I was at a Deaf convention today and picked up a catalog there. One of the items is a “Braille TTY for the Deaf/Blind.” Instead of letters on its keyboard it has Braille. Since a TTY operates by displaying words typed from another TTY on its screen, how does a blind person operate it?
I was thinking it prints the letters on a piece of paper in Braille, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Does anyone know?
firstly, what is a TTY?
I assume its some sort of computer?
Maybe Blind people have the words “spoken” to them, and the deaf people can read the words?
I would assume it would be like the “Braille Note” my journalism student friend has. There is a soft rubbery patch where the screen would be, and there is an array of “pins” underneath which can move up into the rubber to form braille letters which can be read off the screen. The keyboard would work the same as any other braille keyboard I imagine.
A TTY is a telephone typewriter, a device used by the Deaf and hearing impaired to communicate over the phone. The way it can work is that the person with the TTY types in their responses and can see the other person’s responses on the screen of the TTY. If the person who wants to speak with the person with the TTY doesn’t have one, they can call a relay service, who will read out the responses and type in what they say.
If I understand phraser’s explanation right, there is a good example of this in the movie Sneakers.
There is a blind character, Whistler, who uses something like this. I’t sort of the equivalent of a one-line LCD screen that can produce text, but instead of the visual text, it outputs braille.
Good movie, too.
This is correct. Sometimes, the Braille unit can be an ‘add-on’ that attaches to a standard TTY (or TDD) as the on epictured here:
http://www.krowntty.com/images/tty_braille_tyy.gif
Oh, and BTW, it’s normally used by the Deaf/Blind (that’s someone who is both Deaf & Blind at the same time)…not to be confused with ‘Deaf & Blind’ (usually meaning a group of people some of whom are Deaf, some of whom are Blind).
May I present the Telebraille.