A Guide to Braille Screen Input on iOS and iPadOS

Intro

iOS and iPadOS come with a feature that lets you type in braille right on the touch screen. It’s called Braille Screen Input, or BSI for short. It supports all the same codes and languages that work with supported braille displays. BSI can do several useful things:

• You can type braille in your preferred language and code, right on the touch screen
• you can search for and open apps from the home screen just by typing part of their name
• you can issue commands using braille, just like you would with a braille display connected
• you can use letters to move around a webpage, such as typing a braille h to move to the next heading
• you can type braille to search for on-screen controls, similar to VoiceOver's Item Chooser
• you can move around and select text you've written
• you can quickly send messages with a gesture instead of having to find the Send button

Braille Screen Input doesn't output braille, of course. It's all on the touch screen, and you still have to use speech or a connected braille display for output. Still, for those who know braille, BSI is a game-changer. Typing can be far faster than with the normal on-screen keyboard, finding and opening apps is very convenient, and command mode lets you navigate your device while staying in BSI. You can even re-assign gestures, such as giving yourself quick access to cut/copy/paste.

Setting It Up

The Main Settings

First, open the Settings app. Open Accessibility, then VoiceOver, then Braille, then Braille Screen Input.

The first switch you'll come to is "use activation gestures", which is probably on by default. With this switch on, you don't need to use the rotor to turn BSI on and off. If you tap two fingers on the screen, with one finger near the top and the other near the bottom, BSI will activate. You can then slide two fingers toward or away from each other while BSI is active to dismiss it. If you turn the gestures off, see below for how to do this with the VoiceOver rotor.

The next switch controls whether BSI will activate automatically. With "start automatically when editing text" on, anytime a keyboard appears on the screen, BSI will activate itself. If you always use BSI to type anyway, this can be quite handy. It does mean you'll have to exit BSI if you want to explore the screen before you start typing, though, or switch to command mode and use braille commands.

"Keep active until dismissed" is next. Say you use BSI on your home screen to find and open an app. With this switch on, BSI will stay active after the app opens, letting you use command mode or web navigation right away. Or, if you perform a search inside an app and are given a list of results, BSI will stay active and you'll have to dismiss it manually or use command mode to explore the results. The switch is off by default.

"Reverse dot positions" is the next switch you'll come to. This does what it sounds like: dots 1 and 3 swap positions, as do dots 4 and 6. To some people, this feels backward, since the index fingers are always dots 1 and 4 and the ring fingers always 3 and 6. To other people, though, it feels more natural to have the braille cell oriented so it's not upside down when the phone is held in the "away" typing position (see below). You can use this setting to choose the way that feels more comfortable to you.

"Visual text feedback" simply shows the character you're typing as you type it. It changes nothing about how BSI works, but it can be useful to let a sighted person watch what you're typing.

Next, you can choose typing feedback, turning on or off sounds and haptics. Note that only iPhones have the haptic option.

Mode announcement is next. This controls how VoiceOver tells you when you switch between input (typing text) and command modes. You can have VO speak, play a sound, or both. There are no haptics here, at least as of iOS 18.0. Note that, if you have VoiceOver sounds disabled and choose only the sound option here, you'll get no feedback at all when you switch modes.

Finally, you can choose the default braille table to be used. You can't add tables here, but you can do so if you back up one level to the main braille settings screen.

Using the Rotor

If you don't want to use the gestures to toggle BSI, or you want to have the rotor as another option, go back to VoiceOver's settings screen. Choose Rotor, then Rotor Items. Find the item called Braille Screen Input in the list and select it.

The position of this rotor item matters. If you move it to the very top of the rotor items list, it will always appear to the right of whichever rotor item you are currently on. This makes it quick to switch to so you can start typing without needing to move through a bunch of rotor items first; a clockwise rotor movement and you're in braille. If you want to leave braille input in a specific place in your rotor, you need only move it to the desired position. If you always want it to come after the "characters" option, for instance, drag it just under "characters". So long as it's not at the top of the list, it will stay where you put it.

Usage

Getting Into and out of BSI

To get started, find a place you can type. A note, an email, a text message, it doesn't matter. Somewhere a keyboard appears on the screen.

Now, assuming you're using the double tap gesture for BSI, position your fingers. I like to use my two index fingers, one near the top corner of the screen, and the other near the bottom corner. Turn your phone to landscape mode to make this easier. On iPad, you don't need to turn the device since there's so much room on the screen. Your fingers don't have to be directly across from each other, after all, just near the top and bottom.

Now, tap both fingers twice quickly, the same cadence you'd use for a normal double tap. You should hear a sound, and VoiceOver will say "braille screen input." You are now ready to type braille! To get back out of this mode, put two fingers on the screen and slide them directly apart, or pinch them together. The movement doesn't need to be much--I can easily do this with the first two fingers of one hand, moving them only a few inches. You can also use the normal two-finger scrub gesture. If you get stuck and can't get BSI to deactivate, just lock and unlock your device or turn VoiceOver off and back on.

If you're using the rotor instead of the gestures, simply rotor until you hear "braille screen input." Rotor or use the normal two-finger scrub gesture to get out of this mode.

Orientation and Mode

BSI can work in two main input orientations: tabletop and screen away. Tabletop is the simplest to grasp. In this mode, your device is flat on a table, screen up, in landscape mode. Your six (or eight, for iPad) fingers rest on the screen in the normal braille typing position.

Screen away mode is a bit more complicated, but is also what most people seem to prefer, at least on iPhone. In this mode, your phone is in landscape and the screen faces away from you,hence the name. The phone is parallel with your torso, held between your thumbs and pinkies. Some people like to press the back of the phone against their body for extra support and stability. Your thumbs and pinkies rest near the corners of the phone. For instance, between the corner and the side button, or near the mute switch/action button. Other people prefer to clamp the phone between their palms, instead of supporting it with their fingers.

Whichever way you prefer to do it, the end result should be that your six remaining fingers are free to move. The index, middle, and ring fingers of each hand should rest vertically on the screen, able to move away from and back to the screen freely. You'll use these six fingers to type. I promise this gets to be quite natural after a while, and isn't nearly as complex as I'm making it sound. This is one of those things that's hard to explain in words, but is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. You might want to start with a locked phone, or flip the phone around so you're touching the back, until you feel like you have the positioning right.

iOS will detect the mode by default. If your device is mostly horizontal, it'll enter tabletop mode. Flip it on its side, and it'll go into screen away mode. You can swipe three fingers down to lock or unlock the mode. One problem some people run into is getting Tabletop Mode into the correct orientation. Often, when it is first activated, the dots are flipped around, with dots 3 and 6 closest to you. To fix this, simply angle your device so it enters Away mode, but be sure the screen is facing toward you, not away from you as though you were going to type on it. Once you hear "Away mode" while the screen is facing you, put the device back into Tabletop Mode and you should find the orientation to now be correct. It may sound like a lot to go through, but it's really a quick rotation toward you and then flat again, and you'll hardly think about it after a while.

Calibration

You can calibrate Braille Screen Input, letting you better tell iOS where your fingers are. On iPhone, very quickly tap dots 4 5 6, then dots 1 2 3. Don't tap all six at once, do the three on your right hand as a group, then immediately do the same for the dots on your left hand. On iPad, tap all six dots simultaneously, twice, quickly. VoiceOver should say "dot positions calibrated."

You don't need to calibrate all the time. I've used BSI daily for years, and I calibrate quite infrequently. At a guess, I'd say I average a calibration every few months. I know of people who calibrate when they enter BSI, whether they strictly need to or not, as they find it gives them better results. Experiment and see what works for you.

Typing Feedback

Setting the amount of feedback you hear while typing braille is done the same way you'd set feedback for on-screen or bluetooth keyboards: select 'Typing Feedback' from VoiceOver's settings, and choose an option under the "braille screen input" heading. Your choice will not affect the feedback VoiceOver provides for other onscreen keyboards or hardware keyboards.

Note that feedback can work a bit differently in BSI. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

• In the default Mail app, swiping a finger right to insert a space results in VoiceOver speaking what you just typed, assuming you have word echo enabled. In most other places, though, VoiceOver will speak "space", and then what you just typed.
• If you backspace (swipe a finger left) before what you're typing has been translated, VoiceOver says the dots of the deleted character. However, as you type, you hear VoiceOver's best guess as to the translation of what you're typing.

Suggestions

As you type, you can swipe one finger up or down for suggestions. These aren't spellcheck suggestions, though they work in a similar way. Once you swipe a finger right for space, or use the command to translate what you're writing, you can swipe a finger up or down to hear suggestions for the previous word. I've never been able to tell how these suggestions are generated--sometimes it seems like they come from spelling, and other times they seem to come from braille errors.

Once you hear the suggestion you want, swipe a finger right to accept it. This inserts a space as well, which you'll want to delete. There may be a better way to handle suggestions, but this is a feature I almost never use. Leave a comment if you have suggestions (see what I did there?) on how I can improve this section.

Gestures

You can now enter BSI, type in either mode, lock your favorite mode if you want to, and calibrate the dot positions if things don't seem to be working quite right. Once BSI is active, you can, of course, type braille. Let's move on to the gestures you have available in BSI.

Here are the gestures you can use while in Braille Screen Input's braille typing mode:

• one-finger swipe right: space
• one-finger swipe left: delete most recent character (you cannot swipe left and hold to keep deleting)
• one-finger swipe up/down: access typing suggestions, apps that match what you've typed if on a Home Screen, or move by the HTML element whose first letter you entered (webpages/HTML content only)
• two-finger swipe left: delete previous word
• two-finger swipe right: new line
• two-finger swipe down: immediately translate current word (contracted mode only)
• two-finger swipe up: move to next braille table
• two-finger scrub: exit Braille Screen Input mode
• two-finger rotor left/right: choose another rotor setting, which will exit Braille Screen Input if you have BSI's gestures turned off in settings (see above)
• three finger swipe left/right: change between typing and command modes (see below for command mode details)
• Three-finger swipe up: quick action (app-specific, but usually submits a search, sends a message, that kind of thing)
• 3-finger swipe down: locks or unlocks the orientation (tabletop or away)

Command Mode

New in iOS 18 is Command Mode. When this is active, typing dots won't enter text like in Braille Input Mode. Instead, it will input commands, just as though you had a braille display attached and were entering chorded commands. For instance, dot 1 will simulate a one-finger swipe left, dots 1 2 3 will jump to the first item on the screen, 2 3 4 (s) will jump to the status bar, and so on.

Command Mode lets you issue VoiceOver commands without having to get out of BSI at all, or remember special gestures. Sometimes, it can even let you do things more quickly. For instance, Command Mode has commands for cut, copy, paste, undo, redo, notification center, control center, and more. Sure, you can customize your VoiceOver gestures to add these, but they're not there by default. They exist in Command Mode, though. And when you're ready to type text again, just swipe three fingers left or right.

For a list of possible commands, see Apple's documentation on common braille commands. Remember that, while this page says to press space with all these dot combinations, there's no space needed or used in Command Mode. You simply type the dot(s) for the command. Also, there is currently no way to customize these commands like you can do with an actual display.

Finding Apps With Braille

You can use braille to search for apps. On any home screen, activate BSI and begin typing the name of the app you want. As you type, VoiceOver will announce how many matches it has found. To browse them, swipe up or down with a finger, then swipe right with two fingers--the "enter" gesture--to open an app once you hear it.

Matching is done using the app's name. If you type "s", for instance, apps starting with s will show up. Other apps with s somewhere in their name will, too. Say you have an app called Stamps. If you type "st", Stamps will be among the first to show up as you swipe down through the matches. However, you'll also find App Store in that list.

You can use the delete gesture here, but space does nothing. You also don't seem able to use contracted braille.

Reviewing and Editing

While in braille Input mode (typing text), you have another set of commands available to you for reviewing and editing. All of these work while you hold down one finger--any finger--and swipe with one or more other fingers. I tend to hold down my right index finger and swipe with my left hand, but find what's most comfortable for you.

While holding a finger on the screen, swipe another single finger up or down. This will move between characters, words, and lines, similar to what you might be used to in the rotor. Once you land on what you want to move by, swipe one finger left to move back by that amount, or right to move forward. If you swipe left or right with two fingers, you'll select or de-select text instead of just moving.

For example, let's say you write the word "iPhone". Hold a finger on the screen, then swipe another finger up or down until you have selected characters. Swipe that finger left, and you'll hear the letters of "iPhone" backward as you move over them. Swipe right, and you'll hear them in the normal order as you move back over them to the right. This is moving your cursor. If you swipe until you hear "o", landing between the o and the n in iPhone, then start typing, what you type will appear between the o and n. If you swipe left with two fingers instead of one, you'll select each character you move over. Deleting (lift that stationary finger, then swipe any finger left) will delete the letters you selected.

Navigating Web Content

If you are on a webpage, you can use braille input to move around. For example, type an h, and then swipe down with one finger to move to the next heading, or up to move to the previous one. Exit BSI with the slide/pinch gesture, scrub, or rotor, depending on your settings. Focus should be on the element you just navigated to. This mode supports all the same first-letter navigation options as Quick Nav with an external keyboard.

Remember that you can also move to Command Mode with a three-finger swipe left or right. Once you use Braille Input mode to quickly jump to where you want to be, use Command Mode to start reading, selecting text, moving with swipe left/right commands (dot 1 or dot 4), and any other commands you want.

Text Expansion

You can type short codes in braille that expand to anything you want. I mostly use them to input common emojis, since accessing emojis in BSI is impossible. This didn't work for a long time, but it seems to be fixed in recent updates. If you go to Settings, then General, then Keyboard, you can enter text expansions.

For instance, I have an expansion set up so "xgd" changes to the guide dog emoji. All my codes start with x, since it's a letter that's almost never used to start a word. You can use anything you want. If I type xgd and swipe a finger right to enter a space, I hear that the guide dog emoji was inserted instead of the letters.

Command Customization

As with most of VoiceOver's commands, you can change many of the BSI gestures. Go to VoiceOver's settings, then Commands, then Braille Screen Input. Any commands you can't change will be dimmed.

Notice that there are a few unused commands, such as four-finger swipes. I use these for cut, copy, and paste. You can also change any commands you don't plan to use, such as "translate immediately" or "switch braille table". You could also modify a VoiceOver gesture not in the BSI section, to give yourself an easier way to activate BSI if you don't want to use the rotor or the default gesture.

Conclusion

It's no exaggeration to say that Braille Screen Input is a life-changing feature, at least for me. If you're comfortable with braille already, and can get used to typing on glass, you might find that BSI lets you type far faster than you can with the on-screen keyboard. You can also type punctuation and symbols easily, depending on your chosen braille table. Command mode gives you a whole new way to navigate your device, and might be easier than the default VO gestures if you normally use a braille display. Once you get used to BSI, there's no going back. For more, you can read Apple's official documentation on this topic. Note that, as of the time of writing, that linked page hasn't been updated for iOS 18.