Are Braille Bluetooth Displays working Properly Again with IOS8.3 Update?

By John Gurd, 7 May, 2015

Forum
Braille on Apple Products

I heard some time ago that with the advent of IOS8 that Bluetooth Braille Display input didn't work very well. I know it was very laggy and some commands didn't work. I was thinking of getting a Focus Blue 14 but this has been putting me off. Does anyone know if the problem is fixed in IOS8.3 as I haven't seen any reports about this on Apple-Vis?

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Comments

By charadani on Sunday, May 24, 2015 - 18:20

As for my testing, it continues to fail. This can be viewed especially when writing text using the braille display. In a given moment it starts lagging behind and finally freezes. Input for more users would be benefitial since I have heard of people saying it works fine for them.

By Scott Davert on Sunday, May 24, 2015 - 18:20

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Hello.
I wish I had a simple answer for you, the short one is sort of. The lag time on my 5S is still there, but only sometimes. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to this, but whatever they did with the full cells at the beginning and end of the display seem to be what is causing the issue. If you are on anything slower than a 5S, the lag time is still significant. Quicknav still does not function correctly, but the find feature seems to be reliably working now. I hope this helps.

By John Gurd on Sunday, May 24, 2015 - 18:20

A friend of mine with a 5S has a Focus Blue 14 and it seems to be working well on IOS7. She was hoping to upgrade to IOS8 but in the light of other people's experience I don't think she will. I'm already using IOS8 on an iPhone 6 so I'll hold off getting a Braille display for now. Well, at least they've sorted out the qwerty Bluetooth keyboard issues... I suppose Apple Access know about the Braille display issues...?

I have found braille input much better with Ios8.3 than with its predecessors, and for me, this was also helped by getting an iPhone 6+. The failure of the 4S under the first release of iOS 8 spured me on to replace the phone. I have three braille devices, and although I think some improvement is stil required, issues of lagging have almost completely disappeared. Hopefully - more improvements with 8.4.