BRLTTY - Access software for Unix for a blind person using a soft Braille terminal Version 2.1, March 1999 Copyright (C) 1995-1999 by The BRLTTY Team, All rights reserved. Nicolas Pitre Stéphane Doyon Nikhil Nair (and others) Home Page: http://www.cam.org/~nico/brltty If you have any interest in BRLTTY, please drop us a note. We are interested in knowing who BRLTTY users are and how many there are. Even if all goes well and you have no problems with this package, please let us know you're there and tell us which brand of display you use. If you have problems, we will be happy to help. If you have suggestions, comments or if you wish to contribute, you are welcome! BRLTTY comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, placed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation. Please see the file COPYING for details. This software is maintained by Nicolas Pitre . ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- New in BRLTTY 2.1: - Improved readibility in config menu - Added support for EcoBraille displays - Added support for Alva Delphi - Added support for Alva parallel port communication - Added support for BrailleLite 18 - Work-around for bug in Linux kernel 2.0.35 (beeps wouldn't turn off). INTRODUCTION FOR THOSE NEW TO SOFT BRAILLE ========================================== There are two common ways in which blind people access computers. The first, and more widely known, is synthesized speech, which, while having many advantages (e.g. speed for reading plain text), does have its drawbacks: speech output generally gives little information about formatting, making tables, spreadsheets etc. difficult to use; it can also be difficult to use speech output with particularly technical material containing lots of symbols (though many determined people do use it for such things). The other solution, which attempts to answer some of these problems, is Braille output. A soft (or refreshable) Braille display typically consists of a single row of either 20, 40 or 80 characters, each made up of a matrix of 4X2 (4 down, 2 across) dots. Each dot is individually driven by a separate motor, making the whole assembly extremely expensive. A soft Braille display would connect to a PC by either the serial or parallel port. Software on the PC drives the display, reproducing a rectangle of the screen image (which we will call the window) in Braille. Buttons on the Braille display itself are used to send signals back to the software, instructing it to move the window around the screen, or some other specialised function. With a soft Braille display of 40 or 80 cells, it is quite easy for a blind user to appreciate the format of information on the screen, and even allows the reading and editing of on-line Braille documents (a concept not widely enough utilised). INTRODUCTION TO BRLTTY ====================== While soft Braille displays have been used for some years under MS-DOS, and are even being used under Windows now, it seems that they have not been used on Unix consoles so much. This could well be because blind people have been able to access Unix systems through accessible terminals. With the advent of PC-based Unix systems (such as Linux), the need becomes evident. BRLTTY attempts to fill this gap. It runs as a daemon, possibly started at boot-time, and allows a soft Braille user to access text mode applications directly from the Linux's virtual consoles. Since BRLTTY is written as a daemon, it should allow a user a completely free choice of application and development tools. FEATURES ======== - Full implementation of the standard screen review facilities. - A wide range of additional optional features, including blinking cursor and capital letters, screen freezing for leisurely review, attribute display and attribute underlining to locate highlighted text, hypertext links, etc. - `Intelligent' cursor routing. This allows easy movement of the cursor in text editors etc. without moving the hands from the Braille display. - A cut & paste function. This is particularly useful for copying long filenames, complicated commands etc. - An on-line help facility. - A configuration menu. - Support for multiple Braille codes. - Modular design allows relatively easy addition of drivers for other Braille displays, or even (hopefully) porting to other Unix-like platforms. - Basic speech complement support. CURRENTLY SUPPORTED HARDWARE ============================ BRLTTY requires Linux kernel 1.1.92 or later (for `/dev/vcsa0'). It has been tested on - a variety of PCs: both laptops and desktops; processors from 386SX20 to Pentium with a huge range of memory sizes; most Linux distributions including Debian, Slackware and Red Hat; - a number of Linux kernels, including both 1.2.13 and 2.0.x. - a DEC Alpha: only tested once, under Red Hat Alpha Linux on a noname board kindly lent to the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory by DEC in Reading, England. The following Braille displays are supported (serial communication only for most of them): - Tieman B.V.: CombiBraille 25/45/85; - Alva B.V.: ABT3 and Delphi series, serial and parallel ports; - Telesensory Systems Inc.: PowerBraille 40 / 65/81; Navigator 20/40/80 (latest firmware version only?). - Papenmeier Screen 2D Terminal - EuroBraille family of displays (tested only on ClioBraille 40) - Blazie Engineering's BrailleLite - EcoBraille from La O.N.C.E. If you want another Braille display to be supported, please contact the maintainer. Ability to add more Braille displays does, however, depend on the level of cooperation from the manufacturer in providing programming information. THE BRLTTY TEAM =============== There are currently two active developers: Nicolas Pitre: current maintainer of the BRLTTY project and author of the driver for the Alva series as well as the driver for the Eurobraille family. E-Mail: nico@cam.org Stéphane Doyon: Author of the driver for the TSI displays (Navigator and PowerBraille). Active developper. E-Mail: s.doyon@videotron.ca Nikhil Nair: founder of the BRLTTY project and author of the Tieman B.V. CombiBraille driver. Unreachable??? E-Mail: nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk Any comments and/or criticisms regarding BRLTTY in general should be addressed to all three of the above. In addition, James Bowden , the original coauthor, is now acting in an advisory capacity. LAYOUT OF THE ARCHIVE ===================== BRLTTY is distributed as a single GNU compressed tarfile named brltty-.tar.gz where `' is the version number. When the archive is unpacked, there should be a subdirectory called DOCS: this contains all of the general BRLTTY documentation, including the manual in various formats and the list of frequently asked questions (FAQ). The source files for the main, device-independent core of BRLTTY is in the top-level directory. There is also one subdirectory per Braille device type, containing display-specific source files and documentation (in another README file). Finally, some braille definition tables are available in the BrailleTables subdirectory along with some tools to manipulate them.