@emassey0135@caneandable.social
I am a completely blind college student studying computer science. My interests include computers, programming, philosophy, reading, Chess, etc.
Replying to @menelion@dragonscave.space
@menelion Okay, thank you! For the software, what will the editor be like? Is it going to be something like notepad, or a Braille editor with QWERTY Braille entry and contracted Braille editing? What formats will the book reader support, and will it support downloading from libraries like Bookshare? What else beyond standard Windows will the Optima have, besides the Vocalizer voices?
Replying to @emassey0135@caneandable.social
Also the Orbit Flow is really cool. Its a 40 cell display with three buttons on each side, with maybe half an inch of blank metal above it. It has no battery or keyboard and connects with USB C. I could see putting this in front of my keyboard and having a very comfortable setup, a lot better than putting a display with a Perkins keyboard in front of a QWERTY keyboard because the Braille is a lot closer to the keyboard with the Flow. It also has cursor routing keys of course. #NFB26
At their exhibit booth, Orbit Research told me that the Optima should be coming out about a year from now. I asked if they were certain and they said they were pretty confident about it this time. Also the Optima should have twice the battery life of the BrailleNote Evolve (8 to 12 hours). And it will always have the latest processors Framework offers in their mainboards, unlike the BrailleNote Evolve which will be stuck on the Intel Ultra 125U. The Optima will have a custom editor and book reader but I think that was it for the custom applications. Everything else will be standard Windows. All of this is much better than the Evolve in my opinion. They said they are considering a Perkins model but they will release the QWERTY one first before thinking about that. #NFB26
JAWS is getting agentic AI soon. From the demos it was able to take a Word document out of protected mode and pick a date in an inaccessible date picker. It can do multi-step actions too and speaks each step as it does it. If it fails or only partially completes, it speaks a message explaining why. It works both on and off the web. #NFB26
NLS announced that sometime in the future they will add synced reading positions to BARD Mobile and the DA2 and other BARD platforms, so that you can stop a book on one and start it again on another from where you left off. #NFB26