FSCast154, convention information and specials, Sight Village Central and specials, Focus Blue scratchpad and book reader, and a chat with our partners at Nuance

There are huge savings to be made when you purchase our products at the NFB and ACB national conventions, and through Sight and Sound as part of their summer special. Learn about what's on offer, as well as exhibits and presentations. We've released the much-anticipated firmware upgrade to our Focus Blue 5th generation Braille displays, and they now offer scratchpad and book reading functionality. Jonathan Mosen demonstrates where to find the update, how to install it, and what it does. After reviewing the instructions, download the firmware and help file here. The demonstration mentions two software packages to help you convert documents to contracted Braille for reading in the book reader. Download Send to Braille from APH. Download Biblos accessible word processor with multilingual Braille support. Jonathan then speaks with Rachel Elias and Kostas Karachristos from Nuance about the current state of text-to-speech engines, optical character recognition, and speech recognition. Rachel refers to an article about Nuance's involvement with the voice of Stephen Hawking. You can read that article here.