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

[Travis Roth]

This is true, however, PowerBraille was mentioned. This is now a Freedom
Scientific device, so if you are using JAWS, JAWS does include drivers for
it. Not sure about NVDA.

I would suspect only serial port access, or serial over USB using a USB to
serial adapter. I would also suspect parallel port support in Windows 64-bit
version even if you found such a port would not work. 

 

 

From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On
Behalf Of Al Puzzuoli
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2014 11:34 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Refreshable Braille Display - Old tech with new PC

 

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)
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

 <mailto:hunziker at email.arizona.edu> hunziker at email.arizona.edu

http://drc.arizona.edu

 

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