Monarch by humanware and American printing house for the blind

I'd probably like to see a split between brail and tactile graphics. I don't know if we need quite the resolution they are going for or, maybe more accurately, it would be nice to have a choice for something cheaper and less precise. There are technologies out there that, though not great for brail, could be good for tactile graphics which is a lot cheaper.

Probably more than my mortgage.

I think it's kicking around the $13,000 mark.

I do understand the cost restraints. It's a really low quantity item which doesn't benefit from economy of scale. One of the reasons iPhones aren't even more ridiculous money is Tim Cook is a genius when it comes to production lines, scaling and working within the envelope of what they actually want and can produce.

Generally, accessibility devices are expensive and ugly. Why can't we have a little style in our kit? The Mantis is a cheap block of plastic with a cheap keyboard on it. The BI20X isn't much better. Where's the brushed aluminium? Wheres the exciting tactility in something that costs three times a Macbook Air with a fraction of the functionality? 13 times the price when it comes to the Monark.

I just don't like it when I feel we're treated as anything less than a paying customer. The experience should be spot on, no matter who you are. My dealings with Humanware were, and this is being charitable, inefficient. Seemed like lovely people, but it was bundling all the way through. Error with the site and a discount they'd been advertising, and various other issues. You'd not get that at apple and this, again, is an example of really expensive equipment. I want to feel safe when I'm dropping that sort of cash... I want to feel a little special too... For once in my life, or special in the right way.

Sorry, bit of a rant. As usual.

I am curious what is the real cost of the device. Parts and so on. It probably was made in a third world nation where the labor is cheap.

At least so far to my knowledge, screen readers are not supporting multiline Braille well. For example, the Orbit Slate will connect to NVDA but NVDA just dumps a longer line to it. So yes you get more Braille but you don't get actual multiple lines of a document, or a table, or other things I think should be possible. I noticed in the latest NVDA update they added some support for Monarch's cursor routing, so they are at least aware of it. Perhaps now that HumanWare has a device screen readers will start innovating as HumanWare is a larger and more significant partner. For now though even with the Monarch I imagine its best use is book reading with APH's books and inline images and stuff. Screen reader for efficient and effective multiline use is not here yet.

Agree. That is why I asked the question of cost and parts and how much it truly cost.

I have access to a Monarch. It's so much better than a single-line braille display for my use cases, which include reading a lot of text. Screen reader support is expected soon (how long it will take for Apple to release this feature remains to be determined).

My advice is to try a Monarch in demonstration, or borrow one if you can, then decide. Explore any funding options that may be available to you via government schemes or private sources such as grants or scholarships. Even a low-interest loan might be appropriate depending on your financial position, but you'll need to evaluate based on your needs and financial circumstances.

I'm on record elsewhere as saying, and I'll repeat it here, that I would buy one myself if I didn't have access to a Monarch via a funded project. Having used a Monarch for a while, I wouldn't want to go back to using single-line displays only.

The Monarch is primarily intended for what has been referred to as the "funded market" - situations in which governments or organizations such as educational institutions, rather than the users themselves, meet the purchase cost. There are, of course, some individuals who have bought Monarch devices out of their own funds. The braille display mechanism and the custom software development involved are all expensive. The product is expensive for a reason.

You're having a pop at the BI20X again, old lad, and Bingo won't stand for it! The Brailliant Bi20X is a Brilliant product as well as being a Brailliant product. Sure, it's not brushed aluminium and all that lark but if it were, it'd be a mort more expensive.

Turning to the Monarch, the problem I see is this: if it's primarily intended for the funded markets in education or employment, nevertheless it's still pricing itself outside what government support funding people realistically are likely to secure. As a senior lecturer in law I couldn't possibly recommend that one of my students spend 18 grand on one piece of equipment. granted, that is in paart down to law being my subject and not, say, maths or accountancy; but even then, I'm not sure how many of these they're realistically going to sell at that price on the basis of government funding. that leaves private customers. For myself, I could afford one of these but where's the game-changing feature? To adumbrate on a point Holger made arelier on, we're talking more than 2 years' worth of mortgage payments on Bingo Towers (on the basis of interest rates as they are at time of writing). we're talking about 1.5 times what Mrs Bingo paid for her used Voxhall Astra. we're talking 1.5 times the fee for Bingo's barrister training course, or 90% of the course fee for Oxford University's BCL degree - the blue ribbon law Master's degree. For that, there needs to be a mega wow factor. Multi-line Braille sounds lovely. It's what I grew up with reading those things called books and writing on that thing called a Perkins. I'm sure it would make spreadsheets easier to understand and yes, as one of their marketing pushes has suggested, it does make correspondence chess an awful lot easier - no need for a chessboard. There's not enough wow about any of those things, I'm afraid - not for Bingo, in any case. Perhaps Gen Z and particularly Gen alpha have brains trained more towards responding to graphical material, but not I. Anyway you can't take it anywhere, can you? as I understand this, this is a desktop animal? Or am I wrong about that? I'll just end by observing that I've seen fairly decent garden room quotes for less than the price of a Monarch.

First, I'd love to try it out. I am for all things Braille. @Jason White I'd love to hear what you have used it to do and how you feel it works effectively. Don't know what you're able to share. @Bingo it does have a battery and weighs about 5 pounds. Now if you want to carry and bang around a $18,000 fragile item is another matter. If I was a school like this thing targets, I'd be fastening it down solid before the kids touched it.
Now for price: I see both sides. I just looked it up, the Monarch is 10 lines of 32 cells. That is 320 cells, or about 8 40-cell Braille displays. A 40-cell Braille display goes for between $2595-$6595 USD these days. I know it is a wide and wild range. Yes the Help Tech Activator is $6595. So times eight that is a range of $20,760-$52,760. A single 80-cell display--previously the cadillac or rrolls royce of display size-- goes from $9,000 and up these days. So on that price logic, the Monarch is a steal. The other side is $17,995 is a big pill for an individual to swallow. I agree APH targets the funded market and not individuals by in large. In our current environment, I think this may be a tough sell in the U.S. for most schools right now though. I hope some kids get to benefit.
For myself, the next question is value proposition. For this I have some criteria. And here the Monarch is going to need some help. I can't see myself splurging on a Monarch for leisure. SO it has to be for business. Here I need screen reader support to truly take advantage of the multiline. I need to be able to see multiple lines of a document and I don't mean just one text dump. I want each line to be scrollable on its own. In other words I want to see what each line looks like in orientation to the next and previous same as it is on a screen. This would carry over to table and spreadsheet view. I want to be able to assign different lines to different windows and scroll. SO I can have a line on my Inbox, a line on my stocks watch window, etc. The multi-window like sighted people have is my true value point. In addition it'd not hurt if I could assign parts of the display to other devices, say a line for my tablet or phone. This is less critical, but some displays such as the Activator can already do this so it is a pretty easy implementation at this stage.
The thing is JAWS and NVDA are not really set up for doing multi-window. JAWS has some primitive implementation for this now. It only works on one line displays which does limit it a bit. And the implementation is clunky. It shows they kind of see what I see in that there is value in looking at more than one piece of information at a time. So I expect they will keep improving it.
The question is how long will it take. Something I have advocated for over the years, with no result, is to use this idea with multiple displays. Let a screen reader drive two displays. Some now have a desktop display, say 40 cells, and a travel display like a 20 cell. It'd be nice to have each of them monitoring a window on my desktop. I guess in the meantime I should start saving for the Monarch...