Top Braille

Top Braille in use

Top-Braille is a revolutionary and portable personal reading assistant, enabling vision-impaired people to instantly access printed text. Small and light, it can be carried anywhere.

What does Top-Braille do?

Top-Braille addresses one of the greatest challenges for vision-impaired people: to instantly and reliably read standard printed text in any situation. As the name suggests, Top-Braille reads printed characters and instantly outputs the Braille equivalent via a built-in character pad shaped like a Braille cell. By moving the unit along a page or item of printed text, the user can read words and sentences in real-time.
Top-Braille can also speak the words aloud, letter-by-letter, in conjunction with Braille output.

How does it work?

As the user moves the Top-Braille along a line of text, a high definition lens scans each character. Built-in software then immediately translates the character to Braille, and the resulting character is displayed on a Braille matrix. So, by simply resting a finger on the Braille matrix whilst moving the Top-Braille horizontally, the user receives an instant Braille translation of the text being scanned. Navigation dots above and below the Braille cell, as well as audio cues, locate text in a document and guide and orient the user in order to remain aligned with the text being read. Rollers enable a smooth, flowing movement across the text.
Optionally, Top-Braille can also be set to process each completed word and read it aloud, either through the built-in speaker or via earphones. This integrated speech feature makes it a perfect pedagogical tool for learning Braille.
Top-Braille is discreet, lightweight and ergonomic and has rapidly become essential in the daily lives of vision-impaired people.

Key Functions

  • Recognition of all printed text with Braille and speech output
  • Recognition of all printed text with Braille output only
  • Colour recognition
  • Reading of preloaded (USB) text with Braille and speech output

Characteristics

  • Reading speeds of up to 20 characters per second, depending on user’s ability in Braille
  • Up to 6 hours usage per battery charge
  • Braille cell specifically developed by Metec™ includes 6 dots for reading and 2 dots for navigation purposes

This short video demonstrates the Top-Braille in use.

For more information, click here to visit the Top-Braille website.

This podcast introduces the Top-braille.

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Valleys WordWorks is the distributor for Top-Braille in the U.K. and Ireland. All Top-Braille units sold by us include two hours of training in the use of the device.
Please contact us for more information about Top-Braille.