Hi all.
Any tips for learning braille tables? I've got input set to US English contracted and output to UEB uncontracted. Do I need to just match them, and it will translate, e.g. if I'm sending a message? Right now if I try to enter an email address, dot 4 is the at symbol, except if I move off of it, it seems to turn it into a percent. 2-5-6 is given as the 'dd' contraction, not a period, and I think 4-6 is underscore.
I thought the at symbol, for instance, was dot 4 followed by dot 1. But IIRC that did @a. If I set input and output to US English contracted, any tips on what some of the more obscure punctuation is, or how to find out? Also not sure how it distinguishes between things like a slash character or na 'st' contraction.
Oh, while I'm asking questions, landscape orientation, does direction matter? I thought it wanted charge port to the left but it didn't give me a message about it this time.
Thanks in advance for any help, really appreciate it. I figure it's finally time to get to grips with this, since people seem to love it so much.
Comments
Some Tips
To answer your last question first, the phone's orientation doesn't matter As long as you have BSI orientation unlocked. To toggle the lock, swipe down with three fingers. It seems that the extra info given when switching orientation is controlled by VoiceOver hints, so if you have those off, you'll hear only "landscape" or similar. I would recommend figuring which way to hold your phone is most comfortable for you and then locking the orientation there, but of course that's up to you.
As for translation, I keep my input and output tables matching, and I use UEB contracted almost exclusively. Though UEB is a little bit to learn if you don't know it already, I find it makes typing certain symbols easier, whether I'm using BSI or a Braille display. It's been so long since I've used US Braille that I honestly can't recall how to make these symbols there. Hopefully someone else can help you with that if you'll prefer US.
A few symbols, in UEB contracted:
Ampersand (&): 4,1-2-3-4-6
Asterisk (*): 5,3-5
At symbol (@): 4,1
Caret (^): 4,2-6
Colon (:): 2-5
Dollar sign ($): 4,2-3-4
Exclamation mark (!): 2-3-5
Number sign (#): 4-5-6,1-4-5-6
Percent (%): 4-6,3-5-6
Period (.): 2-5-6
Reverse solidus (\): 4-5-6,1-6
Solidus (/): 4-5-6,3-4
Tilde (~): 4,3-5
Grouping symbols are all made via 1-2-6 and 3-4-5 with a prefix. For example, left paren is 5,1-2-6, and right paren is 5,3-4-5. Angle brackets are prefixed with a dot 4; square brackets with dots 4-6; and curley braces with dots 4-5-6.
You can find more complete UEB references on the web via a Google search. I hope the above is enough to get you started, assuming you'll try UEB.
To add to the confusion
I've not tried mixing input and output tables with Braille screen input. I can say from experience that mixing them with a Braille display can cause bad input as the VoiceOver Braille translator mangles the input. For example, I often quick switch input to 8 dot to write an email address. But if I forget to change the output table, the input gets entirely mangled. As I said I've not tried this with Braille screen input, however I suspect it will have the same problem. SO I would advise to not use two different tables with it either.
UEB is probably the best for writing as they tried to account for symbols. I guess I should get in the habit but I know 8 dot (computer Braille) already just let me use it quick.
I'm mostly writing text.
And I miss some of the contractions in US grade II. I set both input and output to US English contracted. But I get the same thing, e.g. dot 4 says it's the at symbol, but when I finish the email address it's foo (percent) the rest. Looks like I just need to find a reference somewhere. If not I'll try UEB I guess, but I'd really like to stick with US contracted. I can read UEB, since it's pretty close and I get the differences from context. But I haven't sat down and learned to write with it. I will if I have to, but 40 plus years of a habit is kind of hard to break, you know?
I feel like I shouldn't need to write a ton of symbols, the at sign and backslash might be the only ones I'd use regularly that I don't already know. So if anybody has or knows of a way to get a reference for whatever Apple considers US English Braille, Contracted, I'd really appreciate it. Actually I'm fairly sure backslash is dots 1-6. But yeah, I probably know like 98-99% of the stuff in that table already. I suspect the stuff I don't know has been modified to get some computer braille stuff in there.
Contracted UEB references.
OK, I see from duxbury's UEB chart that more of the contractions than I thought have carried over. So maybe I'll try it. Anybody have a good reference? For instance, I note that the chart says 'in' and 'to' and 'into' are gone. So you can't do 'into the' with the contractions one after the other, no spaces? How about 'with the', 'of the'? Are they all separated? That's the kind of stuff that's likely to trip me up, I suspect.
Re: Mostly writing text
I get you. I can read UEB better than writing it too.
Ok, for doing an email address while using U.S. Contracted you're on the right track. The key is the dot 4 is used to signal that the next character is not contracted. For the @ sign, use dot 4, dot 4 again. For the period, use dot 4 then dots 46. (If you type a lowered d and immediately time the next letter of say .com, the translator will convert to dd, so you need to do the don't contract this trick.) I usually can get this to work. However I don't have quite enough confidence with it to do passwords. The password manager or using the QWERTY keyboard are more reliable for me.
Another quick question.
Thanks! For swiping up/down, e.g. to send a message, lock/unlock orientation, here's how I have my hands.
In screen away mode, my fingers extend along the phone, from the edges pointing inward. What does "swipe up" mean here? Are my three horizontal fingers swiping from the long edge toward my head, to the long edge facing the floor? Are they sliding to the left, e.g. if the phone were vertical, they'd be swiping up toward the power and volume buttons? Should I reorient my hand so my fingers swipe vertically from long edge toward my head to long edge toward the floor? In other words, now my fingers point to the long edge toward the floor.
I suppose I can just play with this and find out. Oh yeah, here's another question, navigation. I'm in email. I write an address. How do I move between fields? Do I need to put it in command mode, navigate, then go back to writing?
I've only played with BSI a tiny bit and just for writing a little text. But like I said, people seem to love it so much that I feel like it's time to really dig into it and see what I can manage with it. I don't know that I'd use it all the time, e.g. to type on the home screen, but if I"m writing, e.g. email, it makes sense to know how to navigate rather than popping in and out and potentially reorienting the phone and all. I'm still pretty slow with braille in general, even on a display, I haven't written extensively in ages, and the touch screen adds a bit to that. But I do think if I work at it I'd get faster and it could be better than typing with the normal phone keyboard.
For @ (at)
In both french grade 1 and english us grade 1 (I think it's ueb grade 1 really) often times the at @ symbol is mysteriously deleted whenever I type something after like @domain in an email field so I have taken this habbit of type email, virtual keyboard @ outside bsi, re enter bsi, and enter the rest.
I don't know why or how this is but this trick works for me.
Generally speaking I am fluent in writing in both language grade 1 and I always forget how to write the # (number) sign in english braille? Thanks :) I can type long passwords comfortably in bsi. And the passcode of of course when I am very lazy.
As for navigation, maybe not the most efficient or intuitive way of doing things but I have never bothered to learn all the commands, not to mention this new command mode, so when I have to type in many text field, I type into one, get out, swipe to the other or explor by touch there, reenter bsi and keep typing. Feel free to comment on this :) .
Re: Another Quick Question
Regarding swiping directions, I'll answer by first describing the phone's position as it is when I'm using BSI. The screen is facing away from me, the charge port is on my right, the camera bump is on my left and faces me, the volume buttons face the ceiling, and the lock button faces the floor. This is only one possible orientation; I just wanted to make sure we're starting with the same understanding of what's where.
Given this orientation, a three-finger swipe up has you swiping three fingers from the lock button up toward the volume buttons. Another, though maybe more confusing, way to think about it is that it's the same as a three-finger swipe left if the phone were in its natural orientation. Similarly, a rightward swipe requires that you swipe from left to right, or, given my example orientation, from the camera across toward the charge port. I hope that makes sense.
To navigate, you can indeed switch to Command Mode via a three-finger swipe right. You can also enter Command Mode directly by two-finger triple-tapping the shortest edges of the screen if you have that gesture enabled in BSI settings. Command Mode commands are much like the commands you'd use to navigate via a Braille display, if you're familiar: Dot 1 moves you left one element, and dot 4 moves you right once. You can enter help mode by tapping dots 1-3, and here VoiceOver will announce the purpose of whatever cell you type.
You can switch back and forth between text input and Command Mode in the same way. So here's how I might fill out a draft email. Starting in Command Mode, tap dot 4 until I reach the "To" field. Press dots 3-6 to activate it, and three-finger swipe right to start entering text. Enter the address, then three-finger swipe right again to return to Command Mode. Press dot 4 again until reaching the "Subject" field, and so on. It really is quite fast once you can get used to it.
Navigation
I thought I should additionally mention a few major navigation methods I use to get around quickly in BSI Command Mode.
First, you can use rotor items just as you do in VoiceOver's natural mode. Dots 2-3 and dots 5-6 switch to the previous and next rotor, respectively (similar to rotating two fingers left or right), and dot 3 and dot 6 go to the previous and next rotor item (like one-finger swipe up or down). I use these often to navigate by heading, word, etc.
Also, scrolling through large views is possible: Press dots 1-4-5-6 to scroll down, and dots 3-4-5-6 to scroll up. This can be much faster than repeatedly pressing dot 1/4 to get through uninteresting elements, but note that VoiceOver focus won't follow the scrolling as you might expect. To solve this problem, assign "Center Screen" to a BSI command (VoiceOver Settings > Commands > Braille Screen & Braille Keyboard Input > Navigation > Center Screen) and invoke that command after scrolling to ensure VoiceOver focus lands on the newly visible content.
There are plenty of other strategies for getting around, and of course you can see all the possible BSI commands in the Settings section I referenced above, but these are the commands I use all the time to navigate apps efficiently.
Thanks, everybody!
I'll totally have to play around with this. Again, I don't know that I'll use it for almost everything like some people apparently do. But it will be nice, if I can get it working, to just be in it, e.g. if I'm writing an email and need to move between fields, to just stay in that mode without having to flip the phone around and such. I don't really use a braille display with the phone so this will all be new.
UEB Reference
I've been using this as a reference. Hope it helps. Edit to say, yeah I believe the general rule is no combined words such as "with the", so I just try to remember that.
https://www.pharmabraille.com/braille-codes/unified-english-braille-ueb-code/
More UEB Tips
I remembered another thing that tripped me up in the beginning. Many if not all of the contractions that use dot 6, 5-6, 4-6, and 4-5-6 are gone. Sorry I'm probably not describing that well. For example, ation, sion, tion, ally. So if writing the word station, remember to write the ation part out.
Re: More UEB Tips
So, no more "n—dot6—n" for 'Nation', for example?
That's a shame. Those contractions were fun. 😊
They're gone, but you can contract I think.
IIRC it's all dots 5-6 'n' now. So nation would be an 'n', an 'a', followed by dots 5-6, then another 'n'. This is kind of why I want to stick with US contracted if I can though. I could be wrong, because half the stuff from the NLS is in UEB, and the rest is in what I consider normal braille. So like I said, I can read it in context, but not enough of it has stuck with me to be able to write it, I don't think.
If I end up seriously using BSI and I have to switch, well, I'll buckle down and learn to write UEB contracted, naturally. But I mean, I won't like it and stuff.
On learning command mode and orientation
There is a fantastic guide here on AppleVis which is a great reference for BSI.
It explains the new command mode and orientation, which I know you had some questions about, plus some useful tips, tricks, and that kind of thing. My apologies if you've read it before, but I thought I'd put it here just in case.
A Guide to Braille Screen Input on iOS and iPadOS