Meet Smart Help: Intelligent, Context-Aware Help for BT Speak

BT Speak gives you many ways to get help while you’re using it. For example, pressing h-chord gives you context sensitive help from wherever you happen to be. If you’re in the calculator, pressing h-chord opens up a help file containing all of the commands and functions that are available in the calculator.

If you’d like to browse through a list of all of our context sensitive help files, pressing o-chord followed by H opens the list of help files to choose from. Move up and down through the list and press enter on the help file which interests you. Also, our complete users’ manual can be found by pressing o-chord, H, and then select Guides and Tutorials.

Our latest update introduces an even more powerful way to get help. Smart Help is an AI-driven feature that provides focused, context-aware assistance and answers your questions in real time, based on exactly where you are and what you’re doing.

Smart Help lets you ask questions directly to an AI assistant trained on BT Speak’s user documentation. It understands your question and responds quickly with clear, relevant guidance tailored to what you’re trying to do.

How to use Smart Help

To use smart help, press h-chord along with dot 8. BT Speak responds with “How can I help?”. Enter your question, such as “how do I slow down speech” or “how do I delete a file?”

Press enter and after a few seconds, Smart Help responds with the answer along with the navigation commands to get to where you need to go. That answer can be read using standard reading commands, such as dot 4-chord to move to the next line of the response.

Press z-chord to exit the response and you will be asked if the answer was helpful. If it was, press Y or enter and smart help will exit.

If you felt that the response could be improved, press N for no.

If you select No, you will be asked if you’d like to submit a correction or feedback.

If you want to do this, type Y for yes. Type your feedback and then type ctrl+s to send it. You can do this by typing s along with dots 7 and 8.

A Few Notes on Using Smart Help

• Smart Help is a feature which was added to the December 2025 update. This update is available for customers whose BT Speak is under warranty or a maintenance contract.

  
  

• Smart Help requires a network connection. Make sure that your BT Speak is connected to Wi-Fi.

  
  

• Smart Help additionally gives you navigation instructions based on where you were when you invoked it. As an example, if you’re already in the Options menu and you ask how to delete a file, Smart Help won’t tell you to first enter the Options menu, since you’re already there. Instead, it will tell you to go to the file browser, which would be the next step from the Options menu.

  
  

• Smart Help's knowledge base is current to the fourth edition of the users’ manual. This means it lacks knowledge of a few features, such as BT Code, that were added recently. Never fear; Smart Help will continue learning over time as new updates become available.

  
  

• You have the option of typing your question in literary braille or computer braille. While at the input prompt, press dots 2-3-chord to type in Computer Braille or dots 5-6-chord to type your question in literary Braille. This honors the Literary Braille table that you’ve selected in Braille Settings.

  
  

• The more specific your question is, the more you’re likely going to get an equally specific answer. For example, asking “how do I read continuously through a file” will give you a more specific answer than something like “how do I read a file?”