Welcome to the fifty-ninth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
Following last week's episode in which we discussed the Monarch dynamic tactile multiline Braille device, we sit down with the Monarch and give you a taste of its capabilities.
- Here are the topics we cover, and when you can hear them in the episode.
- Introduction to the Monarch 0:00
- Orientation 4:10
- The Main Menu 15:00
- The Tactile Graphics Image Library 16:25
- KeyMail 26:11
- Internet Browser 27:24
- KeyWord 33:00
- KeyMath 34:44
- Victor Reader 38:55
- Chess and other apps 46:51
- Using the Monarch as a drive on your PC 50:38
- Monarch as a Braille display 52:19
- Conclusion 57:19
- Closing and contact info 1:00:22
Transcript
Speaker 1:
Live life you want.
Jonathan Mosen:
Access On. Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. This week in depth and hands-on, a comprehensive look at the Monarch dynamic tactile device.
It's Jonathan Mosen coming to you from the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and this is episode 59 of Access On. It's a full one today because we're continuing our series for Braille Literacy Month, and I think this is our most requested feature. People have been writing into us in large numbers saying, "Can you show us the Monarch?" And what better time than Braille Literacy Month to do that?
If you are coming to the International Braille and Technology Center here in Baltimore and you would like to see some of these multi-line devices that we'll be profiling over the next little while, do make an appointment to see us. We would love to show them to you and let you get your hands on them.
Now, the quest for a multi-line refreshable Braille display, often colloquially referred to within the access technology community as the holy Braille, is something that many of us have hoped for for a long time. It's been one of the key objectives in access technology for blind people throughout the 21st century.
For decades, the blind community has been restricted to the key whole effect of single line displays, where reading a spreadsheet or a spatial math equation or a complex topographer map was unsatisfactory, or in some cases, even impossible. But now we're finally here.
The Monarch has been developed as a result of a collaboration between the American Printing Health for the Blind, APH, HumanWare, Dot Incorporated, and us here at the National Federation of the Blind. As you can appreciate, the Monarch is not a portable note taker in the traditional sense. It's a workstation. It's 15.9 inches wide, 10.5 inches deep and 1.4 inches high. And it weighs approximately 4.65 pounds, that's 2.1 kilograms.
The device occupies a physical footprint comparable to a robust 15-inch gaming laptop. It's got to be this big because of the size of the tactile array. It's probably a good idea to have a stable surface for this, like a lap desk or a full desk, but I have used it on my lap on the couch, reading for pleasure.
And as Greg Stilson said in the interview we conducted with him last week, it really does rekindle your interest in reading and Braille because it's such a pleasant experience. It's much closer to reading four-page Braille.
This has been designed from the get go for the education market. So the casing is designed to be durable and it's got to be because it's housing the sensitive electromechanical actuators that drive the pins. When you get this device, you find that it ships in a protective bubble sleeve and it includes a hard carrying case emphasizing the need to protect the display from crushing forces.
One thing I do hope to see in the future is that at the moment, the case that it ships with does not allow you to attach a strap and wear it over your shoulder. And because of the size of the Monarch, at this point I have found that even when I take the case off, it is a really uncomfortable fit in the backpack that I have taken around the world many times over the last couple of decades.
I've not found a backpack with so many compartments and things, so it's been mended several times and it's a little bit worse for wear, but it holds a lot. I cannot quite comfortably get the Monarch in that backpack.
So you may need a special laptop case suitable for a 15-inch laptop or some sort of large bag than you have now. If I could just throw this over my shoulder and carry it that way from meeting to meeting, take the strap off my person and sit down and use the Monarch, and then wear it again on the way out, I would find that a significant step forward in terms of the ease of use of the product.
Let's have a look at what the Monarch contains in terms of keys and inputs and outputs. You do have a Perkins style keyboard with dot 7 for backspace and dot 8 for enter. Also, you can use it for entering computer Braille code in the right circumstances. There is the traditional space bar below that Perkins keyboard, but between dots 1 and 4 is a very important little round button that is known as the action button. Some people might also refer to it as the refresh button because it performs that function as well. So let's talk about this.
A fundamental challenge of multi-line displays is cursor routing. On a single line display, a physical button sits above each cell. On a 10-line display with 320 cells, installing 320 physical buttons is mechanically and economically unfeasible. So the way the Monarch solves this is genius, it's using a neo-node infrared optical sensor grid overlaid on the display. And this sensor technology enables two primary interaction models.
First, the point and click method. You place a finger on the specific Braille cell that you want to interact with in some way. Say you're in a Word processor and you want to get the cursor there. Or maybe you're in a menu, which of course on a device like this is displaying in full page and you want to get the cursor there.
So you put your finger on that cell and then sensors detect the coordinates of your finger. You then press the action button to confirm the selection. So it's just as precise as pressing a cursor writing key. You do, of course, have to make sure that your fingers aren't doing anything ambiguous. You've got to have your fingertip on just one of those cells before you press the action button and then the cursor is sent there.
The second method is called direct touch, and this allows you to tap the display to root the cursor, which is similar to a capacitive touchscreen. So as you use Monarch more regularly and you become more proficient, more comfortable, this can speed up your editing considerably. Above the Perkins keyboard and the little round button for action and refresh, you have the heart of the Monarch, which is the tactile array.
This is using what they call equidistant pin technology. This is the 10 line by 32 cell display, but describing it merely as a 32 cell Braille display with 10 lines doesn't really fully explain the technology. Traditional Braille cells are discrete eight dot modules and they're separated by fixed gaps.
The Monarch utilizes a continuous array of 96 by 40 equidistant pins, totaling 3,840 individual points of actuation. This equidistant spacing is the critical innovation that enables the dual mode functionality of the device.
When it's displaying literary Braille, the software groups the pens to mimic standard Braille cell spacing, creating the familiar gap that allows for rapid reading. But if you're rendering an image on the Monarch's display, the system utilizes every pin in the grid.
Because the pins are spaced equally, horizontally and vertically, a circle actually does feel like a circle, not an oval. This one-to-one aspect ratio is essential for spatial math and tactile graphics, ensuring that a tactile map retains its geometric integrity.
So there are a lot of cells to look after here, and to protect this device from dust and skin oils, and of course, the liquid spills, these are the historic enemies of refreshable Braille displays. The Monarch employs a user replaceable membrane system. When you get a Monarch, you get five replaceable membranes, and that should stand you in very good stead.
I've been using a Monarch for just over a year now, pretty regularly, and the membrane is in pretty good shape still. You also get a screwdriver, so that indicates that this is something you can do yourself. You don't have to send it back to replace the membrane. This membrane also makes a big difference in terms of smoothing the tactile experience, so you're not feeling the raw plastic tools of the pin.
Instead, what you're feeling is the pins pushing up through a tension surface, and that facilitates the gliding motion required for exploring graphics without snagging your fingers on individual cells.
There are keys on either side of the Monarch's array and they perform identical functions. On the left-hand side of the unit, at the very top left, you'll find a page-up key. This will turn pages in reverse. So when you've got a full page of text on the screen, if you press the page-up key, you will go back to the previous page of text. It can also perform other functions and other applications such as when you're dealing with graphics.
The page down key is on the other side, and it is at the immediate bottom right of the array whereas the page up is at the top left of the display. Underneath page up or above page down on the other side, you have a traditional cursor cross. You can push this up, down, left and right. The navigation is pretty intuitive.
And right to the left of dot 7 and dot 8, you have the zoom keys. These will perform different functions depending on where you are in the Monarch. If you're in a text application, for instance, this will alter the number of lines that are displayed on the Monarch at any given time.
The maximum number of lines you can have is 10, but if you zoom out, then you will find that you have fewer lines on the display with the benefit of the spacing being much more gentle. And that may be something that you want to start with, if you find that having 10 lines of Braille on the array is just a little bit cramped for you.
When you're in maps and other graphics, you can zoom in and out, and that is pretty impressive as well. So those are the keys on the top of the unit. When you're using it with JAWS, you do have the benefit of the reverse panning functions. And what I personally find speeds me up a little is having the page-up key go to the next screen and the page down key going to the previous screen, so reversing those functions.
There is currently not a way to do that in the Monarch itself when you're using it locally, and I'm hoping that that will be added in future, because for some of us who read brow with a certain technique, it really can speed you up.
If we go below the space bar onto the front edge of the unit, you'll find a series of buttons that are textually distinctive. On the left, you've got a back button. This is consistent with Android devices, and yes, the Monarch is running Android under the hood.
In the middle, there is a round button, you press this to get to the home screen, and this is similar to the round home button that you find on some HumanWare devices, but you can also press 4 sign chord to get to the main menu if you prefer that. And on the right of the home button is the app switcher button.
If you tap this, you will get into a list of running apps. So just like a smartphone, you may find that you quickly need to go and look at an email. And yes, the Monarch does have full email support or read a book or something, and then you can use this app switcher to get back, say, to the document that you were writing without the need to go through the main menu.
And if you press and hold it, you'll get the context menu for the application that you're in. This is kind of like tapping the old key on a Windows computer or pressing VO with M on a Mac, and it can be very useful as you get to know the Monarch to press that key and hold it and bring up the menu. You can also press M chord, which is another convention that HumanWare devices use to bring up the menu so the choice is yours.
If you've used a Brailliant or BrailleNote Touch or Mantis before, a lot of these commands will be familiar, which helps with the learning curve of the Monarch. There is Keysoft on this device that has been substantially modified for the multi-line environment of the Monarch, but it's still the same software and the same user interface that people have been using for decades now, so that all helps.
As we look at the right-hand side of the unit, closest to you, you will find an HDMI port. The Monarch is intended to be an education device, so it's handy to use this HDMI port to connect a monitor so a teacher or somebody assisting a student can see what's going on. If you're in a vocational situation though, you could potentially attach a projector to this HTMI port and run a presentation from your Monarch.
Moving further forward, we've got a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, and I'm using that to connect the Monarch to the mixer for this demonstration because it does have the traditional HumanWare Acapela text to speech voices, and you'll hear those in just a moment. Moving further up the right-hand side of the device, you've got a volume down and a volume up button.
They're very prominent buttons. On the left-hand side of the device, you have a USB A port, you can connect thumb drives or keyboards or other peripherals to this, and it's worth noting that the Monarch has full support for QWERTY keyboards, either via a USB or a Bluetooth keyboard that you might choose to connect.
There might be a couple of use cases where this is handy. If a teacher is assisting with this, then they can use the HDMI port to connect a monitor and a USB port to connect a keyboard and drive the machine with confidence. But also there might be people who are becoming familiar with Braille input or who just prefer using QWERTY input when it's available.
There is a full suite of keyboard commands for the Monarch that works with QWERTY and there's an appendix in the user guide that shows you those. And then there is a slightly recessed, but definitely distinctive tactfully power button. And ahead of that, you've got a USB-C port. You can use this to charge the device and you can also connect it to a computer so that you can use it in terminal mode.
As I'm recording this in the middle of January 2026, that's the only way to use terminal mode, but it is anticipated that a soon to be released version of the Monarch 1.4 will allow you to use Bluetooth for terminal mode.
Yes, there is Bluetooth in this device. There's also WiFi. It's only BG and N, but it is 2.4 and five gigahertz. A word about battery life, it's always good when a product over delivers. Battery life was estimated at around about eight hours when the Monarch was released.
In my experience and the experience of many others, it's much longer than that. I've heard of people getting about 24 hours of use with the Monarch, so I don't think you're going to have any difficulty with running out of charge before you can plug this in.
So let's put the Monarch through its paces a little bit. When you power the Monarch on, you will eventually see a Monarch butterfly coming up on the screen. So if you power it on, your very first interaction will be that graphic and you'll think, wow, that is pretty impressive that you've got this refreshable Braille device that's not only displaying all this text, but has the graphics as well.
I'm at the main menu now though. And of course, because this is a multi-line Braille display, I'm seeing a lot of choices. The whole page of Braille is full of menu choices. Braille editor is at the top, and then underneath it, I'm reading tactile viewer. And to the left of that, tactile viewer choice, there's kind of a unique block character, and that shows me that that is currently the selected item.
If I just read down, I'm not using speech at all, I can see after tactile viewer, I have email, KeyMail, internet browser, which is Ecosia, word processor, keyword, math, KeyMath, file manager, files, Victor Reader, Braille terminal, all applications. So I can press dots 1, 2, 3 chord to go to the top of the menu. That's a standard Braille convention.
Speaker 3:
Top. Braille editor, key BRF.
Jonathan Mosen:
And not only is the speech saying that, but I also read that block character before the Braille editor key BRF, so I know that it has focus. Let's say that we want to get right into the nitty-gritty of this and go to the tactile viewer.
I can certainly down arrow and hear the speech doing that, but let's enjoy this amazing multi-line Braille experience. So I find the T of tactile viewer, I can be anywhere on this menu choice and with my finger on one of the characters and just one finger unambiguously on one cell, I'm going to double click the action button.
Speaker 3:
Tactile viewer. Open.
Jonathan Mosen:
That has opened the tactile viewer and open is the first choice that we have in this menu. Just to let you hear what's here, I'm going to down arrow through it.
Speaker 3:
APH TGIL. Settings. Open.
Jonathan Mosen:
And then it wraps. So we can open our own files and look at graphics on the Monarch. The tactile viewer will read files in JPG, PNG, and PDF formats. But if I down arrow-
Speaker 3:
APH TGIL.
Jonathan Mosen:
This is a pretty incredible resource actually. And just in case you miss that, that is the APHTGIL. Not to be confused with TGIF, you see, because I'm not recording this on a Friday. TGIL, in fact, stands for Tactile Graphics Image Library. I'm going to press enter to choose that.
Speaker 3:
APH TGIL menu. Search.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now you can search for something that you're looking for, but you can also move through various categories, and I'm going to down arrow to do that. As you might expect with devices like this, you can also press dot 4 chord to move forward and dot 1 chord to move back. That's dot 4 with the space bar or dot 1 with the space bar.
Speaker 3:
New and updated graphics. APH products. Animals. Architecture. Business. Cartoons. Literature and pop culture. Daily living. Flags. Geography. Health. History. Language arts. Mathematics. Music. Orientation and mobility. Physical and recreational activities. Plans. Science. Seasons and celebrations. Symbols. Transportation and vehicles. 3D models. TG utilities. Search.
Jonathan Mosen:
And now we're back to the top of the menu and we have search once again. Now, everybody will have, I'm sure, their favorite thing that they wish I would open, but I think I'm going to go for geographical options. So I'll just push G, because this is another thing you can do with menus on the Monarch. There is indeed first letter navigation. So by brailing G on the Perkins keyboard.
Speaker 3:
Geography.
Jonathan Mosen:
We're back at geography and I can press enter.
Speaker 3:
Geography. Zero results found.
Jonathan Mosen:
We can in fact down arrow and get quite a few results.
Speaker 3:
United States maps, world maps, African maps, Asian maps, Canadian maps, Central American maps, European maps, South American maps, Haitian maps, navigation tools. Zero results found. United States maps.
Jonathan Mosen:
We're going to press enter on United States maps.
Speaker 3:
Loading categories and assets from TGIL.
Jonathan Mosen:
And I can read on the Braille display that it is still loading at this point. So that's another advantage, I don't have to keep checking speech. And that's taking quite a while.
Speaker 3:
Geography-
Jonathan Mosen:
Here we go.
Speaker 3:
... United States maps. 183 results found.
Jonathan Mosen:
So we have things like, I'm just reading the Braille display, we have 50 states swell. We have 50 states Braille, 29 front expandable, and then we have different states. So I'm going to press it at M.
Speaker 3:
Main congressional districts.
Jonathan Mosen:
And go down.
Speaker 3:
Main outline. Main state map. Maryland Congressional districts. Maryland outline. Maryland state map.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm going to choose Maryland state map and presenter.
Speaker 3:
Loading content, please wait. Index. Page 1-1, key.
Jonathan Mosen:
If there were only one page in this map, it would've just loaded it. But when you have a multi-page map such as this, we have a key on page one and the actual map data on page two. You'll have an index, you can choose the page that you want to open. You can go back to the index by pressing the back button, but in our case, we can also go forward to the next page by pressing enter with dot 135 or enter with O, that goes forward.
You can go back by pressing enter with dot 246. So I'm going to go forward to the actual map and the map is here. There are plenty of keyboard shortcuts you can zoom in and zoom out.
So for those of us who are not familiar with the concept of zooming in and out, because it's a fairly visual thing that historically we haven't had a lot of access to, if you zoom in on a map, you're amplifying the area. You're getting a smaller area, but in a lot more detail. Whereas if you zoom out, you're getting more map, but less detail.
One very cool trick is that you can zoom in on a particular part of a graphic by putting your finger on that part of the graphic that interests you and then double clicking the action/refresh button and that will do the trick.
So it's similar to choosing an item in a menu. There is a really comprehensive series of keyboard commands here. You can rotate the image, you can invert the Braille, you can do all sorts of things.
And the more you use the tactile viewer, the more of these commands you'll commit to memory, but you don't have to commit them to memory because we can bring up the context menu. I'm going to hold down the app switcher button.
Speaker 3:
Context menu. Zoom in plus. Zoom out. Add bookmark. Backspace within.
Jonathan Mosen:
It's important to note that when you add one of these bookmarks, it's only going to be relevant for the current session. So if you save the map locally, which you can do, so you have your own copy on your device, if you don't have an internet connection, you'll be able to access it that way. The bookmarks still won't be saved.
Speaker 3:
Jump to bookmark, backspace with J. Rot it. Space with art. Previous page, enter with dots 2, 4, 6. Next page, enter with O. Index page, enter with A. Go to page, enter with G. File info, space with A, navigation. Invert Braille. Space with dot 35. Show us details. Space with dots 1, 3. Show more details. Space with dots 4, 6. Default retail level. Space with D.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's always handy to get back to a known point. If you want to go back to the default level, just press space with D.
Speaker 3:
Undo last filter, space with Z. Save file locally, space with S.
Jonathan Mosen:
And that's the option I was talking about just a little while ago. If you want to save a local copy of this so you don't have to go back to the tactile graphic image library, you can do that here.
Speaker 3:
Zoom in, plus.
Jonathan Mosen:
And then we're back to the top of the menu. So I'm going to press the back button to exit this.
Speaker 3:
Tactile viewer.
Jonathan Mosen:
And now I'm back in the map of the great state of Maryland. There are some other keys that are useful as well. If you press space with dot 1, you will get to the top left of your image. If you press space with dot 2, you'll get to the center left of the image, and space with dot 3 will get to the bottom left of the image.
Similarly, space with dots 4, 5, or 6 work the same way for the right-hand side of the image. If you want to go to the top center, then mnemonically enough, space with C will do that. I'll just press that in fact and look, I'm right at the center of the image and I can read the graphic and I can also see the key on the display as well.
Going to the center of the image is just a matter of pressing space with dots 2, 5. So now the image is centered. And if I zoom in and out from here, that is making a difference. Yeah, I'm zooming out at this point and the image is emerging. And of course you can go to the bottom center by pressing space with dots 3, 6.
As I've played with this and showed it to people, I found that one of the most compelling demonstrations is actually showing them pictures of animals and how you can rotate the image of the animal so you get a particular view, kind of like the blind man on the elephant, right?
You can't see the whole thing on the display, but you can rotate the image, you can zoom in on a particular part. So looking at animal pictures is actually really interesting.
And there are so many items that you can look at in the tactile graphics image library. There is extensive documentation in the Monarch user guide that provides you with a lot more information, but it is a very cool thing to be able to read in one place graphics and text and choose from this wide array of images in the library, but also to look at your own as well.
APH does produce guidelines to create optimal images that work particularly well with the Monarch. I'm going to go to the main menu now by pressing the little round button on the front of the unit.
Speaker 3:
Main menu. Braille editor, key BRF.
Jonathan Mosen:
I won't go into this application, but it behaves as you would expect. It allows you to edit Braille ready files or read them in an environment tailored for those sorts of documents. I'll go down.
Speaker 3:
Tactile viewer.
Jonathan Mosen:
We've seen the tactile viewer.
Speaker 3:
Email, email.
Jonathan Mosen:
The email app on the Monarch is very capable. It supports all the usual protocols that you would expect, including iMap and Microsoft Exchange or Office 365 accounts, and you can have multiple email accounts set up. So if you have one for home and another for work and school, you can set them both up and switch between them.
There is not a common inbox where you can read everything, so you will need to choose the account that you want to work with when you're looking at your email. You can attach files to an email message and also read attachments that are sent to you, and that integrates with the contact app that is built into the Monarch.
You won't see that on the main menu. You have to go into all applications and you will find contacts there, but this is part of the fact that the Monarch is an Android device.
So if you're logged into your contacts, you will see them there. You can address email messages to people who are in your contacts, or of course you can just type the email address out manually.
You can mark multiple emails for an action, so it's pretty easy to move through your inbox and mark an email or two for deletion, and that's an efficient way to take an action on multiple emails. So a pretty capable email client overall.
Speaker 3:
Internet browser, Ecosia.
Jonathan Mosen:
I do enjoy going to websites and reading in full page Braille. I'm going to press enter to open this Ecosia browser, which is an application that I wasn't familiar with until I started using Monarch, so it is not using Chrome.
Speaker 3:
Ecosia. Open the homepage, button.
Jonathan Mosen:
Open the homepage has focused. I'm going to go up one.
Speaker 3:
New tab.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes, the Monarch does support multiple tabs and you can have tabs open from different websites. This could be very useful if you're doing some sort of study project, you're doing research, you just want to switch between tabs quickly to get from one website to another. You can absolutely do that in the Monarch and there are easy keyboard shortcuts to move from one tab to another. So I'm going to press enter to create a new tab.
Speaker 3:
Search and plant trees. Edit box.
Jonathan Mosen:
So the handy dandy Monarch user guide, which is a great reference document and it is available on the device as well as in a variety of formats on the APH website, tells me that every time I perform a search with this web browser, they plant a tree.
So good. I can get information that I need while planting a tree without having to lift any more than a few fingers to type. This is a good bargain to me, so I'm going to perform a search now.
Speaker 3:
Search and plant trees edit box. End of field. Zero suggested items and list below.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now I can type-
Speaker 3:
M. Want suggested items and list below.
Jonathan Mosen:
I'm already getting suggestions, but I'm typing NFB.org and I can read on the Monarch's display that that's correct, so I'll press enter.
Speaker 3:
NFB.org. Progress bar. 28%. 70%. 80%. Homepage pipe, National Federation of the Blind, web view.
Jonathan Mosen:
And look at this, on the Braille display, I have homepage, National Federation of the Blind, and then I can read all the various links. It's got a skip to main content and various other options as well. There's one here called welcome. So I have my finger on the W, and I'm going to do the point and click method by double tapping the action button.
Speaker 3:
Progress bar.
Jonathan Mosen:
So it is activated that link.
Speaker 3:
27%. 80%. Our community pipe National Federation of the Blind, web view.
Jonathan Mosen:
So I'm going to press the letter H. This is pretty standard stuff these days that will navigate by heading.
Speaker 3:
Our community, heading one.
Jonathan Mosen:
And it says our community, the focused symbol is right beside it. And now I can read in the full page Braille. And it says, "The National Federation of the Blind is the transformative membership and advocacy organization of blind people. Through our network of blind members, we coordinate many programs, services, and resources to defend the rights of blind Americans, provide information, and support to blind children and adults and build a... And that's the end of the display.
So I can scroll with the page down key and continue to read. So that's the way that the web browser works and reading a webpage in full page Braille is certainly a great experience. Let's go back to the main menu.
Speaker 3:
Main menu. Braille editor, key BRF.
Jonathan Mosen:
And has taken me back. So I'm going to press, I, just to get us to where we were before.
Speaker 3:
Internet browser, Ecosia.
Jonathan Mosen:
You do have to press enter to activate the option. So that's good in the sense because now I can keep navigating through the menu, which I can assure you I will do after we take a quick break on Access On.
Speaker 4:
For over 100 years, the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults has provided programs and services to the blind and deaf-blind, mostly without cost and always with an emphasis on Braille.
Thousands of Braille books and Braille calendars sent and thousands more blind and deaf-blind people to reach. Help the American Action Fund by contributing today at actionfund.org/donate. Thank you for your support.
Jonathan Mosen:
You're with Access On the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. We're looking at the Monarch today. And let's do some writing.
Speaker 3:
Word processor, keyword.
Jonathan Mosen:
If you have used a BrailleNote or any sort of HumanWare product in recent years, you will be familiar with keyword and the way that it works. It is a powerful word processor. It supports a wide range of formats. And of course, one of the compelling things about a multi-line Braille display is that it's easy to see indentations when you're reading a document, you can skim it so much more easily and you get a feel for the way that documents are formatted.
It's important that we produce well-presented, well-formatted documents, and by being able to read them more readily, we subconsciously absorb what a good document looks like, how people typically are formatting documents these days, and that's information that we haven't been able to come by easily in the past.
Keyword can open documents in DOCX, Docs, RTF, that's rich text format, TXT, and PDF. There are many navigation commands to help you move through the document by various units such as line and paragraph.
You can also select text and then copy or move or delete that text. You can invoke a reading mode, and that protects the document from accidental edits. Keyword also includes a spell checker. You can have multiple documents open at any time and easily switch between them.
There's no limit to the number of documents you can have open, but the more you have open, the slower things are likely to get. Another handy feature built into the Monarch is that when you have a document open, you can use the save as function to create a Braille version of that document with the BRL extension. Let's down arrow.
Speaker 3:
Math, KeyMath.
Jonathan Mosen:
One very elegant thing is that there is a very close relationship between keyword, the word processor, and key math, the mathematics, application, and Monarch. For example, you could be reading a worksheet that somebody handed to you and it's got a mathematical expression in it.
And when you've got focus on it, you can very easily bring that mathematical expression out of keyword and into key math and vice versa. If you want to perform some kind of mathematical function in key math and then put it into your Word document and show you're working, you're able to do that as well.
You're also able to take math expressions from BRF or BRL files, so there's a lot of thought that has gone into this application. It is a powerful application. We don't have too much time to go into a lot of depth. The user guide will do that for you and there is plenty of information on the APH website, but let's quickly go in.
Speaker 3:
KeyMath. Expressions list. Press space with enter to enter a new expression.
Jonathan Mosen:
If you'd already entered an expression in this current session, then when you go back into KeyMath, you would see those expressions listed here and you'd just be able to up and down arrow through them.
But we haven't entered any expressions in the session, so it's an empty list and you're invited to enter a new one. We can also go to the context menu. In this case, I'm going to press M chord, but you can also hold down the key to the right of the home button.
Speaker 3:
Context menu. New expression, space within. Modify expression, enter. Delete expression. Backspace with dots 2, 3, 5, 6. Delete all expressions. Backspace with dots 3, 5, 6. Insert from BRL file, backspace with O. Export expressions to BRL file, backspace with S.
Announce expression, space with C. Display expression error, space with I. Enable or disable expression, backspace with L. Refresh, space with R. Export content, backspace with E. Graph viewer, enter with G. Graph settings, space with dots 3, 5. New expression, space with N.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now we're wrapped back round to the top. So as you can hear, you can create graphs from the expressions that you enter where that's appropriate. And the Braille grade that you use to enter these math expressions is settable in settings in your Braille settings profile, because in the United States, we're more likely to be using Nemeth in other parts of the world. You may be using UEB Math. I'm going to press enter.
Speaker 3:
KeyMath expression, Nemeth edit box, KeyMath.
Jonathan Mosen:
And it reminds me that Nemeth is my preferred grade of Braille for math expressions. I can go back to the context menu now just to show you how friendly and context-sensitive this is, and you'll see that the menu is quite different now.
Speaker 3:
Context menu. Insert symbol. Backspace with dots 3, 5.
Jonathan Mosen:
That's all there is right now. And if I press enter on that.
Speaker 3:
Symbols list. Name at symbols table list.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now we can down arrow.
Speaker 3:
Numbers. Comparison symbols. Greek symbols. Punctuation. Fractions. Operations. Measurement symbols. Limit symbols. Integral symbols. Sets symbols. Shapes symbols. Routes, superscripts and subscripts. Formatting symbols. Misk signs, trigonometric functions, line of dashes, numbers.
Jonathan Mosen:
And now we've wrapped back around to numbers. So that's a very brief cursory look at KeyMath. It is a powerful application on this device. And as you can see, the combination of the ability to generate and display graphics on this device, it is a powerhouse for making sure that our blind students have a fair chance at working effectively in STEM subjects. Now I'm going to go back to the main menu.
Speaker 3:
Main menu. Braille editor, key BRF.
Jonathan Mosen:
Back at the top of the menu. I'm going to press the letter V.
Speaker 3:
Victor Reader.
Jonathan Mosen:
Victor Reader is a very strong brand in our community. People immediately associate it with reading accessibly. And in this case, the Victor Reader app on the Monarch supports EPUB, Daisy three text and eBraille. And before we have a look at the Victor Reader application itself, I do want to spend some time talking about eBraille because the Monarch is inextricably linked to the launch of eBraille.
This is a new file standard designed to replace the aging BRF format. And in fact, as I put this together, I see that HumanWare has just released its first implementation of the eBraille format in devices like the Mantis and the Brailliant. Spec'ing this format, getting it agreed to by key stakeholders has taken a while, but it is finally getting real and we are seeing eBraille rolling out now on devices.
So why do we need yet another format? In simple terms, the old BRF format just can't keep up with the capabilities of devices like the Monarch. BRF files are static ask-y text. They're formatted for a specific page size, for example, a 25 line by 40 cell Braille display.
So if you open a BRF formatted for a standard page on a 32 cell Monarch, the line breaks will be wrong and that destroys the formatting. This isn't exactly a new problem, of course, because there've been Braille displays of different sizes for some time now. eBraille, on the other hand, is dynamic. It reflows text to fit the display size.
So that's progress in itself, but the progress doesn't stop there because I think the most important thing about eBraille is that it supports embedded graphics. You may have seen if you've come to various conventions around the place, the Demonstration eBraille Book of Treasure Island, where you can read the Treasure Island book, of course, the famous Robert Louis Stevenson classic, and then you have the map in there of where the treasure is supposed to be hidden, and you can just read the graphical depiction of the map embedded in the eBraille file.
There's plenty of markup in eBraille as well. And by that, I mean, you'll be able to bring up a table of contents, navigate through it, select the item from the table of contents that interests you and zap right there. And that's really important.
When you have a large textbook that a student is trying to navigate to when a teacher tells them to go to a particular page or a particular chapter, eBraille will make it far easier for them to go right there. So there is no doubt that eBraille absolutely shines on a device like the Monarch.
Speaker 3:
Victor Reader, my books.
Jonathan Mosen:
Choosing this option will show a list of all of the books that I've downloaded from various repositories. I'll down arrow.
Speaker 3:
My subscriptions.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's press enter and have a look at what's here.
Speaker 3:
Loading magazines. My subscriptions, 14, KBC News, two.
Jonathan Mosen:
And this is a list of subscriptions from NFB-Newsline, and I can quickly scroll down the Braille display and read that we have ABC News or Politics, BBC, CNN, Forbes, LifeHacker, The New York Times, and on it goes. So you choose a subscription that you want once you've set up your NFB-Newsline credentials, and we'll go through that in a little bit.
It will download the publication, you press enter to open it, and then you have that marvelous experience of reading a newspaper or a magazine in multi-line Braille. Just with many other Humanware products, you can press a T chord, which will get you into the table of contents and then you can navigate. You can stipulate whether you want to navigate by hitting level one or one and two and so on, to get the granularity of navigation that you want.
So it's a very similar experience to what you might have seen before. The big difference is that this time you have all of this Braille real estate. I'm going to press the back button.
Speaker 3:
My subscriptions, 14, ABC News, two.
Jonathan Mosen:
We'll go back.
Speaker 3:
Victor Reader. My books. My subscriptions. Manage libraries.
Jonathan Mosen:
Over here, we can choose the libraries that we are subscribed to. I'll press enter.
Speaker 3:
Manage libraries. Books providers.
Jonathan Mosen:
Let's just see what the Monarch supports at the moment.
Speaker 3:
Victor Reader. Check box. Not checked. Blind Low Vision NZ, check box. Not checked. Bookshare, check box. Checked. Bookshare Ireland, check box. Not checked. CELA library, check box. Not checked. Child Vision Online Bookshelf, check box. Not checked. DZDM, check box. Not checked. Check box. Not... KDD, check box. Not checked. Lourdes, check box. Not checked.
B Overdrive, check box. Not checked. NSBS, check box. Not checked. Check box. Not checked. Broken, check box. Not checked. Project Gutenberg, check box. Not checked. Tubi, check box. Not checked. Check box. Not checked. Vision Australia, check box. Not checked. Checkbox. Not checked.
Jonathan Mosen:
And now we're back at the top of the list again. If you want to set one of these services up, you check the box. You can press enter by going in there, enter your credentials, and then you will be able to use that service going forward. We will go back though, not forward.
Speaker 3:
Manage libraries. Books providers. Magazines providers.
Jonathan Mosen:
So we've got books and magazine providers separately. We'll go back.
Speaker 3:
Victor Reader. My books, my subscriptions. Manage libraries. Import book.
Jonathan Mosen:
If you have a compatible format book, you can import it into the library of the Monarch. And at the moment, this is the way to get eBraille files into the Monarch if you are testing that or you're lucky enough to be somewhere where they're starting to work on creating eBraille files at this early stage. But this could also be a useful feature if somebody receives a series of textbooks on a thumb drive.
You can also import files from anywhere in your Monarch such as from a downloads folder. So what you might be able to do is connect your Monarch to a PC, something that we will cover a little bit later, and then copy a series of files onto your downloads folder of your Monarch and then you can import the books that way.
Speaker 3:
Settings. Bookshare. NFB-Newsline.
Jonathan Mosen:
So those are the two that I have set up on this Monarch, NFB-Newsline and Bookshare, and they have their own place. If we go in, for example, to Bookshare.
Speaker 3:
NFB-Newsline. Bookshare.
Jonathan Mosen:
And press enter.
Speaker 3:
Library categories, Bookshare, search book.
Jonathan Mosen:
And now we can search for a book. We can also go down and have the familiar bookshare experience on the Monarch.
Speaker 3:
My assigned books, my reading lists, my history.
Jonathan Mosen:
And there is something almost indescribable and tangible about sitting with so much Braille with this device in your lap and reading. It's a different kind of experience from using a single line Braille display and it has rekindled my enjoyment of just curling up and reading for pleasure. It is a great experience.
One thing that is very nice about reading a book with the Victor Reader on the Monarch apart from the full page Braille and all the navigability that you have is that if you come across an image and that image is embedded in say an EPUB format, then you can do that trick that we've been covering where you can put your finger on the word image.
You can double click the magic reload refresh button and it will take you into the appropriate application so that you can examine the image.
We haven't ventured into the all applications part of the Monarch and given that time is marching on, we won't do that, but I will comment on a couple of things. There is chess built into the Monarch, and this is a great use of the tactile array that we have access to. Now you may be saying, "Well, I always wished that I'd got around to playing chess, but I never have."
This could be your opportunity because there is a tutorial that not only goes through the game of chess, what all the different pieces are, how you identify them, how to play the game, but also how to interact with chess on the Monarch itself. There are two versions of this. You can play against the computer and there are various levels of play.
So if you're just getting into chess, you want to set it to nice and easy, and hopefully the Monarch will have mercy on you. And you can also play against somebody else. Unfortunately, that somebody else has to be physically with you and using the same Monarch.
I mean, that's still fun, and I'm sure it'd be a great experience to do that, but wouldn't it be amazing if at some point in the future this chess game is extended so that you can play against opponents across the internet who also have a Monarch or even dreaming bigger, maybe it could be compatible with some of the services that are out there already where many non-blind people are playing chess online right now, it'd be great to join them on the Monarch.
Another app that is out there is called Wing It. Wing It is two words. And if you search in the iOS App Store, because there is an iPhone component to this, if you search for Wing It for Monarch, it's more likely to come up because if you just search on Wing It, it does return quite a few results. Let's paint a picture of where Wing It could be particularly helpful.
Let's say that a teacher is drawing a triangle on a whiteboard in a classroom and the blind student has to wait for a description or hastily made Wikki Stix version of that triangle, but now equitable access is at hand because a teacher who might have an iPad can open Wing It on that iPad, it connects via Bluetooth to the student's Monarch, and the teacher just starts to draw that triangle on the surface of the iPad.
And that image that the teacher is drawing is sent instantly via Bluetooth to the student's Monarch. And it is quick because it's using Bluetooth LE. So you've got good speed there.
The student can then feel the triangle as it is being drawn. So this is a real time application. Just bear in mind that this is a one-way communication flow. So the student can annotate the graphic. They can add Braille labels. They can zoom in and out and do all those things, but they can't draw on the Monarch and have it come up on the iPad. And there's more to come.
APH is in the process of developing applications that they will be talking about soon. And some of those are really exciting. And they're also working on a software development kit, which means that third party developers will be able to write for the Monarch as well.
But there are other applications built in, including the contacts, one that we talked about earlier and an update feature, which allows you to check for updates to see if there's anything new for your Monarch. And as I record this, version 1.3 is the latest release version, but version 1.4 is apparently very close.
So we'll be checking for updates soon and we should get a prompt as well when that update is ready if automatic updates are enabled. And while we're talking about updates, you may find that certain applications update outside of the firmware. So that's a nice feature that they can update individual parts of the Monarch without having to wait for a whole new build of the firmware.
I just mentioned a few minutes ago connecting the Monarch to a PC, so you can use it as a drive. It will come up in Windows Explorer. This is a very useful tool because obviously you can copy documents that you've created, say in Microsoft Word or some other compatible format.
Perhaps somebody has sent you a PDF file, you're working away on your computer and you think, "I want to read this later. I want to copy the PDF file to my Monarch." Unfortunately, this isn't as straightforward as it is on some other devices where you simply plug in your USB cable and you hear the sound and you're off to the races. It's a bit more complicated than that. And I think that's possibly because of the Monarch being an Android device.
But if you connect the Monarch to your PC without doing anything else, it will charge the device. So that's useful. But if you want it to appear as a drive, you've got to go into the options and choose Android settings, then choose the USB options and make sure that it's set to be a USB storage device. And you've got to do that for every session.
So once you restart the Monarch, you're going to have to go through that process. It's a little bit fiddly, I suppose, but once you get used to doing it, it just becomes second nature, and then you'll be able to browse the Monarch and put files where they need to go.
And of course, copy files off the Monarch. If you've written something on the go and you want to put it into your computer to do further work with it, you can do that as well just by using file explorer.
What you may find a useful trick is to pin your Monarch the first time that you use it to your list of regularly accessed folders and drives, and then it can be even easier to get to the Monarch once it is connected. What I hope this audio demonstration has shown you so far is that the Monarch is a very capable computer.
It's not simply a capable array that gets its smarts from somewhere else. It is a self-contained device where you can get a lot of work done, but there is the terminal mode and it is very impressive on a device like this. It transforms the Monarch from a tablet into a specialized peripheral for Windows PCs.
Both JAWS and NVDA offer native, distinct support for the Monarch. Now, as I'm recording this with version 1.3 as the released version of the Monarch, you've got to connect it via the USB-C port.
The terminal mode at this point does not support Bluetooth. As Greg said last week, this is about to change with the 1.4 version of the software. So bear in mind, this product is evolving all the time. And if you're listening to this a few months even after I've recorded it, things will have changed, things will have evolved.
Some limitations I may discuss here may not exist anymore. Vispero has put a lot of thought into their implementation of Monarch support, and that is largely due to many blind people who are Braille users themselves. It does concern us that there has been, as we've covered in this podcast, some considerable loss of institutional knowledge of late at Vispero, particularly blind institutional knowledge.
And we can only hope that there remain people on the technical development team and who are making product management decisions who understand the very high priority that multi-line Braille needs to be given.
I guess time will tell there, but there is some nervousness about this given recent events. But as it stands, it's a really good start and JAWS has specific viewing modes for the Monarch focusing on office productivity. For a while now, there has been a feature in JAWS called Split Braille, and it really comes into its own when you've got this much Braille real estate to play with.
The feature divides the 10 lines into two distinct regions. So to give you an example, the top five lines might show the active location in a Word document, and the bottom five lines, which is known as the buffer, could be set to show an email message that you're drawing from as you work on your Word document.
Another common scenario for me is being in REAPER while having a buffer that contains an email message, so I can read that email to you while recording Access On.
So it's kind of like the equivalent of having dual monitors. And I've talked to several blind people who've used this who said, "Well, now I understand all the hype about two monitors." In JAWS, you also have cropped mode designed for Excel and HTML tables and other tabular data.
Instead of linearizing the table row, JAWS maps the table spatially. If a spreadsheet has four columns that fit on the 32 cell width, you can move down physically to feel the column alignment.
So cropped mode locks the view to the table boundaries, so when it's on, you can't pan into empty void space. And as I said, NVDA also has some Monarch support. They have implemented point and click, which is great because you can get the cursor to where you need it to be, and they're also showing indentations.
And some developers have reported that that really does help them to write code because they can see when text is indented. And of course, that would also be true if you're working in an application like Microsoft Word and you can see hanging in dents. So it's good to see screen readers rolling out support for Monarch.
And with Bluetooth support for terminal mode coming soon to the Monarch, the burning question will then be, when will Apple deliver support for the Monarch to iOS and iPadOS and for that matter, macOS. And we certainly hope that will be done soon and done thoroughly.
There are positive signs, I guess, in the sense that Dot Pad is pretty well-supported by iOS at the moment, and we hope that the Monarch support will be similar in very short order. Hopefully even expanded. I know that one feature that would benefit deaf blind people is expanded support for the live captions feature that made its way into iOS 26.
Imagine how impactful it would be if you could be using a Monarch for live captions and read a whole page full of those captions.
So as the text scrolls along, the page would update, but you'd also just be able to run your fingers up the display to quickly refresh what has been said in an environment where somebody is talking very quickly.
And of course, then there's the depiction of graphics on display like this. So there's so much potential for Monarch and iOS to work together, and we hope that that will happen very quickly.
As we near the end of this walkthrough of the Monarch, I have to say it's really been a good exercise for me personally because I've been using the Monarch for around about a year now and you become used to something.
And just going through this and knowing that I'm going to be telling people who might not have had their hands on a Monarch or been able to use one long term, about all that it can do, has really reminded me how much I have just come to enjoy this experience every day.
No product is perfect and obviously at the National Federation of the Blind, it's our job to call it as we see it and to tell you about any shortcomings. Probably the biggest one that's obvious is that you have to learn to lift your hands when the display refreshes. If you don't, the cells aren't going to refresh or they're not going to refresh properly. If you get into this situation, you can quickly double click the refresh button and the display will refresh as long as your hands are offered.
It's also noisy when it refreshes because there are so many pins refreshing at the same time. I'm fortunate I am working with a Monarch as I put this demonstration together and look at my notes, but it's some distance from the mic and the mic is very directional, but in certain situations, you really will hear those pins all popping up at the same time.
I gave you the weights, the dimensions at the beginning of this demonstration, so there's no doubt it is on the heavy side. The price is also high, although one hopes that with economies of scale, the price will come down. Advocacy continues to ensure that students get Monarch under their fingertips as early as possible because the economics are clear. It will save money in the long run and it's a capable device that sets students up for success.
If you are a college student studying STEM subjects or you have cause to want one of these devices or you're in a vocational situation where being able to view things in a tabular form or your performance would be improved by having more Braille real estate, then you should definitely initiate discussions about having one of these devices. So often we are surrounded by these perceptions that we're not worthy that somebody else deserves a device like this more than we do.
And if you can demonstrate a legitimate need, then you should absolutely go for it, because there's no doubt this is a first iteration, subsequent iterations will no doubt be better.
Things progress, but this device is the holy Braille we were promised. It changes the definition of literacy from linear to spatial, and it does a lot right on board the device, and it's just the beginning. It's going to do even more.
As Greg said in the previous week's episode, soon there will be cloud storage support, there'll be Bluetooth support for terminal mode. This device just keeps on becoming more capable.
If you'd like to find out more about the Monarch, then you can go to aph.org or humanware.com, and there's plenty of information there.
That concludes this episode of Access On, the Technology Podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. To send in a contribution for a future episode, email us, attach an audio clip or just write it down and send it to [email protected]. That's [email protected].
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To learn more about the National Federation of the Blind, visit our website, nfb.org or phonics 410-659-9314. That's 410-659-9314, and be sure to check out the Nation's Blind podcast right from where you heard this podcast.