Anyone who has delivered a live technology demonstration knows the feeling: you are driving the screen reader, narrating every keystroke for your audience, fielding questions, and somewhere in the back of your mind trying to remember which example comes next. Recently, I delivered a screen-reader accessibility demo on the job, and this time I had a secret weapon sitting right beside my keyboard: my Monarch multi-line Braille display.
The Demo: Keyboard and Focus Success Criteria in the Real World
The demonstration walked my colleagues and students through real examples of both failures and successes of the keyboard and focus WCAG success criteria, using a popular electronics shopping website with the JAWS screen reader on Google Chrome. Live sites are wonderful for this kind of demo because nothing is staged, but that same unpredictability means a presenter needs a reliable way to stay oriented. Which page was I visiting next? Which control demonstrated the focus visibility failure? Which component showed keyboard access done right?
Preparing My Notes with QUILL and KeyDrive
Before the session, I wrote up brief notes as a plain text file using the new QUILL editor. If you have not tried it yet, QUILL is free, community-driven, screen-reader-first writing software for Windows and macOS, designed from the ground up for blind and low-vision users, with first-class support for braille displays and braille file formats. It was the perfect tool for quickly capturing a clean, uncluttered outline of my demo steps.
I saved the notes to Google Drive, then loaded them onto the Monarch using KeyDrive. That was the entire workflow: write, save, load. No conversion gymnastics, no printing, no last-minute scrambling.
Ten Lines of Braille Changed Everything
Here is where the Monarch earned its keep. As I moved through the live demonstration, I could simply reach over to the device, quickly find my place on the 10-line braille display, and jog my memory about which steps to complete in what order. Because I could see an entire section of my outline at once rather than a single line at a time, reorienting took a moment of light touch reading instead of a disruptive pause. My hands stayed in the flow, my narration never stalled, and my audience got a smooth, confident walkthrough.
For those of us who present regularly, this is the multiline difference in a nutshell. A single-line display can hold your notes, but a ten-line display lets you scan them the way a sighted presenter glances at index cards or speaker notes.
The Result
The demo was a resounding success, with lots of engagement and feedback from attendees. Showing real keyboard and focus barriers, and real fixes, on a website people actually use makes accessibility concrete in a way no slide deck can. Having my braille notes at my fingertips let me focus on the teaching instead of the logistics.
Thank You, APH Project Rise
None of this would have been possible without the Monarch RISE Project from the American Printing House for the Blind, which provided me with my Monarch along with all the amazing opportunities that come with it. Project Rise is building a community of Monarch users who share strategies and success stories to advance braille access and competitive integrated employment, and I am deeply grateful to be part of it. This demo was exactly the kind of workplace win the project was created to make possible.