In the last few days; we have had a colorful mix of texts, announcements, images and even music on the subject of Braille.
But today I have something completely different for you. Something with which you can become active yourself.
Something that I have tried out in advance. I’ll talk about this in more detail in a moment.
Have you ever wondered whether you can write on AN ordinary keyboard like on a Braille typewriter?
I tell you, yes, it actually works.
All you need is the free screen reader NVDA and a specific addon that does exactly what I wrote about above.
It turns your PC keyboard into a Braille typewriter.
My first cocky thought was something along the lines of:
“Oh, great, I’m definitely really good at that!”
Well, in theory maybe.
In practice, it turned out to be completely different.
It took me more time than I expected to adapt to the new way of writing. And I lined up mistake after mistake. To be honest, so many that it really couldn’t be called nice anymore.
At some Point, I took the time again and, as an exercise, wrote down a short text five times in a row that I could recite from memory.
And after the third or fourth time, there was a slight improvement.
Nevertheless, I still wonder what could have caused my initial writing problems.
Are PC keyboards just not suitable for typing in this way?
Or, shockingly, have I actually forgotten how to write with a Braille typewriter?
Maybe some of you will try it out and tell me about your experiences on livingbraille.eu.
Now I will explain to you step by step how you can transform your PC keyboard into a Braille typewriter.
As already mentioned, the first thing you need is NVDA.
You don’t have to permanently install the screen reader on your system. It is enough if you create a portable version during installation.
You can download NVDA here:
After starting NVDA for the first time, you will be presented with a dialog box with some basic settings. They shouldn’t actually be a problem for you. The only important thing here is that you decide which key you use as the NVDA key. You’ll need it later.
Next you have to install the addon. But it’s really very simple. You can download it here:
https://nvda.es/files/get.php?file=pckbbrl
Once you have started NVDA, simply go to the file explorer of your choice and click on the downloaded addon.
Confidently answer the following dialogs with yes and OK.
NVDA will restart after installing the addon.
The addon is then freely available to you.
All you have to do is select the correct Braille input table.
To do this, call up the NVDA menu with NVDA-n,select Options and then Settings.
In the menu that now appears, either press b or use the down arrow to navigate to Braille. From there, simply continue with tab until you reach the input table option.
Once you have selected the table that suits you, click on “Apply” and “OK”
No worries! The text was actually longer than it actually takes.
And now the fun begins
To get started, press the NVDA key and 0.
The input keys here are f-d-s-a for points 1, 2, 3 and 7
and j-k-l-ö for 4, 5, 6 and 8
Of course I’m talking about computer braille here.
The rest of the keyboard continues to function normally: Arrow keys, backspace, enter and so on.
If you want your good old F-D-S-A-J-K-L-Ö keys back, just press NVDA key plus 0 again.
Then everything is back to normal.
And now I hope you have as much fun trying it out as I had myself.
May your successes be greater than mine.