Touch the Whole Picture: Nine Lines of Braille at Your Fingertips with the Canute 360 and Canute Console – Meet Ed Rodgers, Managing Director at Bristol Braille Technologies and Steph Sargent, Director at Vision Through Sound

Podcast Summary: While attending the 2023 NFB Convention in Houston Texas, Blind Abilities podcast host Simon Bonenfant met with Ed Rogers, Managing Director at Bristol Braille Technologies. Simon also talked with Steph Sargent, a contractor with Bristol Braille and a Director at Vision Through Sound. Hailing from the UK, Bristol Braille is a company that supports blind people in their assistive technology needs. Ed gives listeners an overview of Bristol Braille’s leading product, the Canute 360 Multi-line braille display.  From the Bristol Braille Website:  “It’s all about the nine lines! Canute’s 360-cell revolution. The World’s First and Only Affordable, Multi-line Braille E-reader. Canute 360 is ideal for use at home or the office. For professionals, home readers and college students Canute can drastically increase the availability of Braille material. It reads all pre-formatted Braille Ready Files (BRF) and Portable Embosser Files (PEF), meaning you can read texts from Bookshare, the RNIB Library or any other Braille library in the world. Ed and Steph next discuss their new product, the Canute Console.  From the Bristol Braille Website: “The Console is a nine-line Braille workstation for professionals and students doing programming or viewing and manipulating data. It is composed of a Canute 360 Braille display docked in a workstation that adds a pull-out QWERTY keyboard, a fold-up 13″ high contrast monitor, and runs off a Raspberry Pi 400 from the Linux command line. This pre-order is for anyone who already has a Canute 360 and wants to convert it into a Canute Console. You receive the dock, which converts any existing Canute 360 into a fully feature Canute Console, including new hardware and software”.  Ed also gives an overview of the process to make the Canute braille display. He credits the Braillists Foundation for their dedicated support and feedback to make the Canute what it is today. Ed closes the interview by discussing his inspiration for the founding of the company.  For those who would like to contact Bristol Braille Technologies, visit The Bristol Braille Website To contact the Braillists Foundation, visit their website at www.braillists.org Or send them an email at help@braillists.org To contact Vision Through Sound, visit their Website You can also reach Steph by sending her an email at stephanie@bristolbraille.org Or stephanie@visionthroughsound.co.uk We hope you have enjoyed this interview. If you would like to learn more and contact us, you can follow us on Twitter @Blind Abilities On the web at www.blindabilities.com Send us an email at info@blindabilities.com Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store and Google Play Store Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-6093. We would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Community on Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page and Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group. To contact Simon directly, send him an email at mailto:sbonenfant2@gmail.com