Communication Technology for Persons Who Are Deafblind

Chapters:

1. Introduction
2. Braille: The Foundation of Deafblind Communication
3. The Tele-Touch
4. The Tele-braille
5. The Deafblind Communicator
6. Accessing the Internet
7. Future Advances in Accessibility Technology

CHAPTER 1: Introduction

BERRIER: There are a lot of people categorized as deafblind through various definitions that still have some useable hearing and some useable sight, or one or the other. But for someone who is totally deaf and blind, the primary means of communicating have to do with touch.

They either use Braille, or they use some other system such as tactile sign language, where they're actually in physical contact with the person they're communicating with.

So the communication barriers for people who are deafblind are many, and they're difficult challenges to deal with. But thanks to technology, we've come a long way to leveling that playing field, if I can use an overused phrase like that.

Simple things like wanting to know how to spell something. I can go online and find it. If I want to look up directions to go to a place, I can easily go online and find those.

Those things were virtually unavailable to me until the advent of the Internet. So that's part of why I am passionate about technology and I embrace it in my personal life and also in my work life.

 

CHAPTER 2: Braille: The Foundation of Deafblind Communication

BERRIER: I can say without any hesitation that Braille is one of the most wonderful skills, one of the most useful skills, I've ever learned. I learned it when I was six years old in first grade.

People talk about how difficult Braille is to learn. But for a first grader, it's a snap. It is not difficult. It's like sighted children learning to read and write with a pencil or a pen. It's not difficult, because they're at that stage of their life when learning things like that is easy.

So I... by the time I was in fourth grade, as were most of my classmates, we were... I was an expert at it. I was a good Braille reader, and have used it ever since. When I first learned it, I learned on a Perkins Braille writer.

NARRATOR: In the upcoming video clip, Jerry Berrier is shown loading a sheet of paper into a next generation Perkins Brailler. He then narrates his actions.

BERRIER: The Perkins Brailler is something that I don't use as often anymore as I used to, either, because I have... I'm fortunate enough to have access to a Braille embosser. So when I want to write something lengthy, I type it on the computer, and then use software to convert it into Braille and send it to an embosser.

But this is a wonderful device. I'll just type a little bit on it.

I just typed, "My name is Jerry Berrier," and I didn't make any mistakes.

It's very labor intensive, because you're pressing combinations of keys rather than one key at a time. And that's how Braille is written.

Each combination of keys creates a pattern of dots within the six dot rectangle that's the Braille cell.

And it takes a lot of work. It's very labor intensive, I think. Also very noisy. And the Braille writer has not changed a great deal in about 60 years, although recently Perkins has come out with a couple of new models that have added some adaptations to it.

NARRATOR: We see a Perkins Smart Brailler being demonstrated. The Smart Brailler has a digital screen, and also voice feedback.

BERRIER: But the Perkins Braille Writer is what I learned on. After I learned on that, by the time I was in third grade, I began using a device called a slate and stylus, which is a little handheld device.

NARRATOR: In the video clip that follows, Jerry Berrier is shown using a slate and stylus. The slate is a metal frame with rows of cells that allow the user to write Braille script manually by using the stylus to create impressions on a sheet of paper.

BERRIER: The slate and stylus is the original Braille writing device. And it consists basically of what you might call a frame that's hinged at one end.

It's got the Braille cells on one side, and it's got little rectangular holes on the other side.

So you put the paper in, and then you fold it together, and then I'll just close it.

And then I start from the right.

And you never Braille on the very first line on the page, because it would be too close to the top of the paper.

But I just start, and I do one dot at a time.

Capital J, ER sign, R, Y, and then I skip one for a space, and then capital B, ER sign, R, I, E, R.

And I said writing on a Braille writer was labor intensive, but that was nothing compared to writing with a slate and stylus.

So now that I've written it from right to left, I have to take the paper out and flip it over, and I can read it from left to right.

And it's very good Braille. The dots are sticking up very well, and I can read everything I wrote there.

And I wrote, "Jerry Berrier," and then I wrote, "This is a big test" below that.

 

CHAPTER 3: The Tele-Touch

NARRATOR: In the upcoming clip, Jerry Berrier describes and demonstrates the tele-touch. In appearance, the front side looks much like a compact typewriter keyboard. The back side has an indentation upon which a circular cutout houses a single Braille cell.

BERRIER: This is a tele-touch. This is an old fashioned device that was used before... before electricity was even popular. It's strictly a mechanical device. It has no electronics in it. And it consists of this keyboard here, and on the other side of it... I'm just going to turn it around.

On the other side of it is a single little Braille cell. So if you were sitting across from a deafblind person, and you typed a letter, say you held down a letter, that person would read it one letter at a time.

So this is the Braille cell here. And as I'm pressing letters one at a time, I can feel them popping up.

This is a very slow means of communication, but also a very useful one. It really worked. So if you were sitting across from me, and I were deafblind, you would type on this keyboard one letter at a time, and I would read what you were typing one letter at a time with the Braille display.

Then the question becomes, how does that person then communicate back to you? So there's still a communication issue, unless that person is able to speak.

As I mentioned, some folks who are deafblind, depending on when they lost their hearing and other factors, they may be able to speak, and speak quite well. So for someone like that, this was an especially useful device.

 

CHAPTER 4: The Tele-Braille

BERRIER: Up until very recently, if a deafblind person wanted to make a phone call to order a pizza or make a doctor's appointment, or chat with a friend, they would use a TTY device such as... there was one called the Tele-Braille that was produced for quite a number of years, up until 1992.

It was by far the most commonly used one up until probably less than ten years ago. So the deafblind person would make the call using the keyboard on that device, would call through a service called Relay.

Relay is a free service that is available in all 50 states. In most if not all states you access it by simply dialing 711.

You can call it with a TTY to communicate with voice callers, or a voice caller can call it on the phone to communicate with a TTY user.

NARRATOR: Displayed on the table are the components of a Tele-Braille device. The first component which will be referred to is made up of a small keyboard with a digital display that can show what is being typed. On top are couplings for a telephone handset.

The other component consists of a Braille keyboard and a refreshable Braille display.

BERRIER: In its day it was a wonderfully useful device. It had batteries in it. This part of it was a standard... well, I should say a modified TTY device used by people who are deaf but sighted.

It was used in conjunction with this, which is commonly known as a Braille box. It has a refreshable Braille display on it. It has a Braille keyboard.

So the deafblind person could plug this into a phone line or put the telephone handset down on this... what's known as an acoustic coupler, and then make TTY calls, read them with the Braille display, and type either on the Braille keyboard, or if they prefer to type on the regular keyboard, they could do that, too. So it was wonderfully useful in that regard.

But it also could be used as a face-to-face communication device. You could sit across the table from a sighted person, hopefully who knew how to type, and they would type on the TTY, you would read it on the Braille display, you would type on the Braille keyboard, they would read it on the visual display.

 

CHAPTER 5: The Deafblind Communicator

BERRIER: The Deafblind Communicator is one of the devices that I teach. It's one of several high-tech, multipurpose devices that's on the market today that have really opened doors of communication for someone who's deafblind.

The Deafblind Communicator was designed over a period of years, oh, back probably almost ten years ago now. So it's almost... I don't want to say obsolete, but it is based on some technology that has changed a little bit already, because as you know, computer technology changes very rapidly.

But it is a device with... it's an electronic device with a Braille keyboard and a Braille... refreshable Braille display, which means that you can read the display, which typically has either 18 characters on it or 32.

You read it, then you advance it and read it again, and you keep doing that until you've read through whatever is on it.

NARRATOR: In a photograph, we see a conversation taking place between a person who is deafblind and a sighted person, made possible by the use of a Deafblind Communicator and a smartphone equipped with a QWERTY keyboard, the appropriate software, and Bluetooth capability.

The Deafblind Communicator has Braille keys and a refreshable Braille display. The Brailler keystrokes are transmitted to the smartphone, where they are displayed as text.

Text entered into the smartphone is displayed as refreshable Braille on the Communicator.

BERRIER: It has a phone line connector on the back. It also has a connector that will accept an external wireless card. It can be connected with an Ethernet computer cable. So it can be used for email, it can be used for face-to-face communication by using a small... sort of a PDA-type device with it that has a visual display on it.

So a sighted person could type on that, and then the deafblind person would read what they type and write back to them from the Braille keyboard, and it automatically converts the grade two Braille that's being written by the deafblind person into text that a sighted person can either read or can see on a display.

So it can do email, it can do instant messaging, it can do TTY calls, TTY being the type of communication over the phone line that's been done by people who are deaf since way back in the '60s, if not longer than that. So it does a wide variety of things. And it is used by quite a number of deafblind people.

But in order to use that kind of device, you have to have good Braille skills, which, of course, not all folks who are blind or deafblind do. I think the statistic nowadays says that between ten and 15% of people who are blind are fluent in Braille. And most of those are people who have been blind from birth, people like me.

Among deafblind folks, Braille is critically important, so probably a higher percentage of them use Braille, but certainly not everyone. So you have to have good Braille skills. You also have to have the ability to learn and be comfortable with technology, because it's a device that... it can malfunction, you can accidentally get off into the wrong menu and be in the word processor when you really meant to be in the email program.

There are lots of things that can happen. So you have to have the ability to operate a high-tech device and be able to control it and troubleshoot when things go wrong. But it is a... it's a wonderfully useful device for those who can use it.

 

CHAPTER 6: Accessing the Internet

BERRIER: The Internet is very accessible to a certain extent. It is... it has certainly opened doors.

A deafblind person can go on a website if that website has been well designed according to current accessibility standards.

If it uses alternate text tags where there are images that need to be labeled, if it labels other graphical things on the website, if it is... if it doesn't overuse some of the technology that is out there that doesn't necessarily work well with a Braille display, or with the devices used by deafblind people, then it can work well.

A deafblind person can go on the Internet, order something from a store. They can go on and do Google searches or Yahoo! searches, or use any of those other search engines that we've all become so accustomed to. They can use them well.

But as I always tell people when I start teaching them how to use computer equipment and the Internet, the virtue that is most required by a deafblind person or a blind person who's going to go out there on the Internet, the virtue that's needed most is patience.

Because I will never be as fast operating a computer on the Internet as a person who can look at it. That's just the way it is.

One interesting thing about iDevices is that since 2006, all Mac computers that have been developed have come with a standard screen reader built into them, which is what they call the audio device that gives you output from a computer.

So that's built in to all the Apple computers. Most people are not even aware of it because they don't need to be. But by simply giving a couple of commands to the computer, you can turn that feature on, and a blind person can begin to use it.

The iDevices — the iPhone and the iPad — have both screen magnification built into them, and also the potential for speech output through a product called Voiceover, which is a module that's built right into the iPhone and the iPad, and even the iPod touch, which makes them very accessible devices for a person who is blind.

NARRATOR: Apple's Voiceover is demonstrated onscreen.

VOICEOVER PROGRAM: Welcome to Voiceover.

Voiceover speaks descriptions of items on the screen, and can be used to control the computer using only your keyboard.

VOICEOVER READER: Voiceover on Safari window, Perkins School for the Blind.

HTML content has keyboard focus. Interact with HTML content having level two accessibility navigation.

Heading level two main navigation.

List nine items.

Visiting link Inside Perkins School.

Link, community programs. Visiting link Inside Perkins School. Press.

Visiting link Inside Perkins School.

Heading level one Inside Perkins School. A teacher leans over a student taking notes on his Braille note taker, image.

BERRIER: More and more, though, people are beginning to use combinations of iDevices, such as the iPhone and the iPad. They pair those up with a refreshable Braille display that has a keyboard on it, and they're able to type on the Braille keyboard, use the phone for its ability to communicate with the Internet, and they can send and receive emails, do instant messaging, texting, all those things.

Email is pretty straightforward. For the most part it's text, although nowadays a lot of email is done in HTML, which can be a little more cumbersome for a blind or a deafblind person.

But email is certainly used by a lot of people with multiple disabilities, and used well. Instant messaging depends on the product you're using. Some of them work pretty well. Some of them don't.

I would say something I find difficult is to go on to a website where they have live chat. If you have a question for your store merchant you can go on a live chat window. That can be difficult.

Any of the Web based products such as webmail, web chat, those things tend to be more difficult because I don't always know that the person has typed something until I actually find my way to that window where they've typed it and checked there to see if there's something there.

Whereas with the desktop or the application-based chat programs, some of them actually just work flawlessly. Some of them will... if I type something, I type it, I hit the send button, it goes. When the person starts typing back to me, I as a hearing blind person actually hear a typing sound in the background, so I know that they're typing. And when they're finished and they send it, it actually speaks it to me.

For a deafblind person, with some technology, one of the Braille cells, typically all the way at the right end of the display, will bounce up and down the entire time the person is typing to you, so that you know that that person is saying something. When it stops bouncing, you know it's time to start reading. And the you can start to type back to them.

So there are things that work better than others. Typically desktop applications, though, work better than Web-based ones.

 

CHAPTER 7: Future Advances in Accessibility Technology

BERRIER: Today I have audio recording devices that make excellent recordings digitally. I have Braille input devices that I can take notes as fast or faster than you could ever write them with a pen, and do it quietly and concisely and reliably. So things have changed a lot.

The world has really been opened to us by technology.

I think one of the dreams that a lot of us who are blind or deafblind share is the dream of someday having a device that can communicate with the Internet, has speech output, and has a Braille display attached to it that is small but versatile, and not too expensive.

We are definitely headed in that direction. There are a number of ventures underway right now where folks are trying to produce a less expensive Braille display. Nobody has accomplished it yet, but I think we're headed there.