From Braille ‘n Speak to BT Speak: A Personal Reflection

Most of our blog posts focus on the BT Speak. This is understandable; it is our flagship product and it receives frequent updates which adds new features and continually improves this amazing little computer. However, I thought I’d shift gears for this post as it was around October of 1987 that Blazie Engineering first released the Braille ‘n Speak. This product was noteworthy for several reasons.

Braille ‘n Speak was one of the first blindness computer products  which was not only portable but it was extremely compact, similar in size to BT Speak but much wider. Its price was only $895.00, which was more inexpensive than other computers at the time, even those built for sighted people. And, for an extra $99.00, you could purchase two additional features, a calculator and the stopwatch with countdown timer.

It was also very easy to use. Like today’s BT Speak, Braille ‘n Speak remembered which file you were working in and always placed you in that file as soon as it powered on. Like BT Speak, there was no need to go into a program before opening a file. Braille ‘n Speak was a portable, dedicated word processor. Navigating in a file used chord commands that were incredibly intuitive and easy to learn. In fact, they are the same commands used in BT Speak today.

The original Braille ‘n Speak, later called the Braille ‘n Speak classic, contained only 180K of storage, which was divided up into 45 pages with each page able to hold up to 4096 characters. It also contained a very small help file, consisting of no more than one page of text. This might not seem like a lot of storage but back then it could hold many documents, a calendar and your phone book.

Braille ‘n Speak generally received one or two updates per year. In its early days, the update was on an eprom chip which had to be physically installed onto the device. Customers either had to send their units to Blazie Engineering to be physically updated or those who had a maintenance contract could exchange their unit for another one with the newer update. In the mid-1990s, customers could finally install their own updates by copying them onto the unit from a 3.5-inch floppy disk if their Braille ‘n Speak had the new, state of the art flash rom technology. That was the best that could be offered as the Braille ‘n Speak had no Wi-Fi connectivity.

In 1988, I heard about the Braille ‘n Speak from a friend of mine and could scarcely believe what I was hearing. A portable device with a Braille keyboard and speech output sounded almost like science fiction to me and I knew that I just had to see it. I was living in Philadelphia during this time and a local adaptive equipment store, one which I myself would later work  for, was selling them. I took a bus and a train from my apartment to the store to try the Braille ‘n Speak for myself and it was like magic. I knew very little about how to operate it but I knew that I wanted to own one. I eventually sold another Braille device that I owned and this enabled me to purchase a Braille ‘n Speak in February of 1989. It was my only computer for over two years. It was my phone book, writing pad, word processor for writing fiction and I even connected it with my modem to go online, accessing bulletin board systems. I used it to keep track of customer data for two separate jobs that I had during that time.

The Braille ‘n Speak absolutely captivated me. Like so many other Blazie customers, it wasn’t just a specialized computer. There was something that almost seemed magical about that device which is difficult to put into words. It was compact, battery operated, reliable  and it was easy and fun to use. I learned how to use it in one weekend but I realized that I wanted to be more than a user. I wanted to work for the company that made the Braille ‘n Speak. A couple of years later, this wish would become a reality for me as I was offered a position at Blazie Engineering as a product support representative. I moved to Maryland and began working for the company in May of 1991. During my nearly seven years with Blazie Engineering, I saw the Braille ‘n Speak grow and evolve, introducing new features and capabilities that I never would have imagined back in 1988 when I first saw it. In October of 1991, we introduced the Braille ‘n Speak 640 with even more storage and room to add even more features, including the ability to run third party software, much of which was written by developers outside of the company. As a result of my work at Blazie Engineering, I found other roles involving computer training with blind children and adults, product manager with a major media and technology company and I'm now back working once again for the Blazie family, including taking some support calls, which is always my first love in this field. It is therefore no exaggeration when I say that the Braille ‘n Speak not only helped me to find work but it helped to launch a 34-year career.

We hope that the BT Speak will have the same appeal and magic that the Braille ‘n Speak once had for so many customers. It has the features that made the Braille ‘n Speak such a joy to use but with more storage and all of the conveniences of a twenty-first century computer.