Bringing JAWS to Monarch: What It Means for Users

On this episode of Change Makers, learn what's being done in preparation for JAWS to launch on the Monarch. JAWS is expected to arrive on the Monarch in the fall of 2025.

Interviews in order of appearance

• Andrew Flatres, HumanWare Senior Braille Product Manager
• Ryan Jones, Vispero Vice President of Software and Product Management
• Jennifer Wenzel, APH Technology Product Specialist
• Michael Dennis, APH Technology Product Specialist

Additional Links

• HumanWare website
• Vispero website
• Meet Monarch
• Email Change Makers

Transcript

Narrator: 0:00

Welcome to Changemakers, a podcast from APH. We're talking to people from around the world who are creating positive change in the lives of people who are blind or have low vision. Here's your host.

Sara Brown: 0:15

Hello and welcome to Change Makers. I'm APH's public relations manager, Sara Brown. And as promised, we're continuing that conversation about the exciting apps and features that are either available or coming soon to the Monarch. Today, we're talking about JAWS. Yes, JAWS will soon be available on the Monarch. And to talk more about this exciting feature, I have Andrew Flatres, HumanWare Senior Braille Product Manager, and Ryan Jones, Vice President of Software and Product Manager for Vespero. Hello, Andrew. Hello, Ryan. And welcome to Change Makers.

Ryan Jones: 0:51

Hi, Sarah. Great to be here.

Andrew Flatres: 0:53

Hi, Sara. It's great to be here,

Sara Brown: 0:55

And I'm so excited to have you all on. But before we get into the questions, do you mind just to introduce yourselves and let our listeners know what it is that you do?

Andrew Flatres: 1:06

Sure, I can go ahead and start. So my name is Andrew Flatres. I'm the Senior Braille Product Manager at HumanWare. And my responsibilities at HumanWare include all things braille and tactile. So everything including the braille displays, note takers, Monarch, of course. I'm responsible for the roadmap and the new upcoming products as well. I've been with HumanWare for over 22 years and really enjoy it. I'm very passionate about braille.

Ryan Jones: 1:34

I'm Ryan Jones. I'm the Vice President of Software and Product Management at Vispero. I've been with the company for almost 20 years now. I oversee all of the teams that build and support and do training and product management for our software products. So most notably, our assistive technology software, JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion. We also have software that make kiosks accessible. We have enterprise-level software for helping people or companies make their digital technology more accessible. So I oversee all the teams that work on those platforms, but I know most notably we're talking about JAWS today, so I get the pleasure of leading the team that builds, supports, and works with the Jaws products.

Sara Brown: 2:23

That's right. And those are two very well-known companies, HumanWare and Vispero, especially in the blind and low vision field. And Ryan, you're right. We're talking about JAWS today. Talk about this new feature that's making its way to the Monarch.

Ryan Jones: 2:38

Yeah, so I'll share just briefly about JAWS and kind of what we're doing there, and then I'll let Andrew talk about The Monarch and what he's seeing in some of this as well. But JAWS, of course, is screen reading software for people who are blind or low vision. It's a very global software. We have people using JAWS all over the world, most all countries. So it's the primary screen reader used in the workplace setting and in education settings. And JAWS supports both text-to-speech for people who want to hear what's on the screen and also braille output for people who want to use a refreshable braille display to also know what's on the screen. JAWS has had support for braille for many, many years, multiple types of braille devices and from different manufacturers, of course, including the HumanWare Braille displays. But most notably, as we move into this new phase of braille and the introduction of multi-line braille devices and tactile braille devices, JAWS is now adding in support so that you can use JAWS with these devices like the Monarch. And so we're really excited that we've been partnering a lot with Andrew at HumanWare and the APH team to work on what do the interactions look like? I mean, multi-line Braille is something that's new. to the industry still. People are learning and creating how the interaction should be. How should a person... be able to use a screen reader with a device that can produce many lines of braille. And so we've been partnering with the teams at APH and HumanWare to design what that looks like. And so we're happy that JAWS is bringing that support in now. We're starting with some basic functionality. We'll keep adding that over the future. We're kind of in a test phase right now where we're showing the early preview of what this looks like before we actually finalize it and bring it into the product. But really happy to do this. I think it's changing the way people interact with Braille. It's certainly changing the way people interact with JAWS and Braille. But Andrew, I'd love to hear your comments on this because you're seeing this on the hardware side from the front lines of how this is changing lives for people and how they interact with Braille.

Andrew Flatres: 4:57

Yes, certainly. And we've had the pleasure of showcasing some of the pre-release of JAWS, showcasing some of the enhancements that JAWS has introduced to support multiple lines of Braille. And as Ryan was saying, multiple lines of Braille, it's like a big buzzword, similar to AI, right? But over 50 years now, Braille readers have been confined to a single line of text, whether it's been 20 cells or all the way up to 80 cells. And I always picture this to someone who's sighted. Imagine reading a paragraph, a table, or an Excel spreadsheet just through a straw, one line at a time. It's not exactly ideal, right? And you look at comprehension, spatial awareness, formatting. These aren't just fancy words. They're essential for truly understanding how information connects, especially in structured documents. These are just some of the key concepts that we had to consider when designing the Monarch from scratch, not just from the standalone, but as Ryan was saying, when you're looking to connect to a full-fledged computer, understanding how can certain items and workflows be displayed in multiple lines of brow. There's been a lot of thought that has gone into it, that's for sure. And kudos to the JAWS team. I mean, what we've been showing is crop mode, which is a mode that's introduced into where you have a table. And when you get to this table, you're able to see the structure of that table. And this is something that is now really unique and new to Braille users of actually being able to see how that table fits structured as opposed to one line. So what we've showcased during the shows has been fantastic. And I see that the JAWS team have been adding and adding more enhancements. It's been really, really incredible to see. So this really, the combination transforms Monarch into this true powerhouse, perfectly suited for both educational settings and the workplace. So it's really good to see an exciting times ahead.

Ryan Jones: 7:02

And maybe I could share just a couple of examples of some things that you might be able to do or will be able to do as we go forward. So think of an example. Maybe you're a student and you're working on a presentation. You're delivering a PowerPoint presentation and on the Monarch using JAWS, you'll be able to have your PowerPoint slide speakers notes on one half of the display. So maybe at the top, the top few lines of display are showing your speakers notes and the bottom section of the display is showing the content on the slide and you can pan and navigate through those sections independently instead of having to toggle your braille display back and forth and trying to remember which part of the presentation you're looking at you can have both of them on the display at the same time and just move your hand from the top section to the bottom section or what have you or maybe you're at work and you're looking at content on a web page and you also want to be looking at content from an email. Maybe you're following some instructions to do something on the web and you've got an email open with those steps. You can have the email open on one part of the display and the web page on the other part and you can interact with them independently from each other. And it really kind of starts getting into the idea of what people who can visually see if they're using two monitors, for example, or they've got two screens and you're glancing back and forth We're kind of reproducing that idea with using something like the Monarch and JAWS together.

Sara Brown: 8:31

Can you explain why this is such an important development for the Monarch?

Ryan Jones: 8:35

Braille technology has been around for quite a long time now, and JAWS has supported the use of Braille for people who read Braille for quite a long time, but it's really taking it to the next level. This is a whole new paradigm for people who read Braille to access information in multiple lines at the same time on a Braille display now with Jaws and The Monarch. And I like Andrew's example of using a straw, thinking about it, if you were to take a piece of paper and try to read with a straw, I often use the similar analogy for describing what screen reading is. is like, where you can read one thing at a time when you're using text-to-speech because JAWS moves around the screen in response to keyboard commands, but you're only getting one piece at a time. And then you have to build a mental map in your mind of how everything relates together. But with multi-line braille now, you'll be able to have a lot of things at your fingertips at once. You'll be able to see much of a spreadsheet or how the rows and columns interact with each other, how it's formatted on the screen, things that would not have really been possible in the past to understand or not easily possible in the past to understand. If you are a braille reader using something like the Monarch and JAWS, those things will come to life and be much easier to understand.

Sara Brown: 9:42

So this sounds like it's really opening the doors of all access in all situations.

Ryan Jones: 10:05

Yeah, I would agree. Andrew, you've probably seen some examples working with people using this and some of their reactions of what it's opening up for them.

Sara Brown: 10:13

Yeah, do you have anything?

Ryan Jones: 10:13

The reactions.

Sara Brown: 10:14

Yeah.

Andrew Flatres: 10:15

Yeah, the reactions has been phenomenal. As I mentioned before, we've had the opportunity, unfortunately, to show it at some exhibitions like Sight City. And we'll be showcasing it as well at the upcoming NFB event, the Sight Village back in UK. We'll have a pre-release version with all the new and exciting enhancement that JAWS has included. I've not had a chance to try them myself yet. I'm eager to, but I was away on vacation last week. But from what I saw at Site City, people really, really took to it. They said, I mean, some of the comments was like, this is what we've been waiting for. And it's really interesting, Ryan mentioned about the spit brow. And that was a feature that JAWS brought out maybe over a year ago now, I believe, Ryan? Yeah, a couple of years ago. Yeah, that kind of gave us a glimpse into what was possible. And given Braille users their own version of a dual monitor, and I always compare this with sighted users that have dual monitors. So why shouldn't someone who's a Braille user have that same ability to make them productive? Now, with the Monarch, it's got a whopping 320 Braille cells. And traditionally, I mentioned single line displays from 20 to 80. But taking that on board of 320 cells now and combine that with JAWS and the evolving capabilities, We're now really getting into an interesting space. We're able to interact with complex spatial formatted documents, which is crucial. Certainly for the younger Braille users, we don't want them to think that Braille is just one long line. With Braille being a lot longer than text, showing basic understanding of tables and Excel documents is extremely difficult to grasp. I mean, I don't know how some of the Braille users do it, me being sighted, but starting to see now how Braille can be presented in that similar fashion without having to have all these multiple pages of Braille paper everywhere and seeing this dynamically is really getting this into a unique space. And one of the things that people did mention was, are we able to select cells? You know, I was given the example of showing a spreadsheet and it was the, I think it was the weather forecast. And at that time you was unable to use our point and click gestures that we have. So the Monarch has touch capabilities. I'm led to believe now it's in the latest version, which I've not yet tried, but you'll have the possibilities now to, in a multiple line way, select those cells that you want to go into and make those changes. So yeah, really exciting times ahead.

Sara Brown: 12:56

And is there any ETA or any word on when JAWS will be available, whether it's just a season or time of the year? Can you share anything? I understand these are floating and these can change.

Ryan Jones: 13:11

Absolutely. I think it's always changing the software world, but we're glad we have early prototypes, as Andrew was saying, that we're showing right now. We expect the first release of this to be in JAWS sometime in the fall of 2025. So we're recording this here at the 1st of July. So really a couple of months from now, we expect this to make its way into JAWS for people to start using. And of course, like anything, it will always evolve and get better. What we start off with will not be the finished product we will always add more we'll take feedback we'll work with APH HumanWare to bring in the feedback that they hear and we'll keep making this better but look for this to make its way into jaws here in early fall of 2025.

Sara Brown: 13:58

Great and before I let you both go is there anything else you would like to share or discuss?

Andrew Flatres: 14:04

Just on my side uh on the Monarch side Version 1.3, that's soon to be released. So the release date for 1.3, which introduces the support, so support ready for multiple lines of Braille with JAWS, will be available 8th of July.

Ryan Jones: 14:20

Yeah, and from the JAWS perspective, as we celebrate 30 years of JAWS and we look forward to the future. I think there's a lot of excitement that we have as a team around what we're able to do with support for Braille. There's a lot we're working on from an AI perspective now and helping get access to information on the screen that traditionally were barriers for people who are blind or low vision. So this is a very fun time to be in this field and a fun time, an exciting time to be working on problems that we've all faced and experience for many years. Barriers around access to Braille information have existed for a long time. And we're really excited now that we're seeing some of those barriers come down. We're seeing some of those barriers come down on other areas of screen reading, like for graphic information or visual information that we can now interpret better with AI. So I just... I think it's a really exciting time to be working in this space. And there's a lot of great things coming to help us use these products better.

Sara Brown: 15:28

Great. Ryan, Andrew, thank you. Thank you both so much for coming and talking to me today on Change Makers.

Andrew Flatres: 15:36

Thank you, Sara. That's been great. Thanks, Sara. Thanks, Ryan.

Sara Brown: 15:41

And that Monarch update Andrew mentioned has already been pushed out, so make sure that your Monarch has been updated so it's ready for multi-line braille usage. For the latest information about JAWS, be sure to follow APH's social media channels for updates on when it's released. Now it's time for our monthly Tech Takeaway with APH's Jennifer Wenzel and Michael Dennis.

Michael Dennis: 16:07

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the second episode of our APH Tech Takeaways. My name is Michael Dennis.

Jennifer Wenzel: 16:15

And my name is Jennifer Wenzel. And we're your technology product specialists from APH, here to bring you some tips and tricks for APH products. We're so glad you're with us today.

Michael Dennis: 16:26

And today we're gonna have a really interesting topic. We will talk to you guys about language profiles on the Monarch. And I think Jennifer, you can definitely tell us something about language profiles and what's actually the biggest benefit of them.

Jennifer Wenzel: 16:41

Absolutely. So language profiles can benefit people who are using Monarchs with multiple students. There are several options that can be configured in the language profile. The most important, I think, or the most beneficial reason to have different language profiles is the braille tables. So you can change between literary and computer braille, but that does not change your contraction level of braille. The way you change your contraction level of braille would be also in the language profile, but it is selecting a literary braille table if you're in literary braille. And so you were able to select For instance, Duxbury UEB Grade 1 or Duxbury UEB Grade 2. And often you need different levels for different students. So being able to select that and have a profile that, for instance, is in UEB Grade 2 and one that is in UEB Grade 1 makes it very quick and easy for you to switch or the student to switch back and forth. So the other things that can be configured in this profile are the voice, and some students may want a different voice than other students and they'd be able to do that. And you can also configure the math code that you use, whether it's UEB or Nemeth. So all of these things would be great to have in a quick, convenient way so that you can easily switch back between them. And the way you switch back and forth is enter with L, L for language profile. If you only have two, this will toggle between the two. If you have more, it will bring up a list and you can select from your list of profiles. You give each profile a name, you could use a number, you could use a student's initials, you could use whatever name you wanted, and you're able to go in and modify those named profiles at any time. And Michael will now talk with you about one of the great uses for language profiles beyond the uses I've just talked about, which is for students who might be learning a foreign language.

Michael Dennis: 18:56

Absolutely. In the language profile, we also do have the ability to change basically the Braille code to describe it that way, maybe a little bit. And actually target with that the language you're trying to learn at school. So the Monarch supports next to English currently three other languages in that case, which are Spanish, French, and German. And also with what Jennifer said already, we have the ability to tailor also then the language profile for any student we're maybe using the Monarch with for the foreign language they're actually learning. And we want to tell you guys two really important things you need to change in those language profiles or these particular profiles to learn a foreign language because there's two really important things you need to change and since my actual native language is German we're gonna do it today with the example of doing it for German. The first step I have my monarchy right in front of me And the first step we need to do when we're in our main menu is to hit space and O.

Monarch: 20:12

"Settings"

Michael Dennis: 20:15

Right away it says options menu and we're on the first bullet point in the list, which is configure language profiles. And that is exactly also what we want to choose.

Monarch: 20:28

German.

Michael Dennis: 20:30

So I do have already a German one in here, but to show you guys what we actually need to work on, we're going to add another language profile, which is also the really last bullet point in this list of items. That is what we want to choose, add additional language profile. So the first step we need to do is give the profile a name. That is what Jennifer already said. We can do initials or something like that, or student's name, or German, what I named my other one. But I just call that now MD for my initials. And then hit Enter. All right, now we're in the list of all the settings we can actually change. And as I said, there's two really important ones we need to work on. The first one, to be able to have a proper pronunciation in one of the three other languages next to English, we need to choose a voice. So we can just go with first letter navigation and hit B for voice. So you also heard this is still set on English USA Lily, but we need to change this. So we hit enter on that. So the really important part here is that if you have your Monarch as a standard, there's only one voice on there and we can download voices. That is the really last bullet point in this menu. It's called Manage Voices. You would hit enter on that and then just search for the language you want to do it for and then choose one of the options. I do have already two voices on here for German. This is a male voice called Andreas. I'm going to just hit enter on this one.

Monarch: 22:30

"It's been a while. German."

Michael Dennis: 22:37

And it brings me then automatically back to the menu where I have to configure my language profile. And the second really important portion is that we need to change our literary Braille table. Also to get there, we can just hit "L" for first letter navigation.

Monarch: 22:53

<Monarch speaking>

Michael Dennis: 23:00

We hit enter on that. So it is already set on the basic language English where we always need to go into. It doesn't matter if you want to do German, French or Spanish. We hit enter on that.

Monarch: 23:17

"Duxbury Grade 1."

Michael Dennis: 23:20

And now we get a huge list of English. How you can picture this list is basically also... If you would think about accents in a spoken language, it's a little bit the same. That is what we need to change now so that the voice we just chose also speaks in the proper accent we actually need. We need to go now for "G" to German, and we could do the same with "S" for Spanish or F for French. So let's hit "G." Okay. And now we also need to take care, the first German we get is German Method 2 UK, so that's the Great Britain version, but we always want to choose the one for the US, which is always German Method 3 US, so it's usually Method 3 with US. At the end, we just hit enter on that.

Monarch: 24:13

..."Language profile."

Michael Dennis: 24:20

And that is the two settings you actually need to change to be able to work on your Monarch in a foreign language. What we can do now is we could open a Word document and write in a different language. And then through space and L, what Jennifer talked about, we can easily switch our language profile between our primary one and the foreign language. And that is the whole secret behind the foreign language profiles. Jennifer, back to you in that moment. Any other advantages?

Jennifer Wenzel: 24:48

Yes. So just so people remember, these are designed for students learning the language, not native German speakers who would be maybe using German Braille. If Michael wanted to have the Monarch display in German Braille, he would pick one of the German Braille tables. But this is for American students learning English in a school. And so what it allows you to do is use the symbols Like for instance, in German, the A umlaut is dots three, four, five, the O umlaut is dots two, four, six, and the U umlaut is dots one, two, five, six. It lets you use those symbols and then use uncontracted Braille for the rest of the language. And the German voice will pronounce those symbols properly and pronounce the words properly when written that way. So this is a great way for students to learn a language to And you were able to switch back and forth, remember, with enter with L. The other thing I wanted to say is when Michael was saying that the choices are the last ones in the list, one quick way to navigate to those last choices in the list is space with dots four, five, six. That always brings you to the bottom of a file or a list. So that's space with four, five, six. So that's a lot about language profiles. We hope that's been helpful information for you and will help you with students in school as you're using them, as you're using the Monarch with the students in the fall.

Michael Dennis: 26:27

Thank you so much. And we hope that you're going to have a lot of fun also working in different languages with your students. And my name is Michael Dennis.

Jennifer Wenzel: 26:36

My name is Jennifer Wenzel. Have a great day.

Michael Dennis: 26:38

And thank you for listening to the Tech Takeaways from APH.

Sara Brown: 26:43

Do you have a tech takeaway question? Be sure to send it my way at changemakersataph.org. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Changemakers. Stay tuned to the next episode where we'll learn the latest about eBraille and get into a bit of science with the Monarch. Don't forget to send any questions or podcast topics you have to me at changemakers@aph.org. And as always, be sure to look for ways you can be a changemaker this week.