My ElBraille Journey.

Introduction.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter, or who have made me a friend on Facebook, will know that in March of this year I purchased an ElBraille40 from our UK distributor for the product, Sight and Sound Technology. Quite a number of people have asked for my impressions of the device, and as a result, I have posted very brief notes using both social media concerning it. However, for interest you can find more detailed impressions below.

Please note that this is not a thorough evaluation of the product. Such an assessment can be found elsewhere on the internet. However you can read all the technical specifications on this page. This blog consists of my initial notes as a user and not a trainer or someone who sells the product.

In brief, the ElBraille is described as a "cutting edge" device for the 21st century for blind people to use. But as Deborah Kendrick wrote in December of 2017 for AFB's AccessWorld publication, it is not quite the "holy grail" of Braille computers and I agree with that assessment. It could however become so with some thought, planning and fixing.

Objectives.

I've been using what might be described as Braille-based notetakers for more years than I care to remember. I do have a BrailleNote Apex, which I'm glad to say is in full working order. However, we had a spare Focus 40 display available, and I thought it would be great to get an ElBraille as it could do a number of things for me:

Most critically, I wanted the ability to write text files on my computer and have them synchronise via cloud storage direct to the device. I need to do this kind of transfer several times a week, and this would save copying the documents to a memory card. I could then read them on the ElBraille. As you will see, this objective has not been totally fulfilled.

I wanted to use it to manage Email, and be a part of social media when out on the road. This it certainly can do. I love being able to read my tweets for example and reply to them in contracted Braille with no speech.

Finally, I needed to be able to write reports and take notes while assessing customers in relation to my work. I can do this as well.

The ElBraille theoretically is capable of doing much more than this. After all, it is a Windows PC with JAWS onboard, so you can imagine the possibilities. In that context then, I think my requirements are quite modest in the scheme of things.

Initial Impressions.

What I like about the ElBraille is the fact that it is very lightweight. It is as light as many similar devices including the older-style notetakers. Its battery life, compared to many laptop computers, is incredible, and equates to about 14 to 18 hours.

Another advantage is the fact that the ElBraille vibrates, depending upon the activity being undertaken. So when it restarts, it can vibrate. I use the word "can" because this element is controllable by the user. It also can vibrate when the electric cable for charging is connected or disconnected. This is very helpful for people who are both deaf and blind, but I find it invaluable (particularly when restarting the device) while travelling in the car, as otherwise it is not always easy to tell when it is doing so.

The other main advantage, to reiterate, it is a Windows PC, albeit a reasonably slow one. So I can customise it as I would do so with any other computer I have. It also means I can install my favourite applications, such as OpenTween for Twitter interaction, or Office 365. The ElBraille takes some time to launch an Office application, but if you are patient, it will happen for you.

Finally, I can use my favourite screen-reader which is JAWS rather than learning something new.

However, not everything in the garden is rosy.

When I took delivery of the ElBraille, I found no documentation whatever: no audio CD, no Braille material, nothing. Just the device. As a side note, I should say I really like the ElBraille's case design. That is very good. But as for learning how to use it, what do you do?

Fortunately I had done my research. The ElBraille Quick Start Guide, (no full manual), is available on the device itself, which is fine if you know how to use it. You can also find it on the web on various sites, especially VFO's Product page which is very well organised and gives you everything you could need. So I started there.

The "Quick Start" guide is just that: a quick overview. Often it will tell you things like: "If you want to do X, Y or Z, you need to look it up in the User Guide for the Focus Braille display. We're not going to tell you how to do it".

The documentation, or lack of it, is one of the product's serious weaknesses. I would suggest it is not acceptable for someone to purchase a product of this magnitude, and to be advised in the User Guide that, to get the information you want, you need to be going to look elsewhere. I would expect complete documentation and even better, an audio tutorial. This device could well be the only access someone has to Email, word processing or the internet and a lot of thought needs to be given to this customer group.

A Bumpy Start.

Sadly, after a few days of using the ElBraille, the Braille display stopped working. To explain, the Focus 40 4th generation display, (not the 14), is connected to the hardware via USB inside the device. This cable had come adrift from the primary hardware so the Focus had no chance of communicating with JAWS. So I had speech but no Braille.

After a lot of troubleshooting, sending the device back to the distributor, and quite a delay, I did get the unit back fully working and it has been fine since then.

The Braille Input Mechanism.

As you can imagine, accomplishing all Windows-related tasks with a Braille keyboard could be interesting to say the least. Fortunately within JAWS, VFO have come up with a clever system for making this possible. The concept is that you press various keyboard combinations to effect Windows keystrokes. So if you want to execute ALT+F4 to close a program down, you hold down dot 8 with space which says to the ElBraille "I want to do a Windows keystroke now", and you also press dot 6 which represents "ALT", and dot 1, which means "A function key is now going to be pressed". Release those keys, and press letter "D", representing 4. Engenius it certainly is, but easy to learn it is not. There is a steep learning curve here.

Within our Leasey product to be released in July, (and as reported by me in the Blind Bargains Podcast), I have created some workarounds for the ElBraille. This involves pressing a dedicated key on the ElBraille and simply typing what you want. So if you want ALT+F4, that is what you type. If you want Insert+F7 to bring up a list of links, you can do that too.

I have had to jump through a few hoops to get this to work. I hit some problems where if you invoke a JAWS dialog box using such a keystroke on the Focus, the first character would not get inserted. I also wanted people to be able to write in contracted Braille, but due to poor Braille translation in a number of areas, that is not possible, so we have to switch to computer Braille and switch back afterwards, making it transparent to the user. But those difficulties have been overcome.

The question is why this very simple concept was not thought about? People may be coming to the ElBraille from an older notetaker environment, and this seems to be the most obvious way of allowing people to get things done in a timely manner while they are learning the keystrokes on the device, which admittedly are slightly faster once you get used to them.

The Dropbox Experience.

As previously stated, I wanted a good way of synchronising my text files with the ElBraille, and I used Dropbox for this. It works well, but you need to manage your Dropbox effectively and do not synchronise all folders. The primary drive on the ElBraille is limited in storage capacity. While there is removable media included containing much more storage, Dropbox will not let you sync to this because it is removable media. So please be careful and only synchronise the folders you need.

Having organised things well however, this does work beautifully.

Notetaking and Reading Documents.

The biggest problem by far with the ElBraille, or using JAWS with the Focus in general, is its inability to work correctly when reading text or RTF files and with finding text strings. Using both Wordpad and Notepad, (I prefer the latter on the PC for many tasks), I cannot successfully read a text file without lines being repeated. I've spent many hours trying to solve this. I will pan through a document, and after reading a few lines, the next pan will cause the line I have just read to be repeated. I know when it is going to happen because I will hear a sound as though it is panning to the next line and flicking back to the previous one.

I read aloud a lot every week, and so I really have to be on the alert to ensure I do not read the same line twice. It is incredibly frustrating.

I received a good tip on Twitter. This was to use QRead from Accessible Apps once I had the text file fully prepared, and this is a lovely solution. It works flawlessly. But it does mean that I cannot change words or make additional notes should I need to. But it does suit the purpose to a certain extent. I firmly believe that if something doesn't work in the way you want it to, then you need to do everything in your power to try an alternative solution or make some personal adjustments yourself. I did do that by using QRead, but I would have hoped to be able to read a simple text file without a problem.

Similarly, if you want to find text in a word processor, you need to press Control+F (dot 8 with space with dot 3 then "F"), type in what you want, press Enter, then the keystroke which equates to Escape. If people want to use this as a traditional notetaking device, they want to be able to find text quickly. It would be helpful if there was a key to press equating to Control+F, type a search string and press Enter, whereupon the cursor would land where you need it to be. Again, our Leasey product will make this possible and is what happens if I use QRead.

There is an application called ElNotes. The Quick Start Guide for the ElBraille makes no mention of how to use this application, but you can create audio and text notes in there and export them if necessary which is very helpful. What you can't do is import them as far as I can see, and given I like to write documents on the PC, this is not helpful.

In summary, investigation needs to be made regarding the panning issues, and ElNotes should be extended to import text documents from other sources. That may well give some good notetaking functionality.

Summary.

The concept of the ElBraille is fantastic. It has the potential to be absolutely brilliant. I was really excited about its arrival. I want to get behind it, tell people about it and particularly how good it is. But it falls short in some key areas, notably documentation, the learning curve involved in executing the various keystrokes, and the basic ability to do good notetaking which includes reading files. At the moment therefore, it hasn't met my overall objectives. I cannot use it properly for the tasks I need, and for a number of things, I will have to revert back to my BrailleNote Apex. I have no choice about it. I do feel sure though that if the developers of the ElBraille work with VFO, a number of shortcomings could be resolved so as to make it the product that it should be.