libbraille
Portable Library for Braille Displays

Documentation

This page provides documentation for libbraille. If you can't find the answer to your question, you can also read the archive of libbraille mailing-list. You are also encouraged to subscribe to libbraille mailing-list if you want to discuss about this library or read tips on how to use it and news.

Developer documentation

Libbraille developer tutorial [HTML]

Generalities

What is a refreshable Braille display?

A refreshable Braille display is an electro-mechanical device for displaying Braille characters, usually by means of raising the dots through holes in a flat surface. Refreshable braille displays usually sit under a regular computer keyboard. Those displays can be used by blind people to interact with a computer.

Because of the complexity of producing a reliable display that will cope with daily wear and tear, these displays are expensive so only 40 or 80 braille cells are usually displayed. Some models have additionnal keys for input of Braille or function keys.

More info about refreshable Braille displays...

What is libbraille?

Libbraille is a component which simplifies the development of accessibility software for blind and visually impaired people. It provides to developers of such applications a common way to interact with Braille displays so that they can focus on doing great applications rather than spend some time on Braille support.

Windows user FAQ

How can I configure a USB Braille display?: If you already use your terminal with a screen reader or you want to in the future, you have to install libusb-win32 filter driver before to launch libbraille.
Otherwise if you only need libbraille support, windows will ask you the location of a driver when you plug your USB Braille display for the first time. You can find such a driver in the Inf directory of the location where you installed libbraille (by default in C:\Program Files\Libbraille-x.x.x\Inf).

Unix user FAQ

How can I configure a USB Braille display?: If you have installed libbraille as a Debian or RPM package you only have to add your user to the 'braille' group. Hotplug will automatically configure the display so that it can be used by a group in the 'braille' group. If you have installed libbraille from source, you should install the files in the scripts/hotplug directory of the source tarball to the /etc/hotplug directory.

Windows developer FAQ

How can I use the fake virtual display?: There is currently no graphical virtual display in windows. You should use the text display which is unfortunately more limited. A windows virtual display will be done eventually.
How can I use libbraille Python modules?: Libbraille Python modules are included in the windows installer and should be directly available from Python scripts.

Unix developer FAQ

How can I use the fake virtual display?: In order to use the graphical virtual display, you should install the corresponding packages.
If you prefer to install from source, you have to give the '--enable-fake' option to ./configure and to make sure that gtk development files are installed on your system.
How can I use libbraille Python modules?: You can use the precompiled binaries provided in the Debian or RPM packages.
To compile and install the modules by yourself, you need the python development environment, then you have to add the '--enable-python' option when running configure