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Hey, I'm using a piece of great equipment today called the Braille Note Apex.
Basically, it is a computer in and of itself. Like what people used to call a PDA.
And it's very portable as you can see.
And it has speech and braille outputs. So I can either listen to the speech or right
down here is the braille display.
And I'll try to move my hands out of the way and you can probably see that there are braille
dots right there and that's what I read with.
Right here is the braille keyboard. And braille is made up of one or more combinations of
six dots.
So there are six keys right here that I use. Combinations of one or more of those keys
to write in braille.
Then there is a space bar right here.
And an enter key.
[keyboard speaks]
[laughing]
And a backspace key
Um, you just heard it say, "word processor."
That is the speech. We have the speech on right now.
Typically I do not use the speech because I prefer to read everything in braille.
I use this for all kinds of activities.
From reading, I'm a recording artist and I do voiceover work. And I also do presentations
for an online business.
So I use this for reading song lyrics in the studio if I need to. Or reading voiceover
scripts in the sudio.
And also for reading presentations.
In addition, lets see.
[keyboard speaks]
We are at the main menu. So I'm just going to go through the menu real quick and then
I'll show you what some of these things are.
[keyboard speaks]
That is the word processor where you can right and edit your documents.
Planner, now this is something I use when I need to schedule appointments and I need
to know exactly what time they are going to be.
I can set an alarm just like you would in a typical PDA or a typical smart phone. An
iPhone or whatever.
I can set an alarm.
[keyboard speaks]
Address list, is just what it sounds like. It's basically the address book. If you want
to use that you can.
[keyboard speaks]
Email, we have email and internet capabilities on the Apex
So I can check my email and surf the web whenever I need to.
[keyboard speaks]
Internet
[keyboard speaks]
Chat, that's if I need to chat with someone. It's kind of like an instant message service
for; uses Google chat.
[keyboad speaks]
Media center is where I can listen to radio, play music, and that sort of thing.
[keyboard speaks]
Navigation is if you have a GPS receiver hooked up to that, you can even use GPS capabilities
if you are walking around a strange place or a strange part of town and you need to
know where you are and where you are going you can use that.
[keyboard speaks]
Bookreader is my favorite feature actually because I can read a book in braille that
I have scanned into the computer.
I have a scanner and I scan things into the computer and translate them into braille.
And then I can read a book with that.
[keyboard speaks]
Scientific calculator is just what it says.
And I love that when I'm trying to figure out how much money I have left in my bank
account at the end of the month.
[keyboard speaks]
Database manager.
Again you can have databases for all kinds of things from address list to even organizing
things like you might have your CDs numbered or something.
So if you want to know the title and the tracks on a certain CD maybe you can look up number
153 and know what tracks are there.
[keyboard speaks]
Games are word games that we have on here so that if somebody wants to play those we
can.
[keyboard speaks]
Extensions is where we get into different tutorials that come with the Apex.
You can learn how to do certain things on the Apex. I looked and one was a Math tutorial
type thing.
[keyboard speaks]
And then the file manager is equivalent of in Windows maybe like Windows Explorer
So you can use that to copy and move files and whatever you need to do.
Rename files, manipulate your files basically.
Let me show you what some of this stuff does and how we get into the different things.
Rather than going back through the menu, I'm just going to hit the letter W to get to the
word processor.
[keyboard speaks]
And that takes us to the keyword menu witch is the name of our word processor.
And I am going to open a document.
[keyboard speaks]
I'm moving through the menu. You move through all the menus with the space bar.
And the first option was create a document.
[keyboard speaks]
The second option is open a document so I'm going to press the enter key here.
[keyboard speaks]
And the drive, and it says press enter for hard disk. And I don't know if you can see
this but on the back of here I've got a little thumb drive plugged in to the Apex that has
a lot of different types of files that I might use in a day.
So next is called the hard disk so we are going to stick with that.
[keyboard speaks]
We are going to go into lyrics right now. We're going to
pretend that I've got a session in the studio.
[keyboard speaks]
Document to open.
So what I need to do is look at the list of documents . I'm going to do that.
[keyboard speaks]
All is Well
[keyboard speaks]
Battle Hymn of the Republic
[keyboard speaks]
Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble
[keyboard speaks]
For Every Mountain
Here is a song that I sing.
[keyboard speaks]
And then it comes up and asks me if I want to review the options.
Basically, I'm going to bypass all of that.
It just wants to know if I want to read it in Braille and I do.
[keyboard speaks]
And then it tells me right where I am in case I needed to know that the text at the top
of the page is centered.
And it tells me that it is a text document so if it want to type in this document, if
I needed to edit anything I have to type in a certain type of Braille.
So if I were doing this in the studio maybe I would be looking at the words and just kinda
singing along.
[Jana Singing] I've got so much to thank God for.
So many wonderful blessings.
So many open doors.
You give brand new mercies along with each new day.
Now we're going to go back.
[keyboard speaks]
To the main menu.
And this time I'm going to go to the planner and show you how we do that.
And this time rather than going through the menus I'm going to hit the letter P.
[keyboard speaks]
Key plan menu and it takes us into that menu.
[keyboard speaks]
Open planner.
And what we're going to do here is we're going to set an appointment.
So I'm going to bring up a menu for the application.
[keyboard speaks]
We're in the appointment menu.
[keyboard speaks]
Schedule and appointment.
That's what we want. So we're going to press enter on there.
[keyboard speaks]
It wants to know the appointment time. I'm going to put.
[keyboard speaks]
Hopefully you could hear all of that. It just set the appointment time. It asks me for the
appointment length.
I set it the appointment time for 7pm tonight. It asked me for the appointment length and
I said 30 min.
Now I'm at the appointment title which I am going to call presentation.
[keyboard speaks]
Presentation, and the location I'm going to put...
[keyboard speaks]
Ok and I just typed the words Hyatt Place.
[keyboard speaks]
And it wants to know recurrence and I'm going to press enter for once.
[keyboard speaks]
And if I wanted to this is where I could set an alarm.
But I'm not going to because I know that it is tonight and if
I can't remember seven hours from now there's a problem.
We're going to just put set and alarm on this appointment, no.
[keyboard speaks]
"Show times as" and the default choice there is busy.
[keyboard speaks]
Mark as private.
We are going to press enter for no.
[keyboard speaks]
And then we are at the end of the list and what I do at this point I hit a command.
[keyboard speaks]
To exit in that list and it says schedule this appointment. And then I press yes or
Y for yes.
[keyboard speaks]
And then it just read me that appointment back.
It said appointment scheduled and then it said 7-7:30pm presentation, Hyatt Place.
And I can look up the appointment of course or whatever I need to do there.
[keyboard speaks]
I'll just briefly show you one more thing.
I could go on all day, it's a fantastic piece of equipment.
I'm going to show you the address list.
I'm going to hit the letter A.
[keyboard speaks]
And that takes us to the address list application which is called the key list.
That takes us to that menu.
[keyboard speaks]
And we're going to add an address. So I'm going to press enter.
[keyboard speaks]
And here is the last name and I'm going to put my last name, Jackson.
[keyboard speaks]
And it wants my first name which is Jana.
[keyboard speaks]
Jana. Middle name, we're not going to put a middle name.
[keyboard speaks]
Title. We're going to put president.
[keyboard speaks]
And we're not going to put a home phone number right now.
[keyboard speaks]
You could add a home phone number, a business phone number.
[keyboard speaks]
Cell phone number.
[keyboard speaks]
Home email address.
And it just, I'm sorry I talked over it. I didn't mean to.
It just came up and informed me that computer Braille is required.
That's just a different type of Braille than I would normally write.
So it's letting me know that if I want to put an email address in here I can. But computer
Braille is required.
[keyboard speaks]
And then we can do business email.
[keyboard speaks]
Home fax number.
[keyboard speaks]
Business fax number.
[keyboard speaks]
Street address.
[keyboard speaks]
Street address line two.
[keyboard speaks]
Street address line three.
[keyboard speaks]
So those are just a few of the things that you can do with this device.
It is as I said, just a wonderful piece of equipment