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#NFB18 Audio: Lets Go Crazy For GoBraille From Irie-AT


There are few things separating Braille Embossers from their mainstream printer counterparts. In this interview with John Taylor, Product Manager for Irie-AT, Chancy learned about wirelessly embossing from your phone with GoBraille . John then describes the features of the embossers that are supported by this modern day convenience and explains how they also have easy to use tactile controls. To learn more about these embossers, and everything else the company offers visit the Irie-AT
website.

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Transcript

We strive to provide an accurate transcription, though errors may occur.

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Transcribed by Grecia Ramirez

Direct from Orlando, it’s blindbargains.com coverage of NFB 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 Chancey Fleet.
CHANCEY FLEET: I am here with John Taylor, who is the product manager for Irie-AT and is here with a line of products including some new braille embossers.
Hi, John.
John Taylor: Hey. Hey, thanks for having me, Chancey. Appreciate it. Yeah, so we have two new braille embossers from Irie. We have one called the Irie BrailleTrac and one called the Irie BrailleSheet. So we kind of made the name a little self-explanatory. One does cut sheet, one does tractor feed. They’re both 120 characters per second, braille, double-sided, inner point. They both do tactile graphics, and they come with a cool device we called GoBraille, which allows the embosser or turns it into, rather, an AirPrint compatible printer. So it’s like the – one of the very few embossers that you can actually print from almost any app on a smart phone you want to over Wi-Fi. So all you do is connect this to your Wi-Fi network, and then you can go to your, like, say, Notes app on your iPhone, for example, or a Word app like -- something like that. And whatever you have written or typed or whatever notes you have, you simply go to Print, the embosser pops up right there as an AirPrint printer, you send it over, it translates on board, and then boom. It embosses out in braille, so –
CF: And how does that translation happen? Do you set the type of translation that you want there on the device or –
JT: You do, yes. So you can log into the device via like, a little web portal. And you just type in its IP address, which is pretty easy to find. It pops up when you go to Print. It shows the embosser name and the IP address, so it’s easy to find. And then once you do that, you can go in and you have all of the embosser onboard settings. So you can set the page size, you can set the margins, you can set your translation tables, all that kind of stuff right in. And then once you have it set how you like it, you pretty much don’t have to touch it again, and you’re all set to go and just emboss whenever you want, so –
CF: As much fun as it is to tear the, like, tractor feed edges off of the paper, I love sheet feed, and I particularly love being able to make booklets and use paper of different sizes. So what is the paper size and weight range that the sheet-fed one supports?
JT: So it can technically handle both thin and thicker paper. One of the cooler features of this one is it does have adjustable dot height, so you could essentially lower the punch force of the solenoids for thinner type paper. Of course, on that copy kind of paper, your dots aren’t going to hold up for as many reads.
CF: Yeah. Don’t read – don’t put documents into the time capsule from the thin paper.
JT: Exactly, yes. So pretty much a read or two, and you’re done. But it has a pretty broad range, so you can use anywhere from copy paper, if you wanted to, not recommended, but all the way up to, like, the thicker 110, 120-pound braille paper. So it has quite a variety of paper that you can use. You could even emboss on like, the braillables, those, kind of like, transparent braille, like, plasticky labels that you can get.
CF: Oh. Yup. Yup.
JT: You can emboss on those too. So you have quite a variety of media sizes. And then, as far as paper sizes, you could do up to 11 and a half by 11. Length doesn’t matter too much, but up to 11 and a half by 11 wide, so --
CF: Got it. And is there any kind of self-voicing, or is everything handled through this web-based interface now?
JT: So, no. There’s a couple ways you can do it. You could either do it through this little web-based platform if you wanted to. That’s for the remote printing anyway. And then, on the embosser itself, if you want to, you can plug in a power speaker and have it have speech to you, and you can access the menus that way. But there’s only four buttons on it. You don’t really need to use anything on the embosser because if you do have it plugged into a computer, from the computer, you can change every setting on the embosser from the computer without actually having to touch the embosser. So I think for most folks, they might actually prefer using a screen reader and changing the settings through the driver, rather than, you know, plugging the speaker or something like that and going through the menu system. But you could do either or.
CF: And I imagine it does support UEB; right?
JT: It absolutely does. Yup.
CF: Okay. And let me ask you this.
JT: Uh-huh.
CF: Is there tactile graphics software that’s packaged with it or some line that you recommend?
JT: There’s not tactile graphics packaged with it. We are a reseller for a program called TactileView, and we do recommend that particular program just because it has more features than most of the other tactile graphics programs out there.
CF: Yup.
JT: So that’s our recommendation. But you could use other third-party ones with it as well.
CF: Okay. Now talk to me about pricing, please.
JT: Pricing. So we actually got a nice price point. So the BrailleSheet is thirty-eight hundred, and the BrailleTrac is thirty-two.
CF: And what are your support options for, kind of, a warranty going forward?
JT: Usually, they – well, they come with a standard one-year parts and labor warranty. And then, from there, you can buy up to four years of extended warranty at a time, and if you want more than four years – not a lot of people do, but sometimes, if you want more than four years, you can either renew after a few years and add a couple more years, or we can even do a special one for you beyond four years if you want to. So there’s lots of options available for extended warranties as well.
CF: All right, John. Thank you so much.
JT: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
CF: Enjoy your convention.
JT: Thank you. You too.
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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.


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