[blindkid] Stand Alone Braille Display for Academics

[Richard Holloway]

We've had a couple of BT 40's that Kendra won at the Braille Challenge. They're nice but Kendra uses her Apex for most needs even having those available. 

We do leave one to plug into her laptop with JAWS but with things like her iPhone, Kendra keeps her phone in a zippered pouch with her Apex and unless she needs to hear the speaker or get to the mic she usually leaves it there while she controls it from the Apex via Bluetooth. 

Mostly she puts a headphone cable into the nearly-closed zipper into her phone so she can hear music and alerts while she surfs or texts. Headphones with a mix can make the need to take a phone from the case pretty much zero. 

I guess the justification would be to make certain devices more easily accessible. Depending if you want a larger or smaller display, you could "spin" for larger (especially if your apex has the smaller display) to facilitate reading larger text bodies more efficiently and if you want the small display, focus on a need for portability. Any size might also be justified to allow better simultaneous access to multiple devices. Sighted users would generally not accept a mandate to use the same display and keyboard  for their computer, a PDA and their phone, for example. Also if the apex battery was getting depleted too quickly because of using the apex as a display, a separate display would extend battery life. Unlike some devices, an apex can't easily swap batteries. You have to pull it from a carrying case then when the battery comes out it does a hard reset and clears various parameters. Nor are there external chargers so to charge spares, so you have to keep swapping and clearing out the configuration. Clearly the iPhone comments would apply, to some degree, to all iDevices and similar units though tablets aren't such a handy fit in the pouch of an apex case. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 24, 2015, at 2:25 AM, DrV via blindkid <blindkid at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> Hope you all had great summers.
> The braille displays we check out in the exhibit hall at convention were
> pretty cool.
> I know a BrailleNote can be also be used, but the stand-alone units seem to
> offer addition advantages & flexibility.
> For those of you who have successfully gotten the standalone braille
> displays to hook up to laptops, desktops & iPads etc - how did you justify
> the need? or what wording would you suggest using to justify the need?
> Thanks
> Eric
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