Braille is important. Braille allows Deaf-Blind people to use their devices and
read. Braille allows blind people to read silently or, for some, to
better comprehend what they read. In this post, I’ll detail how you can
use your Android phone only with Braille, and how you can get the most
out of it. I’m using a OnePlus 13, with TalkBack 16, and Android 15. I
have an Humanware NLS EReader and Braille Edge 40 as my Braille
displays.
This post sets out to help people new to Android, Deaf-Blind users,
and Assistive Technology Trainers. This piece is up-to-date as of
September 2, 2025. It is my utmost hope that this post will not be
current, with issues addressed, in the future. However, with the speed
of Android’s Braille development, I fear that the core issues of this
post, and thus the tips it gives, will be valuable for years to
come.
Setting up and Pairing
Since most Android phones have USB C, and many Braille displays these
days come with USB C, you can plug your Braille display into the phone,
and TalkBack should recognize and connect to it. This may not work when
you first boot your phone and turn on TalkBack, and I don’t have a
second Android device to test this with. However, TalkBack does support
USB Braille displays. For instructions on how to connect Bluetooth
displays, see this
article on connecting Braille displays. You can also check out the
articles under the related resources heading for how items are shown on
the display and a general list of commands.
Once your display is paired, it will show what’s in TalkBack’s focus.
You can navigate with the TalkBack Braille commands, like Enter with
dots 4-5, like pressing Tab, to go forward, and Backspace with dots 1-2,
like Shift + Tab, to move backward through each individual item on the
screen. Then, you can press Enter to activate an item.
As I said above, you can navigate one item at a time. Sometimes,
that’s all you need. However, Android is still new to the need for good
swiping order, or the need to actually swipe through things in general.
So, to speed things up a bit, you can navigate vertically. Space with
dot 4 will navigate to the next line. Space with dot 1 will navigate to
the previous line. You can use this in, for example, the Gemini app to
quickly find the Ask Gemini text field. You would do this by pressing
Space with dots 4-5-6, then use Space with dot 1 to move up until you
find the edit field.
You can also navigate from one window to another. enter with W moves
to the next window, and backspace with W moves to the previous one.
Windows are different apps, different parts of the screen, or things
like the navigation bar and status bar. They’re also used to show popup
notifications. So, if you wanted to quickly check the time, press Enter
with W, then if needed, use Enter with dots 4-5 or Backspace with dots
1-2. Then, when you’ve found the time and read it, use Backspace with W
to return to your app. TalkBack will try its hardest to place you
exactly where you left off.
To see more commands, you can press Backspace with Enter with K. This
will open TalkBack’s Braille settings, to the key command section. This
area is split into categories like Navigation and Editing.
Secret commands
However, the Braille display Commands list doesn’t show every command
your display can do. Your display likely has buttons besides the six
Perkins typing keys, panning keys, Backspace, Enter, and Space. There
are probably arrow keys, navigation keys, or function keys that are not
talked about in the TalkBack commands list. These commands come from the
BRLTTY. BRLTTY is a screen reader,
mainly for Braille only use, made for Linux in the 90’s, and has carried
on up to now. Its command structure is nonstandard, and does not support
typing in contracted Braille. It also has an Android port.
BrailleBack used BRLTTY under the hood, and that Braille support was
integrated into TalkBack. Since TalkBack also uses the same commands,
that haven’t been changed, from BRLTTY, like the Braille Edge F6 to open
Learn Mode/Braille display commands, and Right pad Left with Right Pad
Right for Paste, it’s easy to conclude that TalkBack uses BRLTTY as the
actual driver for all Braille displays. The reason it supports Grade 2
Braille entry is likely custom logic Google has patched into BRLTTY, and
the use of LibLouis.
This has a few ramifications. Firstly, Braille support is based on
free and open source software. This means that rather than build Braille
actively, Google has been, for many years, relying on the good will and
active maintenance from developers for whom BRLTTY is not their main
job. This puts plenty of pressure upon the BRLTTY maintainers, and
leaves Google to take the congratulations. It also shows an
unwillingness to put in the work needed to make a great, fully featured
Braille solution for TalkBack. For now, if you use anything besides the
most popular displays, you will see the exposed wiring that makes up
TalkBack’s Braille support. And that does not lead to a great
experience. It also means that you cannot set your own Braille commands,
and thus your unused buttons will remain useless, and the ones that do
unexpected things will remain that way until Google binds them or they
patch BRLTTY enough to let you bind your own commands.
Reading books and long text
Reading on Android is thoroughly based on audio. Blind users who do
not use Braille with Android have allowed app developers to get away
with making an audio first, and usually, audio-only, experience. This
shuts out Deaf-Blind users, or users who retain or learn information
better with Braille. Kindle is the only exception I’ve found to this,
and it has thus upset the TTS-only crowd.
TalkBack does have support for auto-scroll, and the command is even
bound for you. Not that you can rebind it, or assign it to another
command. The Auto-scroll is nice and generally works well, and supports
scrolling at different speeds depending on the line length, which iOS
does not support. However, if your reading is interrupted by a
notification, you are placed back where you started. If you are reading
a long Gemini response, for example, this can be very frustrating.
Similarly, the Braille driver will sometimes scroll from the current
Braille line to the line before it. Your only recourse is to navigate
away and try to read it again. If that doesn’t work, too bad. You can
only scroll forward and listen to it with speech later, if you can hear
speech.
Writing
Writing is a somewhat nice experience. the cursor is usually steady
within a text field, and translation is about as good as on iOS. One
thing to be aware of, though, is that if you want to submit the
information you’ve typed in without much fuss, don’t press Enter. On the
display, there will be a “next” or “done” in brackets after the text
you’ve written. Press a cursor routing key over that. Or, even better,
just press Space with B for Back. Pressing Enter, even in Multi-line
text fields like notes, can sometimes cause the display to jump to
another Window, like the status bar or navigation buttons.
Another issue you may run across is translation of emoticons. These
are like a colon and right parenthesis for a smiling face. If you write
them as a colon, then a right parenthesis in Unified English Braille, it
will output either “con)” or “conar”. To work around this, type dots
5-6, then a colon, then right parenthesis. On iOS, the dots 4-5 is not
needed. This may be an issue with how TalkBack handles contracted
Braille input, or the version of LibLouis they’re using.
Arithmetic
If you open the Calculator app, and type numbers, all you’ll hear is
the error sound. This is because the only time TalkBack can type is when
the TalkBack Braille keyboard is open. This means you’ll need to treat
the calculator like the PIN unlock screen and navigate to each number
individually and press Enter to activate, as if you are feeling around a
physical talking calculator. This is painfully inefficient when your
Braille display can easily type numbers. More Braille users need to
report these things, and it absolutely will not just be me doing the
reporting, as one person cannot move the behemoth that is Google.
So, the best way to do calculations is possibly to use Desmos, or to
ask Copilot. It’s the only Braille accessible AI assistant which will
output its response to an accessibility announcement which TalkBack
shows on the display, and may get your calculations wrong. This should
not be the case, but here we are.
This also brings about another issue with Braille entry, using
modifier keys. On Android, if you use a Bluetooth keyboard, you are able
to press commands like Control with N for new, or Control with Enter to
send an email, or Shift with Enter to make a new line. Since TalkBack
does not support the use of modifier keys in its Braille support, and
one cannot type when outside of a text field, one cannot enter these
quick, useful commands.
Learn Unicode
Emojis are important these days. If you get a message with just
Emoji, you want to know what they say. It could be the difference
between knowing that your joke was taken as funny, or offensive.
However, TalkBack won’t show the Emoji within Transcriber’s Notes
brackets like iOS does. It will show a Backslash character with dots 7
and 8 under it, then an X, then the Unicode Hexadecimal value in
Computer Braille. For example, the “rolling on the floor laughing” Emoji
is shown as “D83E” “DD23”. Users will not know what this means, and will
skip over it. Braille readers have become so used to this rude and
user-hostile behavior from big tech companies like Google, that they
barely notice that what they’re skipping over is actually important
information.
This extends passed Unicode, however. If you are reading text in
multiple languages, your TTS engine will change languages and read the
other language in a voice for that language. With Braille, however, it
does the same thing with Emoji. TalkBack has several Braille tables, and
Google has proven that they can guess languages with algorithms. They
simply do not use Braille enough to find it a problem. So, for
multilingual users or users learning a language, you’ll have to manually
switch to the Braille table for the other language, read the part of the
text that’s in that language, and switch back, or just learn Unicode. If
the user can hear, this will only be another reason to turn on speech
and put away the Braille display.
Conclusion
Braille support in Android has come a long way. We can now connect
USB and Bluetooth displays, including those with HID Braille, into the
phone and not have to download anything separate to use them. We can
type, read Kindle books, and navigate our phones fairly well with
TalkBack’s built-in commands. However, we are unable to use any
unexpected buttons on our displays, do calculations using the
calculator, or read Emojis and other Unicode effectively. Most apps are
also not designed for swipe-based navigation, and TalkBack itself is
more optimized for explore by touch.
However, with every update, we get more features and fixes. Perhaps
some day Braille support will be the industry standard that other
companies look up to. Time will tell how Braille support is treated by
the TalkBack developers. In the meantime, Braille Android users are able
to use most parts of the phone, and I hope the tips I’ve given helps you
use yours more, or helps you decide if you’d like to give Android a
try.