<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 27/8/24 18:47, Daveed Mandell via
Tactile-Talk wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:170989475.0.1724798839290@localhost">
<pre>I also think it's time to push for heavily subsidized braille products
in this country and throughout the world. They are not luxuries. How
many of us can truly buy a Monarch?</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>I agree with the general point. At least there's already U.S.
government funding available for students that will offset the
cost. I don't know what happens to the device once the student has
completed secondary school and, we hope, moves on to university
though.</p>
<p>According to an interview that I heard, APH and HumanWare are
looking for public funding sources in other countries as well.<br>
</p>
<p>I've recently had a chance to work with a Monarch for several
hours, thanks to an opportunity provided by former colleagues.
I'll say it publicly: I was impressed with the Braille, the
tactile graphics, and the maturity of the included software for a
pre-release product. There wasn't time to try anything especially
creative, but we did experiment with the tactile graphics library,
the graphing calculator, the chess game (without much success),
the word processor, and so forth.</p>
<p>I had prior experience with the Graphiti (also at the prototype
stage), which of course made manipulating tactile graphics on the
Monarch even easier. This is exactly the device I wish I had in
secondary school calculus and physics courses. In the early 1990s
when I was completing secondary school, it was all about raised
line drawing kits and stereocopy machines for producing tactile
graphics. Graphics-capable embossers weren't readily available at
the time, at least in Australia, which is where I am from.<br>
</p>
<p>The Monarch should also be excellent for reading a lot of text,
which I regularly need to do. 10 lines of 32 cells are better than
a single-line Braille display, in my opinion.<br>
</p>
</body>
</html>