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Microsoft and Apple Helped Build New Braille Display Standard (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Today, the non-profit USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) announced a new standard for braille displays. It was developed in cooperation with Microsoft, Apple and other tech industry leaders. The USB Human Interface Device (HID) standard will make it easier for blind or low vision users to use braille displays across operating systems and hardware. It will also remove the need for specialized or custom drivers and simplify development. "We see the opportunity that advancements in technology can create for people with disabilities and have a responsibility as an industry to develop new ways of empowering everyone to achieve more," said the Microsoft's Windows accessibility program manager lead, Jeff Petty.
There's nothing much to really open source here. This is a HID standard that manufacturers implement in their USB devices. How they implement it will always be device-specific, but this change means that they won't have to deal with the other side of the wire any longer, since Apple and Microsoft are now baking the necessary support in on their ends, with Linux almost sure to follow.
For anyone who doesn't know what this is all about, there are HID standards for a number of classes of device, such as mice, keyboards, and gamepads. While you may need device-specific drivers to unlock functionality particular to a device, having a HID standard means that you should be able to plug any HID compliant device from any manufacturer into any modern computer and expect that the standard functionality will work the same across all of them. That's why you can plug virtually any USB mouse into any computer and expect that left click, right click, and the wheel will just work, even if you don't install drivers specific to that mouse. Likewise, you can take your keyboard, plug it into any computer, and expect that all of the standard keys will just work.
Up to now, braille displays haven't enjoyed that same level of compatibility. It'd be like (or, actually, is the same as) if prior to using your preferred monitor on any given computer, you first had to somehow install the necessary drivers to run that monitor...without being able to use the monitor to see what you were doing. And yet, that's what low vision users have had to deal with up to now.
Going forward, however, the hope is that it will be cheaper and easier for braille display manufacturers to make devices since they won't have to devote much/any time to custom drivers. It'll also be the first time for low vision users that they'll be able to take their braille display and plug it into pretty much any computer with a realistic expectation that it will actually work. That's a huge win.