
TalkBack: A new keyboard for typing braille on Android - ChrisArchitect
https://blog.google/products/android/braille-keyboard
======
miki123211
I'm a blind person and have used this feature on iPhone for years. It's just
so, so much faster than anything else out there. Not as fast as a physical
qwerty, but close. For people living in the U.S. who have learned english
grade 2 braille (basically characters that let you type common combinations of
letters quickly), it's probably even faster. Using the touch-based qwerty with
a screenreader is doable, but very, very slow. To explain some of your
concerns, yes, it reads aloud the letters you type, and reads whole words
after a space. You have some basic editing gestures, like delete character or
delete word. If you need more, you go out of the braille screen input mode,
edit and then go back, that's jhow it works on iOS, at least.

btw. This feature wasn't invented by Apple. The first app that had this was
called M Braille, and it was pretty expensive. It was rather inefficient, as
you had to tpype the text in the app, copy it out and paste, as iOS didn't
have external keyboard support back then. People still preferred that over
using the qwerty though. Then, when iOS8 became a thing, M Braille was
essentially sherlocked, as the feature had became part of iOS itself, and it
was so much easier to use.

------
DenisM
What other innovative keyboards are out there? And what _should_ be out there
but isn't?

I, for one, have a particular interest in a keyboard that leaves the largest
possible viewing area on the iPhone - to help with typing essays. Ideally a
hardware keyboard, sidekick-style, but I'll take anything at this point.

Other ideas?

~~~
flanbiscuit
I miss my Android G1's keyboard. I would still much prefer a hardware keyboard
than a touch one but I think those will never come back on mainstream phones

~~~
renke1
The G1 really was a great device. I would love to see a reboot with modern
hardware.

------
ctoth
The iPhone implementation works quite well[0] The one piece that I thought was
concerning was apparently talkback gestures do not work when the Braille
keyboard is enabled, so how do you use it as part of your standard interaction
paradigm while reading with the screen reader and then typing, for instance in
a message conversation?

[0] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210066](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT210066)

------
dgrin91
As far as I can tell, there is still no way to 'read back' the content using
this system. Does it really provider much value if I cant check what I just
typed?

~~~
ewidar
I've never used braille but the situation I was envisioning was a blind person
on the tube, receiving a message, they can listen to it with earphones plugged
in, but may not want to speak the response out loud.

In this case they would type the message using this keyboard, and could have
it read back out loud to check it.

~~~
ficklepickle
How can they use it if they can't see it and there is no tactile feedback? Do
they just have to memorize where to put their fingers?

~~~
thanksforfish
The 6 touch areas look like they are be pretty big, which aids touch typing.
The phone could certainly vibrate on touch to give some tactile feedback.

~~~
CydeWeys
It could also read back to you each letter after it's inputted for
confirmation.

I know a blind guy at work and he is almost entirely using text-to-speech to
drive his cell phone and computer. When you overhear it, it's just lots of
menu options and webpage text being read off super quickly at 200+% speed.

------
vlunkr
I'd be interested to hear what real users would think of this, but it looks
like a really clever hack to me.

------
reanimus
I imagine this'll be a godsend for visually-impaired people in technical
fields especially. Lord knows dictation is woefully insufficient whenever
you're talking with less common words...

------
rozab
Has anyone ever used this sort of keyboard? I had a concept in mind for a
glove based input system that would use chorded gestures like this and I was
wondering how intuitive it would be.

