Good day to you one and all. On Wednesday afternoon, I finally got my hands on an Orbit Reader 20, and took it for a spin. I came away very impressed, and plan to buy one of my own when I can.
I will be using this device when I reactivate my hospital radio career within the next week or two. For portable use, (either in stand-alone mode, or remote terminal with Android, iOS, MacOS or Windows, it is a joy to use. The first thing I noticed was how rugged the case is, although it’s outer skin is plastic. It’s a very tough and durable plastic. The keys are just a little clunky, but I’ve seen much worse than that. I actually own a. Mini Seika which, as people may remember, is a 16-cell device, nowhere close to as functional as the Orbit Reader 20™s, and certainly nowhere close to as responsive. The Orbit Reader 20™ does not employ the usual cursor routing buttons above the Braille cells. Therefore, in remote (terminal) mode, it relies on the screen-reader’s specific command sets governing which options do what. In stand-alone mode, the Orbit Reader 20™ uses conventional key movement commands. For example, a modifier key plus dot 4 will take you to a new line, whereas the modifier key plus dot five will move by word, etc. The lack of routing buttons did,initially at least, cause me a little bit of inconvenience. But not over-much. One soon becomes accustomed to using Braille commands anyway, so for somebody like myself, having several years of experience with Braille displays and readers, it isn’t too difficult to adapt to this one. The menu structure of the device, (which can be accessed in either Stand-Alone or remote modes) is navigable by using the usual modern layout which you’d find on, for instance, a multimedia device’s remote control. Ergo, you’d have the select key as a flat round button in the centre of a circle of horseshoe-shaped buttons which are used for up, down, left and right arrow movement. Panning through text uses the same type of rocker bars as does the Focus Blue 14, 40 and 80 displays. There are two rocker bars, one at each end of the display. There is no mode key to select how these rocker bars respond, as there are on the Focus series. The panning buttons behave in precisely the same way as they do by default on the Focus. One of the things I like most about this display is Braille cells themselves. Because the Orbit does not utilise the usual mechanical cells which most other devices of its kind use, there is absolutely no sound audible when reading Braille on the device. The celluloid electronic cells are not quite as sharp as those on a Focus. But they make up for that with their firmness. Reading Braille on the Orbit Reader 20™ for prolonged periods of time is a joy. The dots are nicely rounded and very clearly displayed. So as long as the device is maintained in a clean dry environment, the cells should last a very long time. There is no physical movement. Not, at least, in the conventional sense. For this reason, when the device is powered off, the Braille dots disappear completely. Perhaps surprisingly, I did not find the 20-cell lines on the display at all irritating or irksome. I used the device non-stop for in excess of 2 hours, reading and writing Braille, and found it a pleasure. The device is very compact, so it would easily fit into a coat pocket, for instance, or a computer travel bag. The one thing which would have been nice is a leather carry-case. Just to give it that little bit more protection when you’re on the move. Using the display with a smart phone is also a joy. Android and iOS just recognise the display without the need for drivers etc., as does MacOS. If you acquire one of these devices and intend to use it on Windows systems, you’ll need to install the virtual serial port driver before you plug the device into the PC, then you’ll need to restart Windows for the virtual port to become visible. I tried the device using NVDA, BrailleBack and VoiceOver, with great success on every OS. JAWS users will also need to install the appropriate JAWS driver, as they haven’t yet got around to including support for this in JAWS 2018, although I believe it does have support in JAWS 2019. Regarding the box package contents, this can vary depending upon local dealerships. But it struck me as rather strange that no CD is provided, so you need to download the drivers you require from <http://www.orbitresearch.com>. Finally, for the moment, I wanted to quickly mention that it has 2 Bluetooth® modes – Auto and Manual modes. In auto mode, no pairing code is required. So any device can pair with the Orbit Reader 20™ without requiring any input from the Orbit. In “Manual” mode, the two devices must be paired using a randomly generated pair code. Usually this is negotiated between the device and the Orbit Reader 20™ automatically, but the user has the option to reject the pair attempt. And finally .finally, the SD reader. This device only handles full-size SD cards, from 4 to 32GB. The cards need to be formatted as FAT32 and cannot be formatted by the Orbit Reader 20™ in current firmware releases. I do have more to say about this device, which I will do later. But all in all, this is a very handy device to have in one’s portfolio, and I shall be adding it to mine as soon as I can. More later.
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