And Then There Were Two: A Review of Notetakers
By Leventhal, Jay; Denham, Jim; Access World, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 22-33Publication Date: January 2002
Article evaluating the BrailleNote and the Braille Lite Millennium from Freedom Scientific, which are both Braille notetakers. The BrailleNote’s surface measures 9.5 inches by 5 inches by 1 inch. Nine keys representing an eight-dot Braille keyboard with a space bar are arranged on a curve for user comfort. An 18- or 32-cell refreshable Braille display is configured on the front, and four thumb keys are placed on the edge facing the user. The thumb keys are used for moving forward and backward through documents and menus. A touch cursor is located above each Braille cell. The BrailleNote also includes a rechargeable nickel metal hybrid battery. The authors were impressed with the BrailleNote’s speech quality and overall usability. The Braille Lite Millennium comes with either 20 or 40 Braille cells, and offers an improved speech synthesizer and the ability to send and receive e-mail with a built-in modem. A Braille display mode switch allows the use to change from a refreshable Braille display to a notetaker at the touch of a button. One of the problems the authors found with the Braille Lite Millennium was incorrect or missing product documentation in the user’s manual.
Assistive Products Discussed: BRAILLE LITE MILLENNIUM (SERIES M20)
BRAILLE LITE MILLENNIUM (SERIES M40)
BRAILLENOTE
Published by: AFB Press (Website:http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=46)
American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) (Web Site: http://www.afb.org )
