Braille-Edit and BEX were significant Apple II software products that brought voice, braille, and word processing for blind students to blind individuals and to schools across the United States. The extensive documentation allowed individuals and educators across the nation to set systems up themselves.
DEDICATION: We dedicate BEX 3.0 to Harvey Lauer, the bold and gentle pioneer who has helped an entire generation make sense of technology. His patient, constructive criticism and good humor encourage us to go on; Harvey made BEX possible.
| text portion | |
|---|---|
| Learner Level | bex_learn.pdf |
| User Level | bex_user.pdf |
| Master Level | bex_master.pdf |
| Interface Guide | bex_interface.pdf |
| Appendixes | bex_appendix.pdf |
| Differences between BEX 2.2 and BEX 3.0 | bex_differences.pdf |
| Quick Reference Card | bex_quick.pdf |
| Thick Reference Card | bex_thick.pdf |
| Reference Volume | bex_refvol.htm |
The BEX Manuals were written by Jesse Kaysen, Caryn Navy and David Holladay.
This is not a scan of the original BEX manual.This is a synthetic manual, created by salvaging the original BEX disks used to produce the BEX Manual, and converting the data to pdf files. Font size, carriage width, pagination is different that the original inkprint BEX manuals.
Articles in the Raised Dot Computing Newsletter with "BEX" in the article title.
Letter from David Holladay to Telesensory (TSI) about Versabraille/Apple software (1980). Five years after this letter was written, the first copy of BEX (version 2.0) was released. Telesensory did supply technical information about the VersaBraille which assisted Raised Dot Computing's software efforts.
David Holladay's paper on his program BRAILLE-EDIT from the Proceedings of the John Hopkins First National Search for Applications of Personal Computing to Aid the Handicapped, Oct. 31, 1981 (IEEE). This paper was written while the first versions of BRAILLE-EDIT were being written.
Discovery '83: Computer for the Disabled, Conference Papers, University of Wisconsin-Stout David Holladay has two papers submitted, one on BRAILLE-EDIT (pdf page 100), and one on math translation (pdf page 104)
Ashcroft paper: Research on Multimedia Access to Microcomputers for Visually Impaired Youth This is a paper that describes an ambitious plan to introduce microcomputers to blind students. What ended up happening is they used Braille-Edit with a number of students, and recorded the results.
Winter 1984 edition of Education of the Visually Handicapped This magazine created an very large increase of interest in the Apple II programs from Raised Dot Computing. This advertisement from Raised Dot Computing was especially effective. (pdf page 17)
Carroll Center 1985 Project Cable to teach Apple 2 Technology This paper describes an ambitious effort to train teachers across the country in the use of computers, braille, and access technology.
The Challenge of Rationality in Computer Access for the Visually Impaired (Robert Lambert, 1987) This paper finds fault in the BEX software on what appears to be trivial flaws. For example, the Apple Super Serial Card had two modes, "terminal" and "modem" (changing settings swaps the use of wires 2 and 3 for input and output). Raised Dot, not wanting users to swap all the time, documented all interfaces in the "terminal" setting. The author of this paper needed to use modem. So he had two serial cards (one for his modem and one for BEX applications). Once he realized that he could have done everything set at "modem", but with a different set of cables, he felt Raised Dot's lack of proper documentation cost him the price of an extra serial card.
National Braille Press: Beginner's Guide to Computers, 2nd Edition, 1987 This popular guide includes a review of BEX by Al Gayzagian & Michael May