Accessible Test

Braille+

Formerly: Linkit

(Continued)

Purpose

To develop a state-of-the-art portable personal data assistant (PDA) that meets the needs of the modern student or professional who is blind or visually impaired.

Project Staff

Larry Skutchan, Project Leader

Marc Mulkahy, Project Consultant

Michael McDonald, Programmer

Rob Meredith, Programmer

Keith Creasy, Programmer

Ken Perry, Programmer

Michael Borsuk, Programmer

Rosanne Hoffman, Editor

Terri Gilmore, Artist

Background

For several years, APH sought a low-cost, simple-to-use, inexpensive replacement for a note-taking system like the Braille 'n Speak (BNS) Scholar.

Today's more connected world and less expensive parts make it possible to design an all-purpose device that can serve as a student's tool for a variety of tasks including note-taking, recording, playing audio content, calculating, timing, web browsing, emailing, and subscribing to periodicals. Expansion should be possible to permit a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver and cell phone chips contained in the units housing.
The unit should use a commercial operating system designed for low power consumption. This ensures the device continues to evolve and ensures the availability of a wide variety of software applications. These applications are often commercially developed packages with rigorous testing and a known user base.
While the development staff were well on their way to the design of this product, events at the CSUN 2006 conference changed things. A company called Level Star showed a working prototype of a unit called Icon that was remarkably similar to what APH had been designing.

Level Star and APH agreed to collaborate on a version of the Icon that contained a built-in braille keyboard. The two companies would share their software expertise, and APH would use Level Star's excellent hardware design.

Once prototypes were built, several field testers were recruited. These included a number of people from various states with ages ranging from 12 to 79 and a wide degree of education levels and occupations including students, teachers, technology consultants, social workers, accessibility consultants, and research scientists. In addition, APH has begun using public beta testing to help increase the size of the test pool.
The Braille+ became available for sale in April 2007.
Work during FY 2009

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  Established a Software Maintenance Agreement and procedures for handling requests for software updates.
  
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  Established a hardware Maintenance Agreement (HMA).
  
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  Designed a tactile map of keys for the unit.
  

Software was modified as indicated in the following:
Version 2.1.X, August 2009

Improves braille display support while reading documents by hiding the cursor and moving the document's cursor to the beginning of the displayed line. This change makes it more intuitive to move the cursor without using the display's cursor routing keys. (In previous versions, the user could get confused after advancing through a document with the display panning keys, then using a document navigation command. Thus the cursor could be far from the reading position.) Now, the cursor is always at the display.

RSS

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  Increases the speed of the RSS reader.
  
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  Adds Recent Articles and Recent Podcasts to RSS's main menu. These two options show a single list of articles or podcasts from all feeds with the most recently acquired items at the top of the list.
  

Calendar

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  Increases the speed of synchronization with Microsoft Exchange.
  
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  Adds settings to limit what Calendar imports from Exchange.
  
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  Adds import and export for iCal (ics) calendar files.
  

Network

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  Shares the public and library/books/import folders automatically when the user turns on file sharing.
  
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  Improves Network Manager performance. Now, if the unit cannot connect to a wireless access point, it turns off the WiFi radio.
  
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  Adds a third outgoing protocol to e-mail, SMTP with SSL.
  
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  Corrects a problem that prevented effective use of file sharing when browsing PCs from the unit itself.
  
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  Corrects a problem that prevented the user from playing audio content stored on the network.
  
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  Corrects a problem that could cause the recorder to crash.
  
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  Corrects a problem that prevented books you downloaded from Bookshare on your PC from unpacking properly when you placed them into the import folder.
  

Tuner

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  Separates the Internet Tuner functionality from Music Player into its own program and improves performance.
  
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  Adds the ability to add custom presets to Tuner.
  
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  Adds Previous and Next Track commands (Pound+Left or Right Arrow) for those play lists that contain multiple tracks.
  
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  Selecting a .pls or .m3u playlist from File Explorer or Web Browser now opens Tuner with that playlist.
  

Version 2.0.41, June 2009

1. Adds support for the following additional refreshable braille displays:

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  Alva Braille Controller 640/680
  
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  HIMS Braille Sense and Syncbraille.
  
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  MDV MB208/MB408L/MB408S (protocol 5)
  
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  Pegasus 20/27/40/80
  

2. Improves detection of Bluetooth braille displays going out of and coming back in range and automatically turns speech back on when out of range.

3. Improves chord command support for some braille displays.

4. Enhances zip file support

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  Lets the user open an existing archive if it has already been extracted.
  
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  Remembers the last location of extracted archives.
  
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  Compresses files.
  

5. Improves Bookshelf

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  Improves playback of NLS books, so they are more responsive at faster playback speeds.
  
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  Changes the increments of speed adjustments to 10% in audio playback. Previously, the commands adjusted playback rate by 20%, so there are twice as many settings.
  
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  Improves brf file support.
  
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  Adds support for dropping audible files into the import folder.
  
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  Supports dropping DAISY 2.x books in the import folder.
  
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  Corrects author name listings in books with multiple authors and authors with names incorrectly written.
  
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  Corrects a problem clearing bookmarks.
  

6. Improves Internet Book Search:

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  Adds an option to list other books by the author or authors of a book in the search results list.
  
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  Adds an option to let the user download the BRF version of a book.
  
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  Checks to see if a book is already in your library and offers to open it if so.
  
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  Corrects a problem that prevented some synopsis information from appearing correctly in some books.
  

7. Improves News Stand

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  Shows revision number in periodical title.
  
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  Shows the Number of New Issues for each periodical.
  
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  Remembers the user's place in a periodical.
  
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  Shows the day of the week in the title.
  
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  Changes the behavior when the user cancels reading. Previously, News Stand opened the navigation tree at the top of the list. Now, it opens the tree at the current location.
  
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  Corrects a bug that prevented proper deletion of old issues.
  

8. Improves Twitter

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  Adds a new tag for template use to show the source of the message.
  
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  Identifies Icon or Braille+ as the source of new messages.
  
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  Adds an option to let the user review the information from a tweet.
  
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  Corrects bugs.
  

9. Corrects a problem that caused some headings in the Help contents to appear incorrectly.
Version 2.0.21, March 2009

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  Improves the Wireless Connection Manager.
  
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  Fixes all known bookshare.org issues.
  
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  Retains one's place in a list of books or authors when the user deletes a book or author from Bookshelf.
  
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  Corrects an issue that made it difficult to navigate backward by page when in continuous reading mode.
  
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  Modifies the behavior of the "Change Level" command so that it announces the current level upon the initial press.
  
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  Restarts the book from the beginning if the user is at the end of the book and she presses the Read command.
  
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  Corrects a problem that caused links in the help document to absorb spaces around the link.
  
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  Adds the number of new issues for each periodical downloaded in Newsstand.
  

Version 2.0.6, February 2009

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  Adds support for refreshable braille displays.
  
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  Setup wizard to guide user through simple connection to display.
  
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  USB, Bluetooth, and serial via USB interface.
  
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  Supports displays from a number of manufacturers.
  
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  Both keyboard and display integration.
  
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  Contracts system and all documents, including e-mail and web pages, to braille.
  
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  Key Learn tells the user the function of the input keys on the display.
  
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  Cursor routing moves the cursor to the display's position.
  
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  Expands word at cursor for editing.
  
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  Hot key turns on or off speech.
  
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  Adds Braille Display Settings to the Utilities menu.
  
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  Adds control to disable all system sounds and speech while braille is in use.
  
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  Indicates attributed text with dot 8 and enhances Word Processor to tell specific attributes with a press of the Status key.
  
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  Improves the braille translation system.
  
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  Flashes the display to indicate system sounds.
  
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  Adds Internet Radio Tuner to the Music Player.
  
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  Presents list of genres.
  
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  Each genre shows list of stations in that genre.
  
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  Creates a Recent Stations list.
  
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  Lets the user add a station to one of 50 presets.
  
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  Move from station to station in any list while playing.
  
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  Adds unzip support for e-mail attachments, File Explorer, and Web Browser.
  
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  Adds support for the Twitter micro blogging environment.
  
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  Updates bookshare.org support to work with the new Bookshare format.
  
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  Adds search by days added to the Internet Book Search.
  
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  Displays author's name in search results.
  
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  Improves background processing, so it is easy to continue browsing while files transfer.
  
• 
  Updates the synchronization utility.
  
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  Includes time zone appointments in Outlook 2007.
  
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  Adds additional fields to synchronize.
  
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  Respects the four states of the busy indicator for appointments.
  
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  Adds the Importance attribute to synchronized appointments.
  
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  Updates the address book.
  
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  New user interface.
  
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  Adds additional fields found in Outlook.
  
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  Adds tabs to categorize types of information.
  
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  Improves managing multiple e-mail addresses for a contact.
  
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  Replaces Planner with a new Calendar application.
  
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  Adds fields from contacts in Outlook.
  
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  Adds templates to customize layout for braille or speech.
  
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  Adds a conflict resolution function to handle conflicting appointments.
  
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  Adds many functions to Calculator.
  
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  Adds variables and a variable viewer.
  
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  Adds user Functions.
  
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  Adds a Function list.
  
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  Adds a function editor that lets the user create their own functions.
  
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  Adds Advanced mode where the user may edit input.
  
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  Adds a history buffer in Advanced mode.
  
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  Automatically saves variables and functions.
  
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  Adds startup and shutdown functions that get called when the program starts or ends.
  
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  Improves error messages.
  
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  Adds interactive speech rate adjustment while using continuous reading mode.
  
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  Improves Bookshelf.
  
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  Improves editing author information.
  
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  Supports dropping Bookshare .bks or .zip files into the Bookshelf's import folder so it automatically unpacks and stores the contained books ready for use when you start Bookshelf.
  
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  Improves RSS
  
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  Adds default settings to RSS.
  
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  Lets you delete articles from the RSS article list.
  
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  Adds templates to define how article titles and status get presented.
  
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  Adds a template editor and templates that let you customize many aspects of how information is presented in various areas throughout the system.
  
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  Adds Minor Enhancements and Corrects several bugs Announces the fact that the key lock switch is on when rebooting.
  
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  Corrects several Key Learn descriptions.
  
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  Adds multi-key braille letter descriptions to Key Learn.
  
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  Adds "Move to Bottom of Document" command in Web Browser (hold Down Arrow).
  
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  Lets you toggle on and off the Bluetooth radio by pressing Select on the Bluetooth item in the Status menu.
  
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  Lets you add a song to a playlist, even if that song is not in the music library.
  
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  Corrects the problem where e-mail message counts did not get updated when returning to the folder list.
  
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  Adds the automatic backup file into the list of restorable backups when updating the firmware.
  

Work planned for FY 2010

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  Add printing capabilities.
  
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  Add the ability to view the student's work on a display.
  
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  Continue improving performance and features.
  
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  Design hardware that includes a refreshable braille display.
  
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  Add GPS and navigation capabilities.
  
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  Streamline and expand browser capabilities to take advantage of Web 2.0 features.
  
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  Redesign the hardware to make it easier to manufacture, test, and increase reliability.