Braille

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Intro

Hi! Welcome to my guide on BARD Mobile.

BARD Mobile (Braille Audio Reading Download Mobile), is a service that offers braille books and audiobooks from NLS.

With this app that is fully accessible, you can easily download, listen and read these books.

Talking books and braille books are free.

I will be explaining the elements the app, as best as possible, and as in much detail as possible.

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Before We Begin

Braille Screen Input is a feature of iOS/iPadOS that allows you to type braille directly on your device's screen. You can use this input method anywhere an on-screen keyboard is available. If you prefer to listen, you can hear an audio demonstration of braille input in iOS8 here. Note that, though this podcast was made under iOS 8, its content is still relevant to more modern iOS versions. Similarly, we keep this guide as up-to-date as we can.

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Public libraries are providing more and more of their content in a digital format. For libraries, it saves on space and staff time, and providers are stepping up to deliver video, music, eBooks and audiobooks electronically.

Why it works

libraries purchase collections from a provider. This gives their patrons the ability to "borrow" content using a computer or mobile device. When the loan period is over, the content is automatically "returned". For example, if you check out an eBook, it becomes available on your device for reading immediately.
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Enabling the Status Cell

If you have ever paired a braille display with your iOS device, you have seen that option that appears above the display name in braille settings: "Status Cell". You may, like me, have double tapped it, decided if you wanted it on the left or the right, then gone about your business, keeping a finger on that mysterious cell to see what it might do. You may have, like me, used it for a while and finally given up on it, having no idea what it was for or how it was useful, so you went back to settings and turned it off.

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Note October 17, 2016: a new and updated guide on iOS text editors is now available here.

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Note: This guide is an updated version of my article “An Overview of Five Text Editors”, submitted to the AppleVis community in February, 2014.

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Introduction

The following guide has been inspired by this episode of the Apfel-Fleger Podcast, a podcast in German for blind users of Apple products. All credit goes to Jürgen Fleger and his friend for discovering and presenting this little trick.

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Starting in iOS 10, a new way exists through the actions rotor to move apps around your various home screens. While the old method is still available, the new way of accomplishing this task seems to be preferred by many. In iOS 11, it then became possible to drag multiple apps at the same time. The below process was written for iOS version 12.1, and if the instructions do not work as outlined below, chances are good you are not running that version of iOS.

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To complete this process, you must have agreed to the BARD Service agreement, and be signed in to a BARD account. This will not work for people who do not have accounts with the national Library Service for the Blind and Physically handicapped . For more info on whether you qualify, and to apply if you do, see the BARD Main Page

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Hello,
There will always be apps with one or more unlabeled elements or elements that have unclear labels. When we encounter an app of this nature, we may resign ourselves to deleting the app and maybe contacting the developer and hoping they'll fix it, but that's not the it's useful to know what they do, but sometimes you may want to take a step further and label the unlabeled elements. This has come in very useful for me and today I'd like to tell you all how to do it so that you all can experience it's benefits too.

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For some time now, users of braille displays have wantted to be able to read brf files from various sources such as the NLS Web Braille collection, Bookshare, and other sources around the world. I'm here to tell you that it's possible to do so using the following steps, but you'll still be very limited in the way in which you can navigate through content. For example, there is no way to bookmark a place in your file, and since iOS does not have a find function, you can't get there quickly through that manor either.
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Hello, everyone. Two years and literally thousands of changes later, the second edition of Personal Power is now available. It's an ebook which I wrote and am giving away freely. Basically, the book takes people from setting up their iPhones to thriving in the iOS environment. It teaches how to use VoiceOver, the various parts of iOS, and a whole lot of apps.

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Last edited by Scott Davert on November 8, 2023.

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Did you know that you can read the entire iPhone user manual through your browser online? This is also true for Mac, iPad, Apple watch and even the older iPod.
This quick guide though focuses on iPhone.
When you pull up the manual, the default is the current iOS, iOS 16 as of this writing. But a drop-down box lets you select an older version of the user guide. It will change to a newer iOS as the default when that is released.