Braille embossers can be expensive investments; however, it is good to know that there is a team out there helping you get the most out of this category of Assistive Technology. Donald Breda, Tech Support Specialist for Duxbury Systems, reminisces about older embossers and what it takes to keep them going in the Windows 10 era. He also outlines changes coming to 12.3 of DBT. To read more about 12.3, and purchase your copy from their new online store, travel to the Duxbury Systems website.
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Transcript
We strive to provide an accurate transcription, though errors may occur.
Hide transcriptTranscribed by Grecia Ramirez
Direct from St. Louis, it’s blindbargains.com coverage of ACB 2018, brought to you by Google
Our friends at Google are working hard to create great technology products for everyone. They’re inviting you to participate in Google user research studies, where you can help shape the future of accessible products and features and get rewarded for it. Check out our tweet for the sign-up link, at blind bargains, or head to google.com slash user research.
Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.
J.J. MEDDAUGH: ACB 2018, St. Louis. Here with Donald Breda, tech support specialist for Duxbury. Hey. There's a new version of Duxbury, 12.3?
DONALD BREDA: 3. Uh-huh.
JM: I want to make sure I got all the numbers right. Hey, Donald. Welcome to the podcast.
DB: High. Thanks a lot, J.J. I really appreciate you asking us to be on the podcast.
JM: Not a problem. So what is new in 12.3?
DB: Well, first of all, in 12.3, we added support for two embossers that were recently introduced to the market by IRIE-A.T. called the TrackSheet 120 and the –
BACKGROUND: BrailleTrack.
DB: -- BrailleTrack 120. That’s right. And those are brand new embossers on the market. We’ve already added the support for those in 12.3. We’ve made a lot of improvements for math. We now support math type version 7. We always work on our law text importers and make improvements in every version, and 12.3 is no exception.
JM: Uh-huh.
DB: We’ve done a lot of work on French mathematics in UEB.
JM: Neat.
DB: So now, we support the French math in UEB quite well.
JM: Uh-huh.
DB: We’ve made fixes in a lot of the foreign languages. We’ve made some significant fixes in our support of Russian and some various Indian languages. There’s quite a bit under the hood, and – oh. One of the other things too, is something that sounds really easy but is very difficult to do, we worked out support for handling the date formats in an Excel spreadsheet, because it’s far from easy to handle those things properly.
JM: Yeah. You would think it’s just numbers, but it really kind of comes into play --
DB: But there’s a lot more than that.
JM: Sure. And then –
DB: Yeah.
JM: -- does it depend on the language too? Everybody wants those a little bit differently, or –
DB: That too, but also the way they’re put in the file is not how you’d think it is. So to actually get the real information is tricky, and so we’ve got that working now, we think quite well. And that’s really a rough summary. There’s more under the hood.
Oh. One of the other things too is we’ve tried to decrease the time it takes Duxbury to load initially. So it loads quite a bit faster than prior versions when you –
JM: Oh good.
DB: -- you know, when you run it. And I would say that’s the major things.
JM: Now, this is the Windows version. Are you updating the Mac version as well, or how is that working?
DB: Yes. The Mac version is updated as well. And --
JM: Are they in parody with each other now?
DB: Yes. Yes.
JM: So when one gets an update, the other one goes --
DB: Yeah. We try to keep it that way now. We’ve got the framework set up now so that we, you know, we build both versions all the time.
JM: One of the other things that kind of just, you know, dealing with the upgrade itself, but you’ve simplified the process for getting an upgrade as well?
DB: Yes. You can now buy your updates online. And everything is immediate, and you can also buy it as a new customer online. So we’ve finally really come into the century with full online shopping for Duxbury. So go to WWW.duxburysystems.com.
JM: Well, there –
DB: And there, you can purchase our software.
JM: Well, there you go. You saved me a question. And, you know, there you go. Of course, Duxbury, still supporting every browser – or no. Every embosser back to nineteen seventy-something.
DB: Absolutely. Absolutely. People ask us all the time, can I run my old telesensory single-sided VersaPoint or my Braille Blazer and this, that, and the other thing. Absolutely. And if you need help getting it going under Windows 10, that’s what I’m here for.
JM: And a lot of times, it’s just the cable; right?
DB: I’m your tech support guy.
JM: -- you know, a parallel to a certain type of –
DB: You need at least a USB to parallel converter.
JM: Which are not all created equal?
DB: No, they’re not. And then, you’ve got to install a printer driver and point it to the right USB port and then tell Duxbury to look at the printer driver. And I’m happy to walk you through all that on the phone.
JM: Because it’s a little long to explain during a --
DB: It is. Yeah.
JM: But it’s cool. Especially a braille embosser, you know, a several thousand-dollar piece of equipment, it’s good that you’re able to support ones that are –
DB: Absolutely.
JM: -- ten, twenty –
DB: We’ve tried to –
JM: -- years old or more.
DB: We pride ourselves on our tech support, which is free. And –
JM: The price, six ninety-five now; right?
DB: Yeah. Six ninety-five for – as a new customer. Yes.
JM: And of course, upgrades, it just depends on –
DB: Yeah. Upgrades, the one-year. After the one-year, it’s two forty-five, and it goes up from there. The highest you can pay after four years of not updating is four forty-five, and we do not charge by the version. So if the version, when you update, is ten versions ahead or two versions ahead, it doesn’t matter. You just pay your update price. We’re not looking to gouge anybody, we just have to have a compromised way to keep, you know, keep the roof over our head –
JM: Right.
DB: -- and keep the customers happy.
JM: Great. Hey, thank you so much, Donald. We really appreciate it.
DB: Thank you very much for asking me, J.J. I really appreciate it.
JM: And that website one more time, Donald?
DB: WWW.duxburysystems, that’s D-u-x-b-u-r-y, systems.com.
JM: Thank you so much, Donald, for coming on.
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Joe Steinkamp is no stranger to the world of technology, having been a user of video magnification and blindness related electronic devices since 1979. Joe has worked in radio, retail management and Vocational Rehabilitation for blind and low vision individuals in Texas. He has been writing about the A.T. Industry for 15 years and podcasting about it for almost a decade.
