[Athen] Refreshable Braille Display - Old tech with new PC

[Al Puzzuoli]

Hi,
Unfortunately, the ports  are just one issue. If you're running a 64 bit version of Windows , it's possible that your screen reader doesn't even include drivers  for most legacy displays anymore. We had some old Alva and Braille Window displays here and unfortunately, we had to put them out to pasture, as they just don't work with anything modern.

Al Puzzuoli
Information Technologist
Michigan State University,
Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities,  120 Bessey Hall East Lansing, MI  48824-1033
517-884-1915
http://www.rcpd.msu.edu

From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Schwarte, David M.
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2014 11:05 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Refreshable Braille Display - Old tech with new PC

We ran into this with our PowerBraille a couple of years ago.  The research I did at the time suggested that the USB/Parallel converters would only work with printers.  I did purchase a few different brands of converters and confirmed than none of them worked.  In some instances you may be able to purchase a parallel card for the computer.  This would probably add an actual parallel port that the PowerBraille driver can find.  I considered doing this, but I had done something similar in the past.  At that time I was always battling with the support folks to keep the drivers installed for the hardware.  I still have our PowerBraille on a test computer  that still has a parallel port.

David Schwarte


From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Hunziker, Dawn A - (hunziker)
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2014 1:34 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network (athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>)
Subject: [Athen] Refreshable Braille Display - Old tech with new PC

Hi all,

We are upgrading our computers and have older PowerBraille displays which are using parallel and serial ports for communicating with the PC.  Has anyone successfully used a USB adapter and have the communication stay reliable?  Or, is it time to invest in newer technologies?

Thanks for the suggestions!

Dawn

~~
Dawn Hunziker
IT Accessibility Consultant

Disability Resource Center
University of Arizona
1224 E. Lowell St.
Tucson, AZ 85721

Phone: 520-626-9409
Fax: 520-626-5500
hunziker at email.arizona.edu<mailto:hunziker at email.arizona.edu>
http://drc.arizona.edu

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20140821/6933dd7d/attachment.html>