Hi E73, this is a topic that has been coming up a lot recently in
access technology circles. I myself am getting an old navigator 80
tomorrow. Unfortunately, if you're running a 64 bit operating system
you're out of luck as far as Jaws is concerned. Basically, the
navigator uses the same communications protocol as the old Blazie
PowerBraille displays, but Freedom Scientific in its infinite wisdom
has stopped allowing people to use the power braille models through
serial connections as of Jaws 11. If you had a power braille you could
still use it with Jaws 12 to 15, but only through an old style 25 pin
parallel port. However, the navigators don't ship with LPT ports so
you're out of luck. Now, if you're running a 32 bit operating system,
you can request a special build of Jaws from FS that will allow you to
use the navigator with PowerBraille drivers on a serial connection or
through a serial to USB dongle, but even then they might not provide
it to you. Fortunately, all is not lossed, because NVDA supports all
the old displays through BRLTTY. (and that includes using those
displays on 64 bit operating systems). This issue is so stupid, those
old braille displays are still in use all over the world, they were
made to last, and given the price people have to pay just to get the
blind equivalent of a computer monitor, you'd think FS would make sure
it supported as many displays as possible right? I for one can't
afford to buy a new focus 80, and I don't see why a navigator 80
shouldn't work with a screen reader I spent close to a thousand bucks
to buy. Could everyone on this list do people like E73 and myself a
favour? The more times people EMail freedom scientific tech support
and ask why old braille displays aren't supported, (hopefully) the
more freedom will realise that this is something their user base
wants. When that navigator 80 gets dropped off tomorrow, I'm
regrettably going to have to switch to NVDA for tasks involving
braille, (which is about half of what I use a computer for). I
definitely won't be buying Jaws anymore that's for sure. But, I would
if they were a little more responsive to user input and a little less
capitalistically motivated.

On 4/12/14, E73KG - Gradimir <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>     Hi to all,
>
> Today I got an old Braille display. On Braille display write: Navigator
> V3/2 40-8. Is there any more information about this Braille displays? How
> to set this old model that works with newer versions of JAWS, such as
> version 12.0 or later ?
>
> E73KG,     Gradimir
>