The new Focus 14 and 40 Blue

By Scott Davert, 20 July, 2012

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Review Category
Braille Devices

Rating

5 Stars

Review

The Focus 14 is a very portable display, about the size of a Braille Pen, but it sports 2 more cells than the Pen, along with a slightly higher price tag than the Braille Pen, but that won't be the case for long.

Instead of wizwheels, you have a rocker button located at each end of the display that you can press up to move up or down to move down.

Above these scrol buttons you have a button that allows you to control the type of element the scrol buttons move by such as paragraph, sentence, line, or display width. The keyboard is much quieter than the older model Focus Blue, and the keys feel more like those on a Braille Sense or Edge. A much more comfortable typing experience than previous models, in my opinion. For those who like the rocker bars on the front of the display, you'll be happy to know that both the 14 and the 40 have them. The price for the Focus 40 Blue is the same as the earlier  generation, while the price of the 14 is $1295, The new 40 is already shipping, and according to one of the Freedom Scientific employees I spoke to, works with iOS 5.1.1. The 14 will ship later this month, and FS is taking preorders. It does not work with iOS 5, but the company says it works with 6. I was not able to verify either finding.

Both the 14 and 40 are a bit more compact than the earlier versions of these products. There are, however, no internal features such as a notetaking app, book reader, etc. However, for those who enjoy the Focus line of products, and the way in which they work seemlessly with JAWS, these new displays are worth considering. They appear to work as advertized, and the braille is more crisp than before.

Devices Accessory Was Used With

iPhone

Disclaimer

The article on this page has generously been submitted by a member of the AppleVis community. As AppleVis is a community-powered website, we make no guarantee, either express or implied, of the accuracy or completeness of the information.

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Comments

By Nafisah on Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - 09:42

Does the Focus 14 offer cursor routing keys?

Hello. Though I don't have one, I do know from a podcast that i'm pretty sure the demo had them. Man if I'd waited two years I could've gotten the new generation. Oh well, maybe I can upgrade eventually. Nice review by the way :)

By Travis Roth on Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - 09:42

It should be noted that iOS 6 uses a somewhat different command structure than JAWS. This is of course to be expected as they're different screen readers operating on different operating systems. The thing to note here is the original review mentions the rocker switches at each end of the braille line can scroll up and down by lines, sentences, etc. This is not entirely accurate when using iOS 6. The left switch will move by the previous and next rotor setting. The right one moves to the previous and next element, like swiping left and right. I did not find a way to further configure this. The mode buttons above each switch only select the selected item, which can also be done with cursor routing keys, etc. So it seems like a bit of a waste of button functionality. It would also be nice if these could be configured to do display panning... Anyways, we'll either have to hope Apple does further tweaking of the layout or gives the user the ability to configure the commands... The other item I wanted to point out was the sleep mode of the Focus 14 Blue when operating in Bluetooth mode which is how its used with iOS devices. It appears overall the display does not like to sleep. By default it is set to a 30 minute wait until it sleeps--this can be configured to five minutes. The display will wake up upon the pressing of any button on the display. And pressing the Power button briefly will not put the display to sleep like seen on some other displays. I do not know if this is common with braille displays overall as my only other pocket sized Bluetooth display experience has been with a BrailleConnect 12 which seems to handle sleep a bit better in that the power button tapped briefly will put it to sleep and it requires the power button to be tapped again or a Bluetooth connection to awaken it again, giving leeway of other keys to be bumped without waking up the display during transport and so forth. I am not sure how big a deal this is, if at all; it seems like extra battery drain to me at a minimum, but I have not tested the display over a long enough time to see if there is a real negative affect due to this power and sleep management methodology.

By Kelsey Nicolay on Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - 09:42

Yes, the Focus does have cursor routign buttons. Regarding sleep mede, I never experienced a significant battery drain when I had mine.

By Karok on Friday, June 23, 2017 - 09:42

hi all how is using a focus 14 these days, now with ios 10 and the soon to be released, ios 11? can i customize the buttons, if i buy one? also, isn't 14 cells a bit limited, although, having that with me and leaving phone securely tucked away somewhere when traveling is appealing. how would i unlock the phone though with the focus?

By Karok on Friday, June 23, 2017 - 09:42

also, does auto-advance work on this display in ios 10?