What's a braille display that _works_?

[Mario Lang]

"Lee Maschmeyer" <lee_maschmeyer at wayne.edu> writes:

> A trend among hardware as well as software manufacturers seems to be to
> release a product or program "on time" rather than when it's ready. I'm
> thinking specifically of braille displays, and I've read reports over the
> past couple years of braille displays allegedly not working as advertised.
> These reports frequently come from vendors of rival products, but they don't
> always.
>
> I'm going to a technology bash tomorrow in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with a heavy
> interest in looking at braille hardware that's currently being manufactured.
> Do any of you have experience, especially bad experience, with stuff on the
> market today? Is there anything I need to stay away from because of its not
> (yet) working on Linux?

The only newly manufactured model I know of which does not yet work
under Linux is the new USB display of Papenmeier.  But this is likely
to change soon.

Apart from that, a personal experience I've made several
times in my life is that routing keys made of rubber-like material
tend to get stuck at some point, generating quite some problems.

One other aspect I personally dislike are displays with very few novigation
keys, like the Vario 40, which has only got 6 keys on the display.
I find those displays a bit anoying in daily use.

To give a bit of positive input too, I currently use a HandyTech
Braille Star 40, which is a very nice ergonomic device.  Have a look
at it if you can someday.

-- 
CYa,
  Mario | Debian Developer <URL:http://debian.org/>
        | Get my public key via finger mlang at db.debian.org
        | 1024D/7FC1A0854909BCCDBE6C102DDFFC022A6B113E44