BrailleNote mPower on Sierra

By Maldalain, 7 October, 2016

Forum
Braille on Apple Products

Greetings all,
I have BrailleNote mPower B32, I have not used it for a while as it is getting falty and old. I tried pairing it with the Mac to use it to edit few documents. It pairs fine but when I add it to VoiceOver as a braille display, VO utility announces a lengthy busy message then I get this message:
VoiceOver failed to load a driver for the Bluetooth device "BrailleNote."
If the device must be in a "terminal mode" to be used as a braille display, please make sure it is in that mode.
It's already paired and in Terminal Mode. Can it be because of Apple no longer supports it in Sierra? I tried the same with a Windows machine and it worked fine. Also it was paired and working as normal on El Capitan.
Thanks.

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Comments

By tunmi13 on Saturday, October 22, 2016 - 11:06

Possibly.
The mPower is a pretty old device, old meaning the device may not be supported for most things anymore.
But I think you could try a BrailleSense since that's a newer device. Or you could try the BrailleNote Apex.

By Maldalain on Saturday, October 22, 2016 - 11:06

In reply to by tunmi13

Well, not sure if it matters to Apple whether these devices are old or not since it's only for connecting to the Mac and getting the content in braille. Why to stop supporting it while I had to save a lot of money to get it in 2009? That's greedy and unfair. BrailleSense U2 or any other braille note taker or display is much far beyond my tiny budget now. I am really disappointed with Sierra.

I suggest contacting the accessibility team at Apple. They'll be able to tell you if the MPower is no longer supported or if you discovered a bug in Sierra. I wouldn't just assume the device is no longer supported because it isn't working. According to the error message you were given, it seems like Sierra correctly recognized the device but couldn't load the driver it needs to communicate with your MPower.

By Maldalain on Saturday, October 22, 2016 - 11:06

In reply to by Carlos Taylor

I did, they said something about specialised team who will look into this. So, not expecting anything to come ot of it. Again, wondering if the functionality of the braille display or note taker in Mac is just to get braille input and output, and it has been supported on El Capitan, why to abandon this in an operating system that is supposed to be a huge leap in terms of accessibility?

By Chris on Saturday, October 22, 2016 - 11:06

I have had this issue Since Snow Leopard. I suspect the device is simply too old and is not properly supported. It's either that or Apple has corrupt/missing drivers.

By Maldalain on Saturday, October 22, 2016 - 11:06

In reply to by Chris

Well, I was working on my BrailleNote on El Capitan all the time. Also I tested it on a friend's Mac who has not yet updated to Sierra and it worked fine. So probably Apple has stopped supporting it on sierra. Wondering if this is relevant to Humanware stopping the support for the mPower line too, and wondering if such relevance is fair enough for the blind. I am from a developing country and a blind person must work and work to afford buying a Perkins braille, let alone a braille display.

By rylee00 on Tuesday, November 22, 2016 - 11:06

Are you connecting with Bluetooth or USB? Unforunately macOS Sierra only supports connecting via Bluetooth for the mPower.