[NFBJ] Hebrew braille on refreshable braille devices

[Andre Zelvin]

Some years ago now, I used an old pacmate with braille display to take notes that included Hebrew. I forget if you could just turn off the speech or if I had to route it somewhere else. I’m not sure what else could be done, in that regard. The limitation was that these had to  be read as is, they couldn’t be converted to print, spoken with electronic speech, etc. but I’m confused about what’s missing. Yes, I put files into computer braille, just so that what I entered would not be converted in any way. Also, for a while I was getting lessons in Arabic from an Israeli Arab, He’s blind but didn’t know arabic braille. Not having a good memory myself, I really needed to be able to take Notes. Another Israeli Arab was kind enough to help me learn to write Arabic Braille. That was even longer ago, so I have no recollection of anything I did and the device I was using crashed before I could back up ;my many notes, and at that point I gave up. But I just did what I did on the pacmate, silenced speech and put the files in computer braille so they would display just as I wrote them. I’m sure there’s loads of room to develop more useful products, but I’m confused about  what an  improvement would be  for writing the way I’d want to read.
Andre


On Aug 20, 2026, at 12:03 PM, Daveed Mandell via NFBJ <nfbj at nfbnet.org> wrote:


Shalom:

Does anyone use a refreshable Braille device to read and write Hebrew Braille? I am not talking about reading BRF files. I'm talking about reading and writing Hebrew Braille from scratch.

For instance, devices manufactured by Selvas have incomplete Braille tables for Hebrew. I noticed that the input table contains fewer signs than the output table. I also noticed that US computer Braille appears to be required to read and write Hebrew, which is ridiculous.

For several years I have reached out to this company asking them to work with the Israeli developers of firmware provided with their  devices sold in Israel. The firmware provides complete tables for Hebrew, in addition to English, Russian and Arabic.

Incidentally, Selvas devices sold elsewhere, such as the BrailleSense 6, do not provide Arabic. However, I have just discovered that Arabic without vowels appears to be included in the Hebrew braille output table, which is really strange. One can read Arabic without vowels, although I don't think the representation is completely accurate. One cannot write uncontracted Arabicboth with and without  vowels, and contracted Arabic, because there are no actual Arabic tables.

The only way one can write Hebrew on these devices is without vowels. Hebrew with vowels can be read, but it does not conform at all with the Hebrew braille code. Because Hebrew is my second language, I am able to figure it out, but frankly, it is a mess!

I would like to hear about other people's experiences reading Hebrew on various refreshable Braille devices, such as Braille BT, or any other devices, such as those from Humanware and Orbit. One should be able to easily read and write Hebrew Braille, both with and without vowels. One should also be able to write bilingual and/or multilingual documents.

For instance, writing two Drashot (sermons) for my Congregation this year took hours to accomplish, because of the awkward way in which Hebrew is represented. At first, I had to write the English in computer Braille and add the Hebrew as an afterthought. I then figured out that I could write the English in contracted UEB, and then switch codes to Hebrew. Still, the process was clumsy at best. I had to send the sermns to the Congregation's collection afterward, and the format was awful. I had to get sighted assistance to fix it.

One of my big concerns is that language support on refreshable Braille devices is one of the weakest links, as far as refreshable braille devices are concerned. All refreshable Braille devices should contain all Braille language tables, so that anyone could choose the language(s) they wish to use. There are literally hundreds of tables in both Duxbury and  LibLouis Braille translation software. They should all be available on every refreshable Braille device. Humanware now provides them. I would also like to see manufacturers of refreshable Braille devices come up with a way to allow for automatic detection of various languages, so that one could read bilingual or multilingual documents with ease.

Kol tuv,

Daveed

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