One of my displays is a SuperVario 40 from Baum, purchased in or around 2005, and still working perfectly. The battery has been changed twice, and the cells have been professionally cleaned twice, with no other maintenance needed.
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Jessica Barr <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, May 11, 2025 at 02:22 To: [email protected] <[email protected]>, [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: RE: I am done for now with the Mac. I tested several Orbit Readers for my braille and talking book library and had very bad luck with them. After only a few months on average, one or more of the cells had dot(s) that stuck up or down and had to be repaired. One unit only lasted a few weeks before this happened, and the one I had the longest lasted about eight months. I love the braille on these displays when they're in good working condition; I just wish they were more durable. I know some people have had good luck with Orbit Research products, but I also know I'm not the only one who has had problems like what I just described. Jessica ----- Original Message ----- From: 'Sabahattin Gucukoglu' via MacVisionaries <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, May 10, 2025 08:41 PM To: via MacVisionaries <[email protected]> Subject: Re: I am done for now with the Mac. You're not wrong, honestly. Braille on macOS has always seemed to be vestigial, at best, in a way that even iOS Braille isn't. It's just tech debt, I fear, that keeps VoiceOver on macOS from being truly great, and nowhere is that more evident than with Braille, which it's better to have than not, but is clearly behind other screen readers. I am looking at a future Braille display that's not a Focus from Freedom Scientific, and it comes down to a toss-up between Humanware Brailliant BI40X and Orbit Reader 40. Astonishingly, macOS still doesn't support Orbit Reader using its native protocol, only through its VarioUltra emulation, as best I can tell. This is very disappointing, to say the least of it, although it gladdens my fleshy heart that Orbit Research implemented the feature in a display of such economical cost at all—so much so, in fact, that I might just wander off and buy one, in spite of that consideration. We must reward that kind of empowering work, I think. As for BRLTTY, yup, I use it every single day; my Mac is often connected via USB to my Focus but not driving it, and a VM with a textmode Linux environment is being used instead to do all the command line things. It's awesome. You want this over the paltry Terminal support in macOS if you're using Braille. Good luck on your travels in Windows land. I think you will find, inevitably, that it has downsides … but there's no denying the superiority of Braille support. -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. 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