If I could see, I would want to be able to drive a car. And that car would be something along the lines of what my son drives today, a BMW with room in it for all the family. But I can’t see, and so the opportunity to purchase a car and drive it is a non-starter. But I have just purchased something that I have nicknamed ‘The Car’, something that is every bit as expensive and every bit as useful to me as my son’s car is to him. Yes, I’ve purchased a Monarch!
As most people know, I love Braille in whatever form it comes: be it on paper, on a Braille display, on packaging, in a lift … it doesn’t matter to me as long as I can read it. But when I finally got my hands on a Monarch at an event I helped to organise in Belfast earlier this year, I fell in love with it! The concept of having 10 lines of 32 Braille cells to read just blew me away. But if reading multiple lines of Braille wasn’t powerful enough, I was able to feel tactile diagrams that could be downloaded from a Tactile Graphic Image Library and loaded on the Monarch. I wanted one, partly for my own use, and partly to demonstrate to pupils and staff I work with in education.
So, money saved, I bit the bullet on 13th May and ordered one from HumanWare Europe. It arrived three days later, yet I still can’t quite believe it!
Multiline Braille displays are still in their infancy. The cheapest of them is the Canute 360 which comes in at a couple of thousand pounds. But the Canute is mains only so is awkward and heavy to carry around, and certainly something you wouldn’t have on your lap for too long due to heat build-up. Canute 360, with nine lines of 40 Braille cells, is only a reader unless you consider purchasing the Canute Console with a monitor and qwerty keyboard that folds away underneath the Canute itself. The company, Bristol Braille Technologies, has done tremendously well in bringing Canute to market on a limited budget, kudos to them.
There are other multiline displays that start going up in price and sophistication such as DotPad, Cadence and Graphiti, and it is indeed a very exciting time for the emergence of such devices, particularly when they will start working with screen readers like JAWS and NVDA. Sadly, however, their price points put them out of reach of many, and that’s why I consider myself very lucky to have been in a position to purchase one at all.
Unboxing And Setting Up
Inside the box is the Monarch, protected by a bubble sleeve; a set of five membranes and accompanying tool for changing them; a USB C charging cable and wall plug. There is also a Quick Start booklet in print and Braille. The Monarch, when removed from its bubble sleeve, is housed in a protective case with access to the ports and buttons on the outside.
The first thing I did was charge the Monarch. There was some battery life left already, but it is one of the first tasks I carry out with new equipment as you never know if the battery is sluggish and giving a false reading to begin with. On a full charge, the battery life is around 20 hours, and it can be replaced. The charger that comes with the Monarch should always be the one to use, it is slightly bigger than your average USB C wall plug. Unfortunately, my Monarch did give me a false battery reading and got to a point where I couldn’t charge it. After going through troubleshooting suggestions, my ‘Car’ had to go back to the garage to be recalibrated. Although I only used the charger and cable it came with, this was a disappointing first outing.
Monarch Description
The Monarch’s measurements and weight are:
- Width: 403.5mm (15.89in)
- Depth: 266.5mm (10.49in)
- Height: 35.5mm (1.40in)
- Weight: 2.1 kg (4.65lbs)
Placing the Monarch on a flat surface, its nine-key Perkins-style keyboard should be nearest you. Behind the keyboard is a large flat surface where you will read up to 10 lines of 32 Braille cells, or navigate tactile diagrams, images or graphs. On either side of this area are controls for panning your text, zooming in and out of tactile graphics, and using four-way directional keys to move in and out of menus. Two stereo speaker grilles are situated at each end of the front edge of the unit.
On the left side of the Monarch, going from front to back, there is a USB A port used for external media. A flat power button is next, followed by the USB C port for charging your unit.
On the right side of the Monarch, from front to back, is an HDMI socket for connecting the device to an external monitor, a 3.5mm headphone socket, followed by the down and up volume buttons.
Along the front edge of the Monarch, from left to right, are triangular, circular and square buttons for controlling the device when in Android, or for additional functions.
The Monarch runs on Android 13, but it does not have a Play Store that you would expect to find on regular Android phones and tablets because it is not a Google certified device. However, you can go into Android System Settings to adjust sounds and notifications, add an email account, turn on Bluetooth and WiFi, or make other adjustments.
Point And Click
You might notice that I have not yet mentioned cursor routing buttons. That is because the Monarch doesn’t have regular cursor routing buttons that are found on many other displays. Due to the fact that Monarch supports up to 10 lines of 32 Braille cells, it would not be feasible to move the cursor to cover more than one line as happens on regular Braille devices. Therefore, Monarch has introduced Point and Click, a method whereby Infrared sensors under your fingers detect where you are in a document or menu. Placing the tip of one finger on the spot where you want to move the cursor, and pressing a circular button that sits between dots one and four on the Perkins-style keyboard, moves the pointer. You can then press enter to open a menu, or start editing a document. The cursor uses all six dots so that you can quickly identify where you have positioned it. This took me a few minutes to fathom, but I can now understand the logic and effectiveness behind it.
Monarch Main Menu
Those who are familiar with HumanWare products will know how to navigate through the KeySoft menu structure, it is very similar on the Monarch to Brailliant, BrailleNote Touch and other HumanWare displays. You can use first letter navigation to reach the desired application, use Point and Click, or you can use the directional keypads to move between applications.
The Monarch menu contains the following items:
- Braille Editor - KeyBRF
- Tactile Viewer
- Internet Browser - Ecosia
- Word Processor - KeyWord
- Math - KeyMath
- File Manager - Files
- Victor Reader
- All Applications
Within the All Applications menu, the following items are listed:
- Contacts
- Ecosia (Chromium-based Internet Browser)
- Files
- KeyBRF
- KeyMail
- KeyMath
- KeyUpdater
- KeyWord
- Monarch Chess
- Monarch Production Tests
- Settings
- Start-up Tutorial
- Tactile Viewer
- User Guide
- Victor Reader
Getting To Know My Monarch Or, Learning To Drive My ‘Car’!
The first thing I wanted to do with the Monarch was make adjustments in Settings to voice, speed, and Braille table so created a language profile. I tend not to use the TTS aspect of most Braille devices I work with because I prefer to read Braille rather than listen to TTS. The exception to this is JAWS on my PC, of course, where I use both speech and Braille.
My next task was adding our WiFi network to the Monarch which was straightforward. Then I began to explore in more detail, and am very impressed with the feel of Braille and images beneath my fingers. The only way I can describe the feel of Braille is like felt, not hard signage Braille, just a comfortable touch with a firmness that suits me.
The Tactile Graphics Image Library has a lot of images you can bring up on the Monarch by going to the Tactile Viewer. When you find an image from the categories list you want to explore, load it and use your fingers and controls on the device to zoom in and out of the image to make it larger or smaller. I have an interest in all things space so found tactile images of the phases of the moon or an eclipse really fascinating. Because I have been blind all my life, tactile images are difficult to visualise to begin with, and I guess this is one aspect of the Monarch that brings the unknown to life for me. Most sighted people are fairly blasé about an iconic building such as the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben’s Queen Elizabeth Tower, or even an object like a hot air balloon, but when you have never seen them, or only been given descriptions, it’s actually very liberating to feel an outline under your fingers. The fact you can even make adjustments to that image frankly blows my mind! Now that products like the Monarch give students an opportunity to feel a pie chart or graph immediately instead of having to wait for it to be reproduced in an accessible format, really puts blind people on a level playing field with their sighted counterparts. More exciting still for me is the day - and it isn’t far away now - when we can interact with our screen reader on the Monarch. So having a multiline Braille document to read in Word using JAWS, or opening an image of your Windows desktop, is a very thrilling prospect.
As the ‘Car’ had to go back to the garage for around a week, I haven’t found the space to add my email account or books to Monarch at the time of writing, so am looking forward to using these features in the coming weeks.
Documentation is very thorough, as is context sensitive help when you need it. As Monarch is a collaborative project, you will also find plenty of information about it by going to the American Printing House (APH) website (see below.)
Pros And Cons
The benefits of using a multiline display are obvious, particularly if you are a student, you work in the education sector, or have a job that requires you to work with complex data. It is now possible to create your own images with Tactile View software that is accessible for someone with little or no sight. So you can now transfer images and graphs to the Monarch.
It is not a deal-breaker for me, but you need to take your hands off the surface of the Monarch when your document or menu is refreshing. It only takes literally a second to refresh a page of Braille, but just lifting your fingers off the surface of the Monarch is necessary before you continue reading, and is something some may find a little disconcerting.
I didn’t know if I would get to grips with Point and Click, but I don’t think about moving the cursor in that way now as opposed to pressing a routing button to do so on a single line display.
It would be lovely to see a greater selection of tactile images relating to the UK and Europe included in the Tactile Graphics Image Library, (TGIL), but adding your own using the Tactile View software (not included) is an interesting concept.
The big downside to multiline devices, however, is cost. Most people can’t or won’t pay the asking price of a Monarch or similar multiline display. The UK funding model is different from the United States too. For example, I contend that it would be very difficult to make a case to Access To Work or Disabled Students Allowance in the UK to fund one of these devices. This means that, realistically, there are going to be very few blind people in this part of the world who will ever own one compared to a single line display, and even single line displays are often out of reach of the majority of Braille users.
As for the technology itself, I think we are only at the beginning of the multiline display journey. It has to start somewhere, and we can only hope that the more popular it becomes, the more affordable devices like the Monarch will be. My ideology is for every school to have a multiline display for their blind pupils in order that students can benefit from tactile images, graphs, maps and documents during classes instead of having to wait for the material to be prepared in advance. The younger the child is in having access to such materials, the better their chances of seeing the world through touch, and having a greater understanding of literacy and numeracy as they grow up.
Contact Information
HumanWare Europe: 01933 415800
Email: eu.sales@humanware.com
American Printing House (APH)