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Blind, Braille and Embossing Technologies

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Setting Up Braille for Display

To ensure that the braille content shown on the display is perfectly identical to what is printed on paper, Biblos uses a centralized system for braille management and transcription. This system integrates with major screen readers, particularly JAWS and NVDA, ensuring consistency between on-screen display, braille output, and printing.

When using JAWS, integration is achieved through specific scripts. The standard procedure includes:

From the program's Help menu, select the "Install scripts..." option to begin installing the scripts required for integration with JAWS.

For JAWS versions prior to 2022, manual configuration is necessary: in the screen reader's braille settings, select the "BiblosUnicode" table, specifically designed for compatibility with Biblos. The "BiblosUnicode" table is based on the EuropeanBraille encoding. In different language settings or non-European environments, the braille representation may not display correctly. In such cases, the braille table used by JAWS must support Unicode braille character encoding. The correct Unicode pattern can be retrieved directly from the "BiblosUnicode" table and, if needed, integrated into a custom configuration.

NVDA also supports direct integration through a dedicated add-on:

From the Help menu, select the "Install scripts..." option to install the NVDA-specific add-on.

Once installation is complete, NVDA is enabled to communicate with Biblos and manage braille content consistently.

Control over the behavior of the braille display is managed via the settings available directly in Biblos (menu: Tools > Braille > Braille Display…). The main options include:

- Braille output: This setting defines how Biblos sends braille content to the screen reader. You can choose to delegate translation to the screen reader itself or use one of the braille groups or tables managed by Biblos. Selecting a custom group or table allows for advanced control over the braille text representation. Also, this setting is necessary for Biblos to display the translated text in real time on the Braille Bar.

- Show text formatting: When enabled, this option displays structural elements of the document, such as indents, alignments, and spacing between characters.

- Show table coordinates: While navigating inside tables, the coordinates of the current cell are shown to better understand the position within the document.

- Show special markers: When this option is activated, the braille display will show representative symbols for special elements in the document, such as tabs, bookmarks, page breaks, and math lines.

Through these settings, Biblos is able to directly manage the flow of braille content to the display, preventing the screen reader from applying independent interpretations or reformatting. This ensures an exact match between what is read on the braille display and what will be produced in print.