Introduction
Welcome to this article on reading books on your braille display! This article will give you a quick rundown on where you can get books and download them to your braille display, and then we will dive into reading. One thing to keep a note on here, the Mantis will only support text only books, while the other 3 displays will support Audio. As of this article, Brrailliant is ready to play audiobooks, but the feature has not been enabled. The Chameleon is ready to play audiobooks, and you can even download audiobooks to read! Now that we got the disclaimers out of the way, let’s get started!
Downloading Books
The first thing to keep in mind, is your displays have support for only a select few libraries for the blind, with more coming soon from other countries. For now, the libraries supported are Bookshare, The National Library Service and NFB Newsline. You must have an account fully set up with these services in order to get any of the books available through these places. Bookshare requires a paid subscription, while the other two services require minimal information for you to get started. Bookshare and NLS will require proof of disability, and once approved, you should get instructions on how to create an online account to get started. Once you find the library service you want, select it from the “Online Services” menu of your braille display. The two libraries of Bookshare and NLS have the EXACT same layout when you open them. You can search books by different categories, or type in your search terms. For instance, if you know the name of your book, type it into this field. Otherwise, you can sort books by different genres. When you find the book you are looking for, press “Enter” on it, and read the book info by using the navigation methods we introduced at the very beginning. Find “Download” if you want to obtain the book you’ve picked. If using Bookshare, when you first log in, you will be asked what format you want to download your books from here. Let’s give a basic explanation of the two formats you can choose from.
Daisy Format
This format of books can best be described as a mainstream style layout book. For instance, the sections are marked properly for you to navvigate by, such as chapters, subsections, etcetera. The major chapters are navigated on level 1, then subsections are accessed through navigation level 2, and it goes all the way up to level 6. These books, apart from havving text, can also use audio at the same time, giving you the option to pick from reading in braille, using the built-in voice, or if the human narrated audio voice sounds much better, you can use that.
Braille Files (BRF)
These are the VERY basic. There is no navigation by heading in this kind of book. Picture a huge braille book, but digital. You can only use braille, and most of the time, the braille display will only let you read in the grade specified by the file. For instance, if I had uncontractted braille on the braille display as my preferred reading system, and the BRF file is in contracted, the contracted would take the priority. It is always the user’s choice which format they wish to read.
NFB Newsline
There is a difference when using this service, since it reads newspapers more than books. This service downloads publications in the DAISY format. In this app, you have the ability to subscribe to new publications, configure your account, and sync your content on demand. We’ll take a look at each option below.
Configuring Account
Once you log into the service, your device will sync your content over such as your subscriptions. Once done, under “configure Account,” you will find the first option being “Remove Account.” This option is self-explanatory. If you know you don’t intend to read newspapers for a while, just use this option to remove said account. The next option is “Update Frequency.” In here, you have the options “Daily, Always, and Manually.” Use this option to keep your subscriptions up to date, or if you want to do it by yourself, choose “Manually.” Keep in mind, the automatic updates will happen only if you are connected to Wi-Fi. Third option you will find under this menu is “Keep Outdated Issues.” In here, you can basically tell your display to delete any issues that are older without your input. Keep this option off if you want to do this yourself.
Managing Publications
In this LARGE menu, you can either find a category or select “All publications.” Sadly there is no search feature here. Once you find the category or state you are looking for, you are presented with all the newspapers available for said state. You can also find magazines under its respective category. When you find a publication you want, you can press “Enter” to subscribe or unsubscribe from each publication. You will know you are already subscribed when your braille display underlines the name of the publication. There is no underlined character if you are not subscribed, which is a good indication. Once you are finished, you can close out of the app, by pressing “Home.”
Reading Books
Now that we downloaded all these books, let’s read them! You can read said books by using your library app. The Brailliant models call this app “Victor Reader,” while Chameleon and Brailliant call it “Library.” They all perform the exact same thing, only the name is different. Remember, Only the braille keyboard models support audio. When you open the library, you are presented with the menu that has “Book list, Recently Opened, and Search.” The “Recently Opened” option remembers your last five books you read. Both lists are navigable the EXACT same way we discussed previously. Refer to the introductory article for more information. You can always search for a book if you know what you are looking for using the “Search” feature. In the book list, you can use the copy, move, and delete commands from the file manager article to move things over to flash drives, or delete books you do not plan to read anymore.
Book Navigation
Now let’s get to the good stuff! Let’s navigate through the book you downloaded. The best way to start off with is to prress a “T Chord (Control+T)” when in a book. You will be presented with a list of navigation elements. This can change, depending on the book. For example, you can have levels 1 through 6, then sentences and paragraphs, followed by bookmarks.” Regardless, Press “Enter” on the option you want, and use the “Next” and “Previous” thumb keys to move forward or back by the level you picked. Alternatively, if you feel brave, you can use shortcuts to move to the next or previous navigation element. To move forward in the list from anywhere within the book press “Backspace+Dot 6 (Control+FN+down Arrow.”) To move back to the previous element, press “Backspace+Dot 3 (Control+FN+Up Arrow.”) From here, use the same thumb keys to move through the book.
Go-to
You can also jump to certain parts of a book such as pages, headings, or percentage. To do this, press “Enter+G (Control+G)”. Select the option you want to use, and when you hit “Enter,” type in a number. For instance, You can go to page 20 on a textbook, so you’d use the “Page” option.
Bookmarks
The nice thing about these library applications is you can put a bookmark in certain places of a book. Of course, you don’t need to put a bookmark at a stopping point, since the display remembers where you are. You label these bookmarks using numbers, or if you leave the insert field blank, the braille display will assign the next available bookmark number. You can find all these options under the “Bookmark Menu” by pressing “Enter+M (Alt+m). The options you have are accessible using keyboard shortcuts. The list below shows you what you can do using shortcut keys, but if you forget, this menu tells you what to press.
- insert bookmark: Enter+B (Control+B)”
- jump to bookmark: “Enter+j (Control+j”
- show highlight bookmarks: “Enter+h (Control+H
Highlight Bookmarks
In the bookmark menu, you also have the ability to do highlight bookmarks. Basically, you set your cursor to the start of the passage you want to select. When you find the end, go back to the bookmark menu and find “Highlight Bookmark End.” You can then recall that bookmark by pressing the command for highlight bookmark list.
Removing Bookmarks
You can also remove bookmarks from this menu. There is no shortcut to do this. However, if you want to remove all your bookmarks, go to “Insert Bookmark” and type in the number, “99999.” You should then have all bookmarks gone from the book.
Easter Egg
Did you know that this same bookmark menu is in the editors? Yes, you can do the EXACT same functionality as the book application when editing documents. All the keystrokes for bookmarks apply to the editors as well.
Scrolling and Reading
If you want to continuously read books without having to prress any keys, you can do it in a couple of ways. If you are reading an audio book, prress a “G Chord,” and the display will begin reading. You can rewind and fast-forward through the book while reading by holding either “Next or Previous,” depending where you wish to go. The longer you hold one of these, the longer the time jump will be. You can also speed up and slow down the narrator by pressing “Enter+Dot 2” to slow down, and “enter+Dot 6” to speed them up. When you get to normal speed, the device will beep to tell you that you are right in the normal middle setting. It will make a clicking sound if you reach the slowest or fastest speed as well.
Braille Scrolling
If you wish to read using braille, you can also scroll your braille display, and you will not need to use the thumb keys each time. To begin the scrolling process, press “Enter+dots 1-2-4-5-6 (Alt+g.)” Use the same commands for audio speed control to change the scrolling speed as well. On Mantis, use “Control+Equals” to speed up the scroll rate and “Control+hyphen” to slow down the speed.
Aditional Navigation.
You can find text by pressing “Space+f (Control+F.”) You can find the next and previous instances of the text you wrote by pressing an “N Chord (F3″ or a P Chord (Control+F3”) respectively. If you downloaded a book onto a Mantis in BRF format, before you find any word, you must switch to braille keyboard layout by pressing “F12.” From here, type like you normally would in braille, using contracted braille. You can switch back once you find the word by pressing the “F12” key again. If you want to know where you are in a book, you can press a “WH Chord (Control+W.”) To get information about a book, press an “I Chord (Control+I.”) You can move to the beginning or end of the book by pressing an “L Chord (Control+FN+Left arrow”) and a “4-5-6 Chord (Control+FN+End”) respectively. If you want to read another book from anywhere, press a “B Chord (Control+Shift+B”) to open the book list again to choose another book.
conclusion
We hope you have enjoyed this article on downloading and reading books! I know this may be too much information, but just take it a couple headings at a time. This is a great way if you don’t wish to drain your phone’s battery, you can use your braille display to also read books on the go. For now, happy reading!