871 --> 00:39:11.030
And so he could raise the pins in rubber, and then when it would, when it would cycle on through, through the pulley, it would flatten the dot back up.
00:39:11.369 --> 00:39:16.900
But that, that didn't really end up working, being practical, but it got Oleg Tretiakov.
00:39:17.960 --> 00:39:28.860
His wife was a, uh, uh, a linguist who was interested in, uh, braille translation and Ole was more of a computer guy.
00:39:29.780 --> 00:39:38.329
Uh, and so, you know, as happens sometimes with married couples, you know, somebody, you know, you bring on more problem you're, you know, struggling with at home.
00:39:38.469 --> 00:39:44.449
And the other half of the team is like, maybe they bring something different to the, to the problem.
00:39:44.550 --> 00:39:53.130
And, and that's what Oleg did he sat down and created this machine called the digit cassette in France about 1975.
00:39:54.469 --> 00:40:05.719
And the digit cassette was out, oh, it was about probably, uh, 12, 15 inches wide and, uh, about 10 inches deep and maybe about four inches thick.
00:40:05.739 --> 00:40:10.559
And it used audio cassettes to store the data.
00:40:12.159 --> 00:40:35.630
Um, and so, uh, and then it had those six, they had the keyboard, the, a braille keyboard that you could set and do data entry with, and it would store it on the audio cassette a magnetic tape, but then it had a, I think a 20 or 25 cell refreshable brail display that, um, it could, you know, play back basically what you had typed onto the audio tape, but it would play it back as in, in braille.
00:40:35.679 --> 00:40:36.030
Right.
00:40:36.489 --> 00:40:40.780
And it used to a technology called Pizo electric technology to raise the pins.
00:40:42.179 --> 00:40:47.280
Um, and, uh, Tretiakov comes over the United States.
00:40:47.389 --> 00:40:50.079
He's, you know, trying to figure out a way to, you know, mass produce this.
00:40:50.500 --> 00:40:56.440
And he goes to a, a company called Telecensory a big, uh, accessibility company back in those days.
00:40:57.420 --> 00:41:12.590
And try was negotiate with them to produce the, uh, the, uh, Tretiakov, machine, the, digit cassette, well Telecensory was like,"no." And so basically what they did was they stole Tretiakov idea.
00:41:13.159 --> 00:41:13.510
Right.
00:41:14.010 --> 00:41:30.900
And they took his idea and came up with this thing called the Versa Braille, which was the first commerially available refreshable braille device in the United States, also used, uh, um, uh, magnetic tape, um, cassettes, you know, to store the information, but it was portable pretty heavy.
00:41:32.139 --> 00:41:37.079
Um, by comparison day, you couldn't stick in your pocket, but it was portable and used a rechargeable battery.
00:41:37.619 --> 00:41:49.199
And every, all of our devices today, really, they all kinda harken back to those two devices, the Versa Braille and the, although there are European manufacturers that, that have their roots in, in other inventors in Europe.
00:41:49.760 --> 00:42:01.829
Um, but you know, the exciting thing to is that, you know, that piso electric cell for the longest time has been kind of the, the limiting factor, because it was pretty expensive.
00:42:02.659 --> 00:42:07.150
Each cell was, you know, I don't know, 250 bucks or something like that just per sale.
00:42:07.369 --> 00:42:11.469
So if you had a 40 cell display, that's 40 times, two$50.
00:42:11.471 --> 00:42:11.750
Right.
00:42:11.989 --> 00:42:26.420
And so, uh, and so that's why, uh, like inventions, like the, uh, Orbit 20 that we, uh, uh, came up with, uh, a few years ago and it's, it's now out of our catalog, but it used a different kind of technology.
00:42:26.420 --> 00:42:41.889
And so a lot of inventors are, you know, poking and prying and, uh, working on that on the, kind of like in the hourglass, you know, the blockage, the one little thing in a, in a technology that, that, that is kind of slowing it, uh, development down.
00:42:42.730 --> 00:42:53.010
Um, but, um, you know, there's been a lot of, lot of movement, a lot of growth and a lot of miniaturization, you know, these devices just keep getting smaller and smaller and cheaper and cheaper.
00:42:53.010 --> 00:43:00.920
And that was the whole idea is how can we get to a point where we can put one of these in the hands of every body who wants to use one?
00:43:02.039 --> 00:43:04.480
Um, and, you know, we're really getting close to that.
00:43:04.960 --> 00:43:09.880
Um, you know, the chameleon and the, and, uh, what's the other device that, that just came out,
00:43:10.969 --> 00:43:14.159
We've got the Chameleon 20 and Polly is coming out.
00:43:15.679 --> 00:43:16.030
Polly.
00:43:16.590 --> 00:43:23.829
Um, then that's after Polly Thompson who was, uh, who was, uh, Helen Keller's assistant, but all this stuff is, you know, it's happening fast.
00:43:24.650 --> 00:43:33.869
And, uh, the changes are, it's just pretty amazing to watch the, the, the, the new products that are coming out, um, that to make braille easier to use.
00:43:35.300 --> 00:43:53.820
Um, and, and, you know, it's a tribute to how elegant Louis's original code was that this thing that was, you know, published for the first time in 1829, which we're coming up now, you know, won't be too long till we'll be working on the 200th anniversary, but it's co the code is so elegant.
00:43:54.820 --> 00:43:57.929
Uh, so easy to so easy to use that.
00:43:58.030 --> 00:44:09.690
And so flexible that we're still, you know, uh, technology is making it easier to use, but the reason that we're still inventing new technology is because the code itself is so elegant.
00:44:11.519 --> 00:44:15.780
And, you know, when something's done right or done, well, it will stand in the test of time.
00:44:15.960 --> 00:44:18.610
And this is a classic example of that.
00:44:19.110 --> 00:44:23.449
It has not strayed very much from the original, the original code.
00:44:23.550 --> 00:44:26.769
So that's just, that's the, that's my thinking.
00:44:26.771 --> 00:44:30.530
That's my thoughts on it when something's good, the first time you change, you don't reinvent the wheel.
00:44:30.599 --> 00:44:30.889
Yeah.
00:44:31.059 --> 00:44:35.760
So my old boss, Gary people always used to ask him, you know, why, you know, when will braille go away?
00:44:36.460 --> 00:44:48.360
And he would always say, when people no longer need a pencil and paper, when side people no longer need a pen to, you know, then people who are blinder vision impaired will stop using braille.
00:44:48.659 --> 00:45:02.070
But as long as we need to read to, uh, to, to memorize things, uh, to store data, to, to, to send messages to each other, uh, people who are blind will be using, um, Louis' code,
00:45:03.659 --> 00:45:06.949
What else can we see regarding braille in the APH museum?
00:45:08.250 --> 00:45:10.710
We have an awesome collection, as you might imagine.
00:45:11.380 --> 00:45:17.699
Uh, you know, it starts with Louis's original, uh, publication of the braille code in 1829.
00:45:17.701 --> 00:45:21.380
What we call the per se day, the method it's super rare.
00:45:21.380 --> 00:45:23.980
There's only six copies of the book left in anywhere in the world.
00:45:24.039 --> 00:45:25.739
And we have one of them it's on display.
00:45:27.079 --> 00:45:40.090
We have over a hundred braille slates, the collection, and probably 50 of'em on display in all shapes and sizes and materials designs.
00:45:40.849 --> 00:45:51.929
Um, we have 40, uh, different bra riders, uh, from all over the world, from Europe, from Asia, from north America, you know, starting with that, uh, hall rail rider.
00:45:52.260 --> 00:46:04.559
We have, uh, you know, the St machine, if you wanna see that we have that, uh, we have, uh, some of the early computer, uh, the IBM developed, uh, computer translation devices that are on display.
00:46:05.260 --> 00:46:23.789
And, um, you know, uh, we, we di we've done temporary exhibits with the, uh, refreshable brail devices, but that's, we'll one of the things I'm really excited about the new museum project that we're working on is that we're gonna be able to put out a lot of this technology I've been collecting over the last 16 years that we haven't had room for in the new museum.
00:46:24.170 --> 00:46:40.059
And so, um, you know, a lot of the Bri and bosses, uh, the digital, uh, note takers and stuff will have, um, on display and, um, and, uh, and also in a, an accessible way so that people can actually get their hands on.
00:46:40.880 --> 00:46:41.260
And is
00:46:41.260 --> 00:46:44.019
There anything else you'd like to add regarding braille devices?
00:46:45.170 --> 00:47:13.610
Yeah, I think it's just that the braille code is alive, Sara, and, um, and so, you know, we have just this in incredible new, you know, new generation of users that's coming up and, you know, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's just a constant process of people, uh, poking and prodding and stretching and, um, and, and asking questions.
00:47:14.360 --> 00:47:16.840
And I think if we just keep asking questions, why do we do this?
00:47:16.860 --> 00:47:17.960
Why do we do it this way?
00:47:18.019 --> 00:47:30.920
Why did, how did it happen that we, we got the, to where we are, um, uh, that people just keep applying their, their, their human ingenuity to this, this, this simple problem of reading and writing.
00:47:31.659 --> 00:47:38.480
And, and, uh, and so I, you know, I think that's what our museum talks about, and I, and I'm excited to see where we're gonna go next.
00:47:39.730 --> 00:47:42.400
Thank you so much, Michael, for joining me today on Change Makers.
00:47:42.889 --> 00:47:43.559
Thank you Sara.
00:47:45.449 --> 00:47:48.400
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of changemaker.
00:47:48.719 --> 00:47:57.670
We've put links to Chameleon 20 and Mystic access in the show notes, and as always be sure to look for ways you can be a change maker this week.
00:00:00.029 --> 00:00:03.879
Welcome to Changemakers a podcast from APH.
00:00:04.969 --> 00:00:12.119
We're talking to people from around the world who are creating positive change in the lives of people who are blind or visually impaired.
00:00:12.619 --> 00:00:13.359
Here's your host.
00:00:15.810 --> 00:00:20.359
Hello, and welcome to Change Makers I'm APH's Public Relations Manager, Sara Brown.
00:00:20.949 --> 00:00:28.629
And today we're celebrating braille history with the look at some of our high tech braille devices that feature the latest of braille technology.
00:00:29.160 --> 00:00:31.589
We'll look at a brand new product that's in the works.
00:00:31.879 --> 00:00:39.149
Learn a new feature that's coming to Chameleon 20 and go way back and learn about the history of braile devices.
00:00:39.439 --> 00:00:42.020
We'll also have a check-in with Partners with Paul.
00:00:43.280 --> 00:00:47.420
Up, first we have APH's Early Childhood Product Manager, Donna McClure-Rogers.
00:00:48.030 --> 00:00:50.020
Hello, Donna and welcome to Change Makers.
00:00:50.439 --> 00:00:52.140
Hi Sara, it's nice to be here.
00:00:53.070 --> 00:00:53.420
Great.
00:00:53.799 --> 00:00:57.500
So can you tell us about this brand new product that's coming soon?
00:00:58.850 --> 00:00:59.140
Sure.
00:00:59.570 --> 00:01:01.380
This product goes by the name of Polly.
00:01:02.729 --> 00:01:16.790
Uh, it was developed in partnership with Thinkerbell Labs out of India, and Polly is an independent braille learning device, complete with a curriculum for both contracted and uncontracted brail.
00:01:16.799 --> 00:01:26.939
It also includes an online parent-teacher portal that allows the device to be customized, to fit the child's needs.
00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:30.219
And talk about Helios.
00:01:30.260 --> 00:01:33.060
I understand that's the learning management system that comes with Polly.
00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:34.900
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
00:01:36.239 --> 00:01:39.579
Helios is the online portal.
00:01:40.340 --> 00:01:48.250
Um, it is basically a web site that provides information about use data.
00:01:49.049 --> 00:01:58.849
Uh, you know, how much the child has been online, what lessons they've mastered, where they're struggling, that type of thing.
00:01:59.390 --> 00:02:17.840
It, has a lot of graphs and just data that can really help doing, IEP reporting and providing that information to the classroom teachers or the parents just wanting to know, you know, where is the child,"where's the child at right now?
00:02:17.939 --> 00:02:18.680
How are they doing?
00:02:19.560 --> 00:02:22.159
Um, you know, what real characters do they know?
00:02:22.580 --> 00:02:25.430
Are they master spelling that type of thing?"
00:02:26.250 --> 00:02:27.469
So the product is Poly.
00:02:27.729 --> 00:02:31.270
Now tell me how is poly different from other APH products?
00:02:31.860 --> 00:02:40.310
Well, Polly has a lot of really exciting features, um, as a former TVI and a braille reader, myself.
00:02:40.810 --> 00:02:45.580
The first thing that I noticed when I picked this device up was the electronic slate.
00:02:47.099 --> 00:03:15.280
I really enjoyed being able to erase when I was working on those slate and stylus skills, a, uh, there's also a jumbo display, which there's two cells for the jumbo display and then six standard cells on this device and these work in conjunction, but the jumbo display is used for not only for input on the device, but also for output.
00:03:16.020 --> 00:03:28.710
So it kind of takes the place of, of how a teacher might introduce a braille character to a young child using the tennis balls and muffin tin.
00:03:29.409 --> 00:03:44.860
Remote braille instruction that this device provides is extremely helpful, especially now, as we're all dealing with this ping pong effect of,"are we virtual today?""Are we in person today?" That type of thing.
00:03:45.259 --> 00:03:56.379
Um, when this all started, the field did a great job stepping up and making it possible to continue teaching our students that needed that hands on instruction so much.
00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:08.009
But with this device, teachers can remotely make assignments to their students and push those through as long as their students are connected, um, to the internet.
00:04:08.430 --> 00:04:21.519
And they can do that using either the Bluetooth with Wi- Fi for this device, or they can also plug in, um, with a hard wire ethernet port, whatever the students have available.
00:04:21.939 --> 00:04:24.879
It'll make it possible for them to receive those assignments.
00:04:25.339 --> 00:04:35.079
And then for the teacher to be able to receive feedback on how the child is doing, and this device is created in a game like format.
00:04:36.019 --> 00:04:45.589
So it's very similar to those commercial beginning reading programs that cited kids have in an abundance of choices.
00:04:46.410 --> 00:04:50.470
Um, but those are just not really accessible to our braille readers.
00:04:51.310 --> 00:04:56.069
And this device has everything right there for the student.
00:04:56.430 --> 00:05:04.339
They can navigate independently, they can get all the feedback they need and they can even get their instructions, repeated.
00:05:04.509 --> 00:05:10.379
Everything is, is perfectly accessible for both the teacher and the student.
00:05:11.540 --> 00:05:17.819
I really enjoy, um, the Helios website because even the graphs are accessible.
00:05:18.379 --> 00:05:31.970
Um, this company has done such a wonderful job, making sure that even our teachers that need that accessibility feature are able to access all the information that is provided to the side users.
00:05:32.959 --> 00:05:35.209
Okay and what's the target demographic for Polly?
00:05:35.350 --> 00:05:45.000
Um, we are looking at this device working best for children between the ages of probably five and nine or 10.
00:05:45.800 --> 00:05:56.839
Um, this would be, you know, your beginning braille readers and, uh, the, the it's because the feedback on the device is geared for a younger child.
00:05:57.759 --> 00:06:04.839
Uh, we have taken the time to have the voice for this device recorded within the studio at APH.
00:06:06.379 --> 00:06:11.800
So you're not getting this computerized screen reader voice, um, talking to the child.
00:06:11.980 --> 00:06:22.790
We want them to be able to make that personal connection with the device and feel like, um, they're actually receiving feedback from a person.
00:06:23.569 --> 00:06:35.350
And so a lot of times if they give a correct answer, they'll hear, um, children clapping and saying yay, or, um, the narrator might say you got that right.
00:06:35.490 --> 00:06:42.220
You know, and that might be some that an older child might not necessarily need that much feedback.
00:06:43.579 --> 00:06:48.420
Um, you know, it's not to say that an older child or even an adult couldn't use this device.
00:06:49.139 --> 00:06:53.620
Um, but again, you know, at the moment we do kind of have it geared more for those younger kids.
00:06:54.720 --> 00:07:00.050
Now, what was the motivation behind the development of Polly and what brought about this need?
00:07:01.250 --> 00:07:10.370
Uh, this one actually came about, uh, one when the team at Thinkerbell Labs was, uh, working together on a graduate school product.
00:07:11.160 --> 00:07:22.560
They, um, they had noticed that a lot of sighted children have apps that are available, um, like maybe on their iPad that will sing the alphabet song.
00:07:22.980 --> 00:07:25.800
And then the alphabet letters appear on the screen.
00:07:25.980 --> 00:07:35.319
So the sighted child can see the letters, but there wasn't anything that worked, um, in conjunction with a braille display for their blind students.
00:07:36.540 --> 00:07:52.790
So they took an iPad and one braille cell, and they created, um, an app that would be able to, uh, show the alphabet letter as the song was going through, uh, singing the alphabet.
00:07:53.769 --> 00:07:59.500
So it began with just the simple iPad and one brail cell.
00:08:00.100 --> 00:08:12.939
And it has turned into this fabulous device that teaches contracted braille, provides games for the children, gives that feedback for the teachers online.
00:08:13.519 --> 00:08:19.220
And then, you know, again, my favorite thing, they can, they can work with that electronic slate.
00:08:19.579 --> 00:08:26.889
So, so they can build those skills to have the most portable braille experience that, that they can be provided with.
00:08:28.160 --> 00:08:31.220
And when will poly be available for people to purchase?
00:08:32.580 --> 00:08:35.539
Uh, we are looking at spring of 2022.
00:08:36.720 --> 00:08:39.460
And is there anything else you would like to say regarding Polly?
00:08:40.570 --> 00:08:40.929
I do.
00:08:41.370 --> 00:08:53.649
Um, this device is really geared to allow our students to be able to practice when the, um, when their TVI is not present.
00:08:54.529 --> 00:09:02.840
Um, we all know that it's great for students that are beginning braille to have that five days a week with that TVI.
00:09:03.039 --> 00:09:12.320
I, but sometimes that's just not possible and we don't want our children to only have braille instruction for one day a week.
00:09:12.919 --> 00:09:14.399
Um, and we know that does happen.
00:09:15.289 --> 00:09:30.590
So, um, you know, if, if you're thinking about getting this device for one of your students, please make sure that your district knows that this device is intended to go home with the student it's intended to be used in the classroom without the TVI present.
00:09:31.370 --> 00:09:38.019
And so, you know, that may need to be added into the IEP just to make sure that everybody's on the same page.
00:09:38.860 --> 00:09:43.659
Um, you know, the parents can walk through and learn braille alongside their child with this device.
00:09:44.320 --> 00:09:58.889
And it would just create that holistic approach that we're looking for so that we can, uh, help everyone in the field to implement braille into this child's general ed classroom as quickly as possible.
00:10:01.409 --> 00:10:04.289
All right, Donna, thank you so much for joining me today on Change Makers.
00:10:05.070 --> 00:10:06.289
You are so very welcome
00:10:07.470 --> 00:10:10.809
And Polly is only available inside the United States.
00:10:11.149 --> 00:10:12.529
For those outside the U.S.
00:10:12.590 --> 00:10:22.120
who are interested, we encourage you to contact Thinkerbell Labs directly to get Polly's sister product,"Annie." We've put a link to Thinkerbell Labs in the show notes.
00:10:24.059 --> 00:10:27.399
Up next, we're gonna learn about an update in the works for Chameleon 20.
00:10:29.990 --> 00:10:37.429
Here to talk about Chameleon 20's new update is APH's Product Manager, Educational Product Innovation William Freeman.
00:10:37.600 --> 00:10:39.389
Hello William, and welcome to Change Makers.
00:10:40.120 --> 00:10:40.470
Hello.
00:10:40.120 --> 00:10:41.269
Thanks for having me.
00:10:41.289 --> 00:10:42.110
I'm excited to be here.
00:10:42.649 --> 00:10:45.029
So tell us what's new with Chameleon 20?
00:10:45.990 --> 00:10:47.669
Uh, there's a lot new with the Chameleon.
00:10:48.309 --> 00:10:55.909
Uh, we've recently added Spanish language support, which is great shows the menus in Spanish and also adds support for, uh, Spanish braille codes.
00:10:56.559 --> 00:11:10.019
We've all also added a one handed mode that makes it easier for folks to use the device one handed and the most exciting thing coming to the Chameleon right now is text to speech which will be coming in our 1.3 update.
00:11:11.330 --> 00:11:16.100
What was the motivation behind adding text to speech to Chameleon and how will it improve?
00:11:17.600 --> 00:11:25.450
Well, uh, text to speech is a great way to reinforce braille literacy while also giving folks an easier path to learning how to use their Chameleon.
00:11:26.070 --> 00:11:56.240
So as a person is reading braille on their Chameleon, uh, they can use the speech to learn new braille words and contractions, and even choose to rely on the speech if they need a short break from the somewhat task of reading braille, uh, uh, something also that I've realized, uh, that I didn't think of was TTS(text to speech), makes it possible for someone that can't read braille to interact with the device, which will be great for parents and teachers that have otherwise never used a braille display.
00:11:56.580 --> 00:11:59.360
And maybe aren't that proficient with reading braille
00:12:00.179 --> 00:12:01.279
And speech engines.
00:12:01.639 --> 00:12:04.159
What, what speech engine will TTS use?
00:12:04.710 --> 00:12:05.759
It's gonna use Acapella
00:12:06.820 --> 00:12:08.559
And how will the student access speech?
00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:10.679
Multiple ways?
00:12:11.179 --> 00:12:15.190
So there's the speaker on the unit, but also a headphone jack.
00:12:15.370 --> 00:12:20.950
If they want more privacy, another thing is they could plug it into a speaker or even into their computer.
00:12:21.490 --> 00:12:27.830
If they wanted to share their speech with someone else, like if you plug it into your computer, you could share it over a video call.
00:12:29.340 --> 00:12:29.629
Okay.
00:12:30.019 --> 00:12:32.870
What are the different options for text to speak?
00:12:33.129 --> 00:12:35.740
Does it do more than just say what's currently displayed?
00:12:36.320 --> 00:12:36.539
Yes.
00:12:36.919 --> 00:12:42.460
So there's, uh, of course a say all function that will start reading from the current cursor position.
00:12:42.850 --> 00:12:50.100
There's also read current line, read text under cursor, as well as a typing echo and delete echo functions.
00:12:50.649 --> 00:12:53.340
It's cool because you can turn each feature off and on as needed.
00:12:53.950 --> 00:12:56.690
So you don't necessarily have to use all of those features.
00:12:56.691 --> 00:12:58.809
You can just pick the ones you want to use.
00:12:59.509 --> 00:13:17.759
So if someone doesn't wanna be bothered with speech very often, maybe they turn off all the other options and just leave, read text under cursor turned on, and then that way, if they come across some brow that they're not familiar with, they can just move the cursor using outer buttons, and then hear that unfamiliar word, read aloud.
00:13:18.840 --> 00:13:26.000
Um, users of course, users will also be able to increase and decrease the speech rate, which we know is a must have feature.
00:13:26.460 --> 00:13:31.879
No one wants to sit around listening to a voice that's either too slow or too fast for their personal tastes.
00:13:33.299 --> 00:13:38.029
What's what, what the advantage to a student for Chameleon to have speech?
00:13:38.700 --> 00:13:39.950
There's tons of advantages.
00:13:40.350 --> 00:13:45.429
Uh, like we've talked about, it's a great way to learn new braille words by using read text under cursor.
00:13:46.110 --> 00:13:48.590
Uh, but it can also just generally help build their confidence.
00:13:48.980 --> 00:13:52.429
Like the typing echo can be used for letters, words, or both.
00:13:52.889 --> 00:14:02.980
And that means while the student is typing, they can be sure that they're making the characters and words that they think they are initially they'll build their confidence as they continue to become fluent braille readers and writers.
00:14:04.049 --> 00:14:08.340
Overall, it's just another way to get students reading braille learning braille is hard.
00:14:08.559 --> 00:14:09.700
It takes so much time.
00:14:10.120 --> 00:14:14.299
So anything we can do to make that process easier and more fun, we want to do it.
00:14:16.350 --> 00:14:16.570
Now.
00:14:16.649 --> 00:14:18.850
I understand chameleon has different voices.
00:14:19.990 --> 00:14:21.450
Why put that option in there?
00:14:21.470 --> 00:14:22.090
Why the choice?
00:14:22.710 --> 00:14:24.809
Choice is what the Chameleon is all about.
00:14:25.610 --> 00:14:30.289
Uh, we really wanted a braille display that students could customize and know belongs to them.
00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:35.049
When we first introduced this product and part of that was the, uh, different colored cases.
00:14:35.051 --> 00:14:38.919
Now we've extended that to the voice selection.
00:14:39.019 --> 00:14:53.120
So students can pick a voice that they are comfortable hearing at launch users will be limited to two voices per language with English, getting"Sharon" and will and Spanish getting"Rosa" and will.
00:14:53.429 --> 00:15:07.799
However, with our next release, we will introduce the ability for users to download a whole range of voices, including non-American English, voices, fun, children's voices, and also bilingual voices that can competently speak both English and Spanish.
00:15:08.659 --> 00:15:15.870
One aspect of this that is really interesting is that users will be able to select both a primary and secondary voice.
00:15:16.529 --> 00:15:22.870
The primary voice will read menus and system messages, and the secondary voice will read content.
00:15:23.610 --> 00:15:33.419
So you could pick, say a British voice to read your menus and system messages, you know, make it very proper and then a more American voice for your content.
00:15:34.620 --> 00:15:42.700
Um, and with the addition of all these features it'll mean that every chameleon really is unique to the person as everyone's gonna have their own preferences.
00:15:43.610 --> 00:15:45.059
When will this release be available?
00:15:46.019 --> 00:15:47.259
Uh, it'll be coming out early this year.
00:15:47.690 --> 00:15:49.980
William, is there anything else you would like to add?
00:15:51.340 --> 00:15:56.929
Uh, main thing, uh, the main message I wanna get out to folks with both the Chameleon and the Mantis is update your units.
00:15:58.090 --> 00:16:03.210
Uh, I've been really trying to make a big deal outta this lately, and it's because we're finding out some folks aren't updating their units.
00:16:03.509 --> 00:16:04.850
So make sure you update your units.
00:16:04.940 --> 00:16:06.169
We're listening to your feedback.
00:16:06.539 --> 00:16:09.970
Everything we're putting into these devices is based on stuff you've asked for.
00:16:10.309 --> 00:16:13.639
And we just want folks to be able to take advantage edge of all the cool stuff that we're bringing.
00:16:16.240 --> 00:16:19.519
All right, William, thank you so much for joining us today on Change Makers.
00:16:19.950 --> 00:16:20.240
Yeah.
00:16:20.240 --> 00:16:21.279
Thank you so much for having me.
00:16:21.280 --> 00:16:21.879
It's been great.
00:16:22.940 --> 00:16:23.399
Up next.
00:16:23.490 --> 00:16:25.600
We're gonna check in with partners with Paul.
00:16:26.940 --> 00:16:29.399
Thanks, Sara and welcome back to Partners with Paul.
00:16:29.629 --> 00:16:34.909
Glad to have you with us today on the show we have Kim and Chris Nova from Mystic Access.
00:16:35.519 --> 00:16:40.269
Chris is the founder of Mystic Access and Kim is the Director of Product Development.
00:16:40.899 --> 00:16:42.309
Welcome into the show.
00:16:43.169 --> 00:16:43.950
How are you today?
00:16:44.440 --> 00:16:45.990
Great, Paul, Thanks for having us.
00:16:46.509 --> 00:16:48.590
A lot of things we wanna talk about today.
00:16:48.591 --> 00:16:51.830
So for folks who may not know Chris, what is Mystic Access?
00:16:52.289 --> 00:16:56.379
Mystic Access, is a company that I founded back in 2013.
00:16:56.720 --> 00:17:06.099
And, uh, our mainstay is audio documentation for mainstream and or blindness related products.
00:17:07.910 --> 00:17:08.259
Great.
00:17:08.260 --> 00:17:10.539
Can you tell us more about some of the products on your site?
00:17:11.170 --> 00:17:11.460
Sure.
00:17:11.559 --> 00:17:27.210
We have tutorial for the Amazon echo, for example, everybody's favorite a person Google home, uh, iOS, Android, and we even have an APH tutorial up there as well.
00:17:28.289 --> 00:17:28.289
Yep.
00:17:28.290 --> 00:17:30.690
That's definitely something we wanna cover here in just a bit.
00:17:31.269 --> 00:17:34.519
Kim, is there any new products or offerings we should know about?
00:17:35.619 --> 00:17:46.880
We do have a few cool new things, Paul, in terms of the actual audio that we offer, which can be downloaded digitally or purchased on physical media, like an SD card or an NLS cartridge.
00:17:47.339 --> 00:18:06.960
We have a cool new class on podcast listening that people may find fascinating since we're sitting here actually recording a podcast all about the various ways you can do it, whether that be on an app via iOS or Android via your Victor stream or another player that might need you to manually download a podcast feed.
00:18:07.299 --> 00:18:08.240
We talk about all these things.
00:18:08.319 --> 00:18:10.829
I like what podcast feeds, what are episodes?
00:18:11.099 --> 00:18:14.789
What do you need to know to get your feed downloaded onto a player?
00:18:14.970 --> 00:18:22.789
For instance, if it doesn't allow you the capacity to do it magically through the beauty of electronics, you know, through the player itself.
00:18:22.970 --> 00:18:31.420
So it's a very comprehensive class that starts with foundational concepts and moves all the way through to more advanced concepts.
00:18:31.440 --> 00:18:36.619
And it's three sessions of powerful information over three hours in links.
00:18:37.119 --> 00:18:43.660
So that's a cool class for people who are kind of looking for alternative ways or just perhaps some new ways to check out their podcasts.
00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:46.700
We also have a couple new hardware products that we're carrying.
00:18:47.079 --> 00:18:48.420
One is a desk caddy.
00:18:48.421 --> 00:18:49.140
That's really cool.
00:18:49.200 --> 00:19:00.329
So if you have some goodies that you just want to make sure always at hand, it's a nice spinning metal desk caddy with a lot of compartments and we have some really cool magnetic cable ties too.
00:19:00.650 --> 00:19:05.049
So these are kind of fun things we got in for the holidays and they're great gifts for time of year.
00:19:05.050 --> 00:19:05.329
Really.
00:19:05.950 --> 00:19:18.400
The other thing we, the other thing we have is a partnership with guidelines and edges, where we have talking medical products, blood pressure, monitor oximeter, and a infrared thermometer.
00:19:19.940 --> 00:19:22.440
So definitely a range of products.
00:19:22.930 --> 00:19:24.680
Let's get back to the audio for a moment.
00:19:25.119 --> 00:19:28.680
Uh, those are something that you completed in partnership with APH.
00:19:28.779 --> 00:19:29.960
Can you tell us more about that, Kim?
00:19:30.599 --> 00:19:31.269
Absolutely.
00:19:31.529 --> 00:19:38.430
We were really excited to work with APH in creating and compiling a tutorial on the Mantis Q40.
00:19:39.369 --> 00:19:53.740
And since the Mantis is such an innovative little product, we were really excited to get involved with working on this with you guys and making this really comprehensive again, audio that takes you from again and the more foundational concepts of what's the mantis.
00:19:53.740 --> 00:20:06.940
"Why do you want one?""How do you orient yourself to this device?""What does it do all the way through all the different applications?" So you can learn about how to write documents and make calculations and of course use terminal modes.
00:20:06.941 --> 00:20:13.529
So there's a ton of great information in there that hopefully will make using your mantis a less stressful and more fun experience.
00:20:14.779 --> 00:20:16.890
There is a lot, it is comprehensive.
00:20:17.230 --> 00:20:18.329
No question about it.
00:20:18.349 --> 00:20:25.210
So if you're an audio learner, by all means, uh, we're gonna talk to you about how you can get to that here in just a bit.
00:20:25.269 --> 00:20:26.650
So let me end with this.
00:20:26.750 --> 00:20:29.250
Is there anything else going on you'd like to talk to us about?
00:20:29.720 --> 00:20:37.480
Well, We do have on our site of bunch of paid products, but we also have a bunch of free downloads.
00:20:37.579 --> 00:20:41.880
We have a biweekly Mystic Access podcast that comes out every a couple weeks.
00:20:42.069 --> 00:20:44.200
It's Kim and I, so you get to listen to us.
00:20:44.740 --> 00:20:53.880
We also have a free downloads page where there's literally hundreds of hours of audio for you to download and listen to for free.
00:20:55.779 --> 00:20:56.599
That's fantastic.
00:20:56.980 --> 00:20:59.720
And we appreciate the opportunity to have you on today.
00:20:59.769 --> 00:21:01.279
Thank you very much for joining us.
00:21:01.500 --> 00:21:02.200
Thanks, Paul.
00:21:02.201 --> 00:21:03.440
We appreciate the opportunity.
00:21:05.380 --> 00:21:10.470
So at the, in the show notes, you're going to find a link to the Mystic Access site.
00:21:10.789 --> 00:21:17.869
We're also going to include a link to the Mantis tutorial, have a look around, I'm sure you can find something useful there.
00:21:18.450 --> 00:21:19.470
Thanks for listening.
00:21:19.650 --> 00:21:20.950
And now back to you, Sara,
00:21:22.650 --> 00:21:23.549
Thanks so much, Paul.
00:21:24.009 --> 00:21:25.869
And now we're back to the beginning.
00:21:26.130 --> 00:21:31.500
We have APH's Museum Director, Michael Hudson, and he's here to talk about early braille devices.
00:21:31.009 --> 00:21:33.740
Hello Michael, and welcome to Change Makers.
00:21:34.289 --> 00:21:35.460
Good morning, Sara.
00:21:36.039 --> 00:21:45.539
Now I've just discussed the new APH product that's coming soon, which is called Polly and the, and updates to Chameleon 20 both high tech braille devices.
00:21:45.839 --> 00:21:49.250
Can you talk about some of the early braille tablets and devices?
00:21:50.680 --> 00:21:50.970
Sure.
00:21:51.109 --> 00:21:58.160
So Louis(Braille) publishes his code for the first time in 1829.
00:21:59.380 --> 00:22:13.789
And, uh, one of the things that made braille so superior to raised letters, which was the system they were using before, that was that you could write braille pretty easily.
00:22:15.029 --> 00:22:19.069
Um, and today, you know, if you go in the APH catalog, you'll find, um, slight stylus'.
00:22:20.430 --> 00:22:47.140
Um, what Louis came up with was called a Braille Tablet, which is really kind of a desk slate, but if you think of a clipboard size board, um, and then, um, it had, uh, holes pierced down the side of the frame and then a little metal writing flame frame with the little windows that guided your stylist to create the six dot cells, right?
00:22:47.740 --> 00:22:58.009
And so you would write one line at a time and then you would lift that writing guide out, slide it down, one set of holes, click it in and then write your next line.
00:22:58.230 --> 00:23:02.329
And another thing that was different about it was, uh, today, uh, slight and stylus.
00:23:02.330 --> 00:23:19.839
It has these recessed, uh, pits on the bottom side of the frame and that, so when you, when you push your sty into it, it goes into that, that, that recessed hole makes a nice rounded dot, uh, Louis's braille tablet had grooved lines.
00:23:21.059 --> 00:23:32.710
And so its braille is not quite as, as, uh, well formed and neat as a modern slate and stylus, but it was still, uh, a quick and easy way to write with.
00:23:32.730 --> 00:23:38.630
So you could sit and take notes in class, and that was just a, a vast improvement over, over raised letters.
00:23:39.700 --> 00:23:43.109
What was technology like in those early devices?
00:23:43.619 --> 00:23:58.720
Well, I mean, they're made out, you know, uh, they're made out of wood and brass, um, and, um, and then they start being made out of cheaper metals.
00:23:59.640 --> 00:24:08.309
Um, and, and also nickel, uh, you, you start seeing, even though they're still made out of brass, they start being nickel plated so that they wouldn't tarnish.
00:24:09.230 --> 00:24:12.150
Um, and, and, you know, get your, get your fingers dirty when you were using them.
00:24:12.529 --> 00:24:23.910
The, the stylus come in, all kinds of shapes, you know, everybody that had one thought of a different way to, to carve the knob on the stylist to make it more comfortable for your hands.
00:24:24.009 --> 00:24:35.339
So you see things that look like wooden tops, um, uh, things that look like chess pieces, um, you see the made out of all kinds of materials.
00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:51.329
So, you know, wood obviously is common, but then, uh, as early plastics come along, you start seeing a made out of plastic, you know, APH for the longest time had one called a saddle stylist, which was supposed to fit nicely in your hand, but it also was flat on the edges so that it wouldn't roll.
00:24:52.349 --> 00:24:58.730
Um, and, and that's, that's helpful, you know, so you're not constantly knocking your stylist and then, you know, it falls on the ground.
00:24:58.730 --> 00:24:59.450
You can't find it.
00:24:59.509 --> 00:25:06.759
So, um, yeah, everybody who, who, whoever saw a slate in stylus and their entire life thought of a different to make them.
00:25:07.660 --> 00:25:15.319
So, you know, they come in, they come in pocket size, they come in desk slates, they come in upward writing and downward writing.
00:25:15.420 --> 00:25:29.150
You know, one of the, one of the things that's always been seen of as a challenge for stylus is that when you press the, the stylus into the paper, you have, you know, the dot appears on the bottom side of the page.
00:25:30.170 --> 00:25:32.349
So you have to know two braille codes.
00:25:32.351 --> 00:25:38.950
You have to know the braille code to write with, which is basically everything is as if you're looking in a mirror.
00:25:39.970 --> 00:25:44.150
Um, and then you have to know the way to read it, you know, um, um, left to right.
00:25:44.630 --> 00:25:45.750
Um, as you might normally read.
00:25:46.390 --> 00:25:51.900
Um, and so, so there's all these inventors who come with upward writing slates, like, so they would take the stylus.
00:25:52.960 --> 00:25:57.019
And instead of it being a sharp point, it would be a hollow tip.
00:25:57.880 --> 00:26:06.500
And then on the bottom frame of the slate, instead of it being a recessed pit, it would be a raised pin, right?
00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:15.410
So the, the hollow tip of your stylist would fit over the top of that raised pin and make an upward dot.
00:26:16.569 --> 00:26:20.970
Um, so we, we, you know, and APH has sold several models like that.
00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:31.119
They never their problem with all of those upward writing slates is they tend to make ghosts dots, meaning that at, because there's a raised pin on that bottom slate.
00:26:31.579 --> 00:26:40.319
If you, if you don't get the stylist really super, perfectly aligned right down on it, sometimes you'll get ghost dos.
00:26:40.320 --> 00:26:41.960
And so your braille is not very clean.
00:26:42.559 --> 00:26:53.079
Um, but that didn't keep people from trying to lick that, that design problem, but still, you know, there's nothing like having something you can stick right in your pocket, just like a pencil and paper.
00:26:53.700 --> 00:26:59.720
And, um, and you know, if you just wanna write down a note or a phone number or something like that, still something that is very handy.
00:27:01.660 --> 00:27:04.470
Wow! The fact that you had to learn two types of braille codes...
00:27:05.230 --> 00:27:05.470
mm-hmm,
00:27:05.550 --> 00:27:08.390
...Just to do that is insane.
00:27:08.391 --> 00:27:13.549
So when you're writing, you're thinking about how this is going to almost translate on the other side.
00:27:13.259 --> 00:27:13.549
..
00:27:13.809 --> 00:27:14.670
Yes, that's right.
00:27:14.930 --> 00:27:19.789
But, but think about this, when you're six years old, this is a piece of cake, right?
00:27:19.819 --> 00:27:27.460
It's not that big a deal cause your brain is plastic and it's nimble and yes, and you're, it's easy to learn new things.
00:27:27.519 --> 00:27:31.500
And the idea that, well, you have to write this way and you have to read this way.
00:27:31.690 --> 00:27:58.650
It's not a big deal for your six now for people that lose their vision later in life, you know, uh, a slight and stylist maybe is gonna be a, you know, is not something necessarily that they're gonna be all that interested in using, but, but you know, really that whole, uh, upside down and backwards, the way of, of writing with the slate and stylus, is a big reason why the braille writer, the brail writer was invented, right?
00:27:58.651 --> 00:27:59.890
The mechanical braille writer.
00:27:59.910 --> 00:28:05.839
We think of the Perkins Braille Writer as the, as the, kind of the gold standard today, uh, for, for reading braille.
00:28:06.460 --> 00:28:24.930
And, and it, the original braille, a mechanical braille writer was invented by a guy named Frank Hall, who was the principal at the Illinois Institution for the Education of Blind in, um, Jacksonville, Illinois, and the Illinois school didn't even use braille.
00:28:25.880 --> 00:28:30.009
They used a competing code called New York point that we've talked about before, right.
00:28:30.130 --> 00:28:32.690
A dot code that was like braille, but not braille.
00:28:33.789 --> 00:28:41.849
And so, uh, Frank Hall wanted to invent a mechanical writer to kind of overcome that whole, the whole writing with a slate problem.
00:28:42.390 --> 00:28:50.519
But when he started trying to mechanize New York Point, he, he ran into some problems because New York Point did not always take up the same amount of space.
00:28:50.660 --> 00:28:52.599
It was of a variable width.
00:28:53.099 --> 00:29:06.990
And so what he ended up doing was coming up with a mechanical braille writer, we call it the Hall Braille Writer and the first, um, commercial models for the hall brail rider came around 1892 or so.
00:29:08.009 --> 00:29:12.710
And, and it basically had seven keys, right?
00:29:12.711 --> 00:29:16.990
It had six keys for the six dots in the braille cell, and then it had a space key.
00:29:16.990 --> 00:29:22.349
That's all it had, but that braille that it was, it, it was a brilliant little machine.
00:29:23.170 --> 00:29:29.700
And everybody who wrote braille that, you know, was using a slate stylus that got their hands on a brail writer, like, oh my gosh, this is awesome.
00:29:30.680 --> 00:29:31.500
So much faster.
00:29:32.079 --> 00:29:36.579
You didn't need to know, you know, two different, a way to write a different way to write a different way to read.
00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:45.440
And, uh, once you got, you know, adept at the typing part of it, um, you're sitting there banging out braille much, much quicker than, than doing it by hand with a SL and stylus.
00:29:46.500 --> 00:30:02.190
And, um, every braille writer that we use today, including the Perkins, you know, owes its technological roots to Frank Hall and a, and a gunsmith that was a buddy of his named GU Seber, um, who helped him kind of figure out the mechanics of it.
00:30:02.690 --> 00:30:08.509
And then, uh, also there was this, uh, typewriter company in Chicago called the Munson Typewriter Company.
00:30:08.569 --> 00:30:10.829
And they're the ones who kind of helped him mass produce it.
00:30:12.349 --> 00:30:12.349
Okay.
00:30:12.970 --> 00:30:24.099
Now tell me about braille printing and mass production, because I'm sure with this new braille, the mechanical braille opened up a, all the doors for printing as production.
00:30:24.279 --> 00:30:34.779
So, so, so now, you know, Hall's got his Hall Braille Writer and you can, you can quickly, you know, take notes in class or write a paper in braille or, or write a letter in braille.
00:30:34.780 --> 00:30:34.980
Right.
00:30:36.279 --> 00:30:43.970
But how do you, how do you make, you know, lots of copies of say the same book, a fourth grade spelling book in braille, right.
00:30:44.630 --> 00:30:47.529
So, and it, and it's, and it's our boy Frank again.
00:30:47.789 --> 00:31:08.640
So, so, you know, right now he's got a, a machine that writes on paper, but he starts thinking what I, what I, what I also would like to do is invent a, a bigger heavier duty machine that writes on brass hinged, brass plates plates that can be loaded into a clam shell style printing, press.
00:31:08.700 --> 00:31:10.039
It opens its jaws.
00:31:10.460 --> 00:31:19.039
It spreads that printing plate, an operator puts a piece of paper in it, slams its jaw shut and, and, and the dots get pushed onto the page.
00:31:19.140 --> 00:31:22.359
So he invents this machine called the Hall Stenograph machine.
00:31:24.769 --> 00:31:29.029
So it's a big tabletop, uh, size machine, maybe about four feet wide.
00:31:29.609 --> 00:31:34.029
And it has a big foot, a foot pedal at the bottom and the same six keys.
00:31:34.200 --> 00:31:34.549
Right?
00:31:34.849 --> 00:31:40.950
So you type your, uh, the, the Le the, you push the keys down that correspond to the pins.
00:31:40.951 --> 00:31:49.660
You want to make the, the braille character say, say, you're trying to make an E so you're gonna press"one in five", and then you slam down that pedal.
00:31:50.359 --> 00:31:59.299
And that's what forces gives you the kind of the mechanical advantage to, to, to punch those, those, uh, dots into the, to the, the brass plate.
00:32:00.039 --> 00:32:03.339
And, uh, so you, you sit there with your book in front of you, the print book.
00:32:03.789 --> 00:32:10.250
And so the operator then will, in their mind translate the print characters into the braille, type them onto the page.
00:32:10.450 --> 00:32:17.490
And now you've got one page, you've got page one of your fourth grade, you know, geography book or spelling book.
00:32:17.670 --> 00:32:21.089
So you gotta make a plate for each page of the book.
00:32:21.619 --> 00:32:21.970
Right.
00:32:22.789 --> 00:32:29.640
And at first, uh, the whole paragraph machine just puts braille on one side of the page, right.
00:32:31.579 --> 00:32:38.920
But in the 19's and 20's, uh, people start experimenting with this idea called inner pointing.
00:32:39.829 --> 00:32:40.119
Okay.
00:32:40.220 --> 00:32:49.200
And in inter pointing, uh, you, you've got dots on the brass plates on one side, on both sides of it.
00:32:49.230 --> 00:32:49.519
Okay.
00:32:49.520 --> 00:32:55.799
And they slightly offset those dots between the characters on one side and those on the back.
00:32:56.019 --> 00:32:57.400
So they don't cancel each other out.
00:32:57.401 --> 00:32:59.509
They actually fit inside of each other.
00:32:59.680 --> 00:33:00.029
Right.
00:33:00.299 --> 00:33:04.069
There's just enough space between the dots, uh, to do that.
00:33:04.609 --> 00:33:14.109
And so now you can prepare these embossing plates, uh, so that you're producing brail with, uh, pages with brail on both sides.
00:33:14.111 --> 00:33:15.950
And now it's a lot less bulky, right?
00:33:15.951 --> 00:33:17.509
Takes up half the amount of space.
00:33:18.509 --> 00:33:22.099
Um, you, and, um, so inter pointing becomes very popular.
00:33:22.359 --> 00:33:31.339
And, you know, even today, although we're using much different, more modern presses, uh, digital presses, we're, you know, inter pointing is still a part of, of most braille production.
00:33:32.240 --> 00:33:35.900
And, and, and by the way, Sara, uh, them printing us didn't wanna do it.
00:33:36.890 --> 00:33:56.569
They didn't want to inter point, um, um, they, uh, uh, they didn't really want to change, you know, our, our, our people, you know, we were pumping out the braille doing it one, you know, on one sided pages, they didn't wanna have to think about how are we going to invent a sterograph machine that will put the dots on both sides of those brass plates cause halls, machine wouldn't do it.
00:33:57.069 --> 00:34:01.880
But the pressure from the field was so great that our, a board eventually decided to do it.
00:34:01.881 --> 00:34:09.519
And so we invented our own, we worked with the American Foundation for the Blind and invented a new sterograph machine that would, that would do that.
00:34:09.619 --> 00:34:12.719
Uh, two-sided uh, uh, plate preparation.
00:34:13.780 --> 00:34:15.679
And so just to bring it on up to the future.
00:34:15.860 --> 00:34:24.710
So, so you're still talk, even though you've got a machine, right, that makes, that makes your brail plates, and you've got machines that mass produce your braille.
00:34:25.369 --> 00:34:28.469
You, um, it's still slow.
00:34:30.210 --> 00:34:34.389
And your, your stereo machine operator needs to be really highly trained, right?
00:34:34.489 --> 00:34:37.869
So if, if you, you, you get a woman she's, she's highly trained.
00:34:37.889 --> 00:34:42.780
And then she decides to leave the workforce and go, you know, uh, have a family.
00:34:43.679 --> 00:34:50.300
Now you've gotta train somebody else in this, this very unique thing that, uh, braille braille presses do.
00:34:51.480 --> 00:34:55.300
So the, you know, the idea is how could we computerize this whole deal?
00:34:55.630 --> 00:34:55.980
Right?
00:34:56.079 --> 00:35:04.489
And so in the 1950s and sixties, the center of computer technology is, is IBM.
00:35:05.449 --> 00:35:07.010
Um, International Business Machines.
00:35:07.630 --> 00:35:13.730
So APH collaborates with IBM, uh, to figure out how to, how to compute this whole thing.
00:35:13.730 --> 00:35:16.690
And back then computers, you know, data entry is done.
00:35:16.710 --> 00:35:23.440
You, you do, you do data entry on this machine that punches holes into these, into these punch cards.
00:35:24.780 --> 00:35:29.000
And then you load a stack of punch cards into a, a feeder.
00:35:29.001 --> 00:35:38.559
And it, it feeds them into the computer and it shines light and wherever you've punched a hole light shines through, and, and the computer reads that.
00:35:38.561 --> 00:35:38.880
Right?
00:35:39.019 --> 00:35:47.599
And so we figure out a way to have a, a, the transcription is done by, uh, someone typing on, uh, punching these cards.
00:35:48.099 --> 00:35:55.400
And then we would ship the cards up to, uh, New York and they would load'em into a machine, and it would it'd feed'em in the computer.
00:35:55.400 --> 00:36:03.789
And then computer would be programmed to translate the print characters into braille, and then punch, punch, punch, punch, punch.
00:36:03.809 --> 00:36:09.070
It would punch a bunch of card, big, another big stack of cards out that now that's the braille translation.
00:36:09.170 --> 00:36:10.590
They'd ship that back to us.
00:36:11.099 --> 00:36:19.739
We'd put that into a card reader that was connected to a special machine, a stereograph machine, a computer stereograph machine, and then it would, it would punch the plates.
00:36:19.740 --> 00:36:21.300
It would, emboss the zinc.
00:36:21.320 --> 00:36:23.019
By that time, we weren't using copper anymore.
00:36:23.320 --> 00:36:25.820
We were using zinc plates and it would, emboss the plates.
00:36:25.820 --> 00:36:32.659
Then you would take those and put them into the, into the, uh, the press, right to mass, produce them today.
00:36:33.050 --> 00:36:36.619
That whole process can happen on your cell phone, right?
00:36:37.599 --> 00:36:42.610
Your cell phone, we, you could use a, you know, software package called like braille blaster from the(American) Printing House.
00:36:43.550 --> 00:36:50.369
And, um, you know, you could load just about any publication, any print publication into, into that program and it'll translate it.
00:36:50.371 --> 00:36:55.489
And that, you know, you've got the computing power of, of a mainframe computer in your pocket.
00:36:56.690 --> 00:37:06.559
Um, and today a transcription occurs, uh, just using a desktop computer, you know, here at APH, we have a, a Braille Translation Department that does that.
00:37:07.440 --> 00:37:10.880
Um, and, and there are also braille translation programs at lots of prisons.
00:37:10.880 --> 00:37:14.639
You know, we work with a lot of prison, braille programs, get all the textbooks translated.
00:37:15.599 --> 00:37:19.670
Um, and then a lot of times you don't even use those bossing plates anymore.
00:37:19.869 --> 00:37:24.949
Although we, we have some presses that still use the Bo in bossing plates for publications.
00:37:24.951 --> 00:37:29.590
You wanna make lots of copies of like, say the McDonald's menu, right.
00:37:30.030 --> 00:37:33.909
Um, every now and then we'll, we'll, we'll bid and get the contract for the McDonald's menu.
00:37:33.911 --> 00:37:38.949
And we'll make a million copies of that, that you need still need the, the embossing plates.
00:37:39.920 --> 00:37:45.940
But a lot of times we make one book for one kid somewhere out there in the United States.
00:37:46.519 --> 00:37:52.980
And so that you use, uh, a digital press, like a Brailo 650, or an Interpoint NV 55.
00:37:52.740 --> 00:37:55.420
The Brailos come from Norway.
00:37:56.260 --> 00:38:05.929
Uh, the Interpoints come from Belgium and we, you know, have adapt a little bit, but, um, so a lot of, a lot of embossing now is done...
00:38:06.480 --> 00:38:07.289
It's all digital.
00:38:08.570 --> 00:38:15.329
Um, and then your next question is gonna probably be what about paperless brail, right?
00:38:16.550 --> 00:38:17.170
Yes, yes.
00:38:17.239 --> 00:38:17.530
Yeah.
00:38:17.909 --> 00:38:40.840
So, because you got that's, what you've been talking about is the, the Chameleon and other, uh, refreshable braille devices, little computer note takers, and you can just sit there and bob...bobby..bob, in your class, or in your, in, in the grocery store, or while you're talking to your mom on the phone and take notes, um, and then it's got the refreshable braille display where it raises the pins electronically.
00:38:40.840 --> 00:38:44.679
Well, that all starts in the late 1960s.
00:38:44.681 --> 00:38:55.349
They start, uh, you know, a number of inventors start working with pretty complicated little devices like that used some sometimes use rubber, uh, belts.
00:38:56.090 --> 00:39:03.869
And, uh, the, the, the dots would, would, would, it would kind of a, like a memory, uh, foam material, the belt was.
00:39:03.871 --> 00:39:11.030
And so he could raise the pins in rubber, and then when it would, when it would cycle on through, through the pulley, it would flatten the dot back up.
00:39:11.369 --> 00:39:16.900
But that, that didn't really end up working, being practical, but it got Oleg Tretiakov.
00:39:17.960 --> 00:39:28.860
His wife was a, uh, uh, a linguist who was interested in, uh, braille translation and Ole was more of a computer guy.
00:39:29.780 --> 00:39:38.329
Uh, and so, you know, as happens sometimes with married couples, you know, somebody, you know, you bring on more problem you're, you know, struggling with at home.
00:39:38.469 --> 00:39:44.449
And the other half of the team is like, maybe they bring something different to the, to the problem.
00:39:44.550 --> 00:39:53.130
And, and that's what Oleg did he sat down and created this machine called the digit cassette in France about 1975.
00:39:54.469 --> 00:40:05.719
And the digit cassette was out, oh, it was about probably, uh, 12, 15 inches wide and, uh, about 10 inches deep and maybe about four inches thick.
00:40:05.739 --> 00:40:10.559
And it used audio cassettes to store the data.
00:40:12.159 --> 00:40:35.630
Um, and so, uh, and then it had those six, they had the keyboard, the, a braille keyboard that you could set and do data entry with, and it would store it on the audio cassette a magnetic tape, but then it had a, I think a 20 or 25 cell refreshable brail display that, um, it could, you know, play back basically what you had typed onto the audio tape, but it would play it back as in, in braille.
00:40:35.679 --> 00:40:36.030
Right.
00:40:36.489 --> 00:40:40.780
And it used to a technology called Pizo electric technology to raise the pins.
00:40:42.179 --> 00:40:47.280
Um, and, uh, Tretiakov comes over the United States.
00:40:47.389 --> 00:40:50.079
He's, you know, trying to figure out a way to, you know, mass produce this.
00:40:50.500 --> 00:40:56.440
And he goes to a, a company called Telecensory a big, uh, accessibility company back in those days.
00:40:57.420 --> 00:41:12.590
And try was negotiate with them to produce the, uh, the, uh, Tretiakov, machine, the, digit cassette, well Telecensory was like,"no." And so basically what they did was they stole Tretiakov idea.
00:41:13.159 --> 00:41:13.510
Right.
00:41:14.010 --> 00:41:30.900
And they took his idea and came up with this thing called the Versa Braille, which was the first commerially available refreshable braille device in the United States, also used, uh, um, uh, magnetic tape, um, cassettes, you know, to store the information, but it was portable pretty heavy.
00:41:32.139 --> 00:41:37.079
Um, by comparison day, you couldn't stick in your pocket, but it was portable and used a rechargeable battery.
00:41:37.619 --> 00:41:49.199
And every, all of our devices today, really, they all kinda harken back to those two devices, the Versa Braille and the, although there are European manufacturers that, that have their roots in, in other inventors in Europe.
00:41:49.760 --> 00:42:01.829
Um, but you know, the exciting thing to is that, you know, that piso electric cell for the longest time has been kind of the, the limiting factor, because it was pretty expensive.
00:42:02.659 --> 00:42:07.150
Each cell was, you know, I don't know, 250 bucks or something like that just per sale.
00:42:07.369 --> 00:42:11.469
So if you had a 40 cell display, that's 40 times, two$50.
00:42:11.471 --> 00:42:11.750
Right.
00:42:11.989 --> 00:42:26.420
And so, uh, and so that's why, uh, like inventions, like the, uh, Orbit 20 that we, uh, uh, came up with, uh, a few years ago and it's, it's now out of our catalog, but it used a different kind of technology.
00:42:26.420 --> 00:42:41.889
And so a lot of inventors are, you know, poking and prying and, uh, working on that on the, kind of like in the hourglass, you know, the blockage, the one little thing in a, in a technology that, that, that is kind of slowing it, uh, development down.
00:42:42.730 --> 00:42:53.010
Um, but, um, you know, there's been a lot of, lot of movement, a lot of growth and a lot of miniaturization, you know, these devices just keep getting smaller and smaller and cheaper and cheaper.
00:42:53.010 --> 00:43:00.920
And that was the whole idea is how can we get to a point where we can put one of these in the hands of every body who wants to use one?
00:43:02.039 --> 00:43:04.480
Um, and, you know, we're really getting close to that.
00:43:04.960 --> 00:43:09.880
Um, you know, the chameleon and the, and, uh, what's the other device that, that just came out,
00:43:10.969 --> 00:43:14.159
We've got the Chameleon 20 and Polly is coming out.
00:43:15.679 --> 00:43:16.030
Polly.
00:43:16.590 --> 00:43:23.829
Um, then that's after Polly Thompson who was, uh, who was, uh, Helen Keller's assistant, but all this stuff is, you know, it's happening fast.
00:43:24.650 --> 00:43:33.869
And, uh, the changes are, it's just pretty amazing to watch the, the, the, the new products that are coming out, um, that to make braille easier to use.
00:43:35.300 --> 00:43:53.820
Um, and, and, you know, it's a tribute to how elegant Louis's original code was that this thing that was, you know, published for the first time in 1829, which we're coming up now, you know, won't be too long till we'll be working on the 200th anniversary, but it's co the code is so elegant.
00:43:54.820 --> 00:43:57.929
Uh, so easy to so easy to use that.
00:43:58.030 --> 00:44:09.690
And so flexible that we're still, you know, uh, technology is making it easier to use, but the reason that we're still inventing new technology is because the code itself is so elegant.
00:44:11.519 --> 00:44:15.780
And, you know, when something's done right or done, well, it will stand in the test of time.
00:44:15.960 --> 00:44:18.610
And this is a classic example of that.
00:44:19.110 --> 00:44:23.449
It has not strayed very much from the original, the original code.
00:44:23.550 --> 00:44:26.769
So that's just, that's the, that's my thinking.
00:44:26.771 --> 00:44:30.530
That's my thoughts on it when something's good, the first time you change, you don't reinvent the wheel.
00:44:30.599 --> 00:44:30.889
Yeah.
00:44:31.059 --> 00:44:35.760
So my old boss, Gary people always used to ask him, you know, why, you know, when will braille go away?
00:44:36.460 --> 00:44:48.360
And he would always say, when people no longer need a pencil and paper, when side people no longer need a pen to, you know, then people who are blinder vision impaired will stop using braille.
00:44:48.659 --> 00:45:02.070
But as long as we need to read to, uh, to, to memorize things, uh, to store data, to, to, to send messages to each other, uh, people who are blind will be using, um, Louis' code,
00:45:03.659 --> 00:45:06.949
What else can we see regarding braille in the APH museum?
00:45:08.250 --> 00:45:10.710
We have an awesome collection, as you might imagine.
00:45:11.380 --> 00:45:17.699
Uh, you know, it starts with Louis's original, uh, publication of the braille code in 1829.
00:45:17.701 --> 00:45:21.380
What we call the per se day, the method it's super rare.
00:45:21.380 --> 00:45:23.980
There's only six copies of the book left in anywhere in the world.
00:45:24.039 --> 00:45:25.739
And we have one of them it's on display.
00:45:27.079 --> 00:45:40.090
We have over a hundred braille slates, the collection, and probably 50 of'em on display in all shapes and sizes and materials designs.
00:45:40.849 --> 00:45:51.929
Um, we have 40, uh, different bra riders, uh, from all over the world, from Europe, from Asia, from north America, you know, starting with that, uh, hall rail rider.
00:45:52.260 --> 00:46:04.559
We have, uh, you know, the St machine, if you wanna see that we have that, uh, we have, uh, some of the early computer, uh, the IBM developed, uh, computer translation devices that are on display.
00:46:05.260 --> 00:46:23.789
And, um, you know, uh, we, we di we've done temporary exhibits with the, uh, refreshable brail devices, but that's, we'll one of the things I'm really excited about the new museum project that we're working on is that we're gonna be able to put out a lot of this technology I've been collecting over the last 16 years that we haven't had room for in the new museum.
00:46:24.170 --> 00:46:40.059
And so, um, you know, a lot of the Bri and bosses, uh, the digital, uh, note takers and stuff will have, um, on display and, um, and, uh, and also in a, an accessible way so that people can actually get their hands on.
00:46:40.880 --> 00:46:41.260
And is
00:46:41.260 --> 00:46:44.019
There anything else you'd like to add regarding braille devices?
00:46:45.170 --> 00:47:13.610
Yeah, I think it's just that the braille code is alive, Sara, and, um, and so, you know, we have just this in incredible new, you know, new generation of users that's coming up and, you know, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's just a constant process of people, uh, poking and prodding and stretching and, um, and, and asking questions.
00:47:14.360 --> 00:47:16.840
And I think if we just keep asking questions, why do we do this?
00:47:16.860 --> 00:47:17.960
Why do we do it this way?
00:47:18.019 --> 00:47:30.920
Why did, how did it happen that we, we got the, to where we are, um, uh, that people just keep applying their, their, their human ingenuity to this, this, this simple problem of reading and writing.
00:47:31.659 --> 00:47:38.480
And, and, uh, and so I, you know, I think that's what our museum talks about, and I, and I'm excited to see where we're gonna go next.
00:47:39.730 --> 00:47:42.400
Thank you so much, Michael, for joining me today on Change Makers.
00:47:42.889 --> 00:47:43.559
Thank you Sara.
00:47:45.449 --> 00:47:48.400
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of changemaker.
00:47:48.719 --> 00:47:57.670
We've put links to Chameleon 20 and Mystic access in the show notes, and as always be sure to look for ways you can be a change maker this week.
