Testimonials

I am a totally blind professional jazz pianist and jazz piano instructor who has been a VERY SATISFIED owner of the HumanWare Maestro and Trekker GPS system since December, 2006 and May, 2007 respectively. Once I purchased the Trekker, I have used it on many occasions in my travels, both on foot and in automobiles. Trekker has been invaluable in guiding my wife Debii and me to unfamiliar destinations.

In September, 2007, I was invited to perform with a drummer and bassist in the Summer Jazz in the Park concert Series in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Trekker gave me a guided tour through downtown Milwaukee as Debii and I enjoyed the great weather and she took many pictures of the architectural landmarks both old and new.

In June, 2009, I purchased the Victor Reader Stream, and I can't express in words adequately how many hours of enjoyment and benefit I have gained by owning one. When I placed the order, the customer representative with whom I spoke told me that once I owned one, I would not want to be without it. She was 100% right!

The Stream has given me access to books that were previously either unavailable or only available in Braille. I remember my grade school and high school years when Braille, talking books on vinyl records, reel to reel tape and then cassettes were the available formats. Now, thanks to your magnificent Victor Reader Stream, the computer and the Internet, I can easily download titles and transfer them to my Stream and read at my leisure anywhere!

The Stream has also been invaluable to me as an instructor of jazz piano. Sometimes during lessons, I use recordings by great jazz pianists to illustrate techniques or stylistic concepts. Thanks to your latest Stream update, I can now easily search for and play any track that I have stored in the $VRMusic folder! Such convenience and flexibility was unheard of when I attended Dartmouth College from 1967 through 1971 and the University of New Hampshire from 1974 to 1978.

Finally, I want to commend all of you for your sincere, dedicated and diligent work as you develop products that are truly user friendly and perform exactly as promised. Furthermore, your philosophy of giving users access to FREE, DOWNLOADABLE UPDATES TO THE ASSOCIATED SOFTWARE demonstrates your commitment to assuring that owners of your products can always keep them up to date and performing optimally!

Keep doing your marvelous and wonderful work that allows people such as me to attain greater independence, education and enjoyment by owning your products.

I walked to the Post Office today which is a good two miles one way. The best part, because it was such a nice day, my husband walked with me with the two Pugs as well I had Ms. Whisper (my Service Dog) with me. My husband has never really seen me walk with Whisper, my cane, and the Breeze. I walked in front as I had the Breeze. My husband offered no help except to tell me where there was ice or low hanging tree branches. He said he did not want to take away from any of my skills. He was totally amazed at my confidence and I knew exactly where I was at all times. I just have to remember to turn the volume down when I go inside, as I had the speaker attached and I had everyone turn around and then they all wanted to know about the Breeze.

Being an avid crafter, I purchased a large needlepoint canvas to keep me occupied during the anticipated long hours at the hospital. I pulled it out, I had the yarn to finish it; however, my vision is no longer adequate to do such detailed work. I used every available magnifier I could find, with limited success. I then saw the SmartView. By using the SmartView I was able to complete the project and present it to my Son, Daughter-In-Law and Granddaughter on October 15, 2011 exactly 29 years after I started it!

Since getting my Brailliant 40, I have had access to braille outside of the blind school I attended. This meant that if I got my college textbooks electronically, I could still read them. Even between semesters and beyond, I could use the brailliant with my iOS device and read books purchased using iBooks! This meant that I could still keep my braille reading skill up while still enjoying a book for the same cost as everyone else! This was not my first braille display, but it's been my best!

I have a pretty active social life and like to travel a lot and often fly or take Amtrak trains alone. This would not be possible without my little Brailliant Braille display. Since I am deaf and cannot hear to talk on the phone and am also blind and cannot see to read texts, this is my only way of communicating with anyone. I not only use text messaging to communicate with family and friends but also use it to communicate with my employer, to "call in sick", to schedule appointments with doctors, to ask my guide dog school questions, and to check my credit card and checking accounts and the weather. It also allows me to access the web where I can shop for my groceries, dog food, Braille embosser paper, labeling tape and more. And last but not least, my Brailliant gives me 24/7 access to a favorite pastime: reading. I love to read!

I was working with an early elementary student. Like all young students her dexterity, finger isolation and strength was weak. She spent more energy trying to push down the keys on a Perkins than focusing on her braille symbols as she wrote words and sentences. This is a very bright little girl. To see her labor over mechanics while she was ready to burst into braille was frustrating. I knew about the MountBatten and had seen it at conference. I took a mini class and I was sold. I purchased two as we had another student who was struggling. The difference was immediate. She moved over the keys easily. Because she no longer has to keep "pushing those keys down" she writes pages which is also contributing to putting a story together, sequencing, and using more punctuation. Problem solving along with using her imagination also are increased. No more heavy sighs over brailling. I cannot say enough about this. One of our best purchases!

We now have 9 Classmate readers in use daily in our class as well as 2 of our families have purchased Classmate Readers for their child to use at home.As we began to pull the most recent test scores a week ago, 85% of our students were not only on the grid, but some had even doubled their lexile scores from the previous test 4 months ago! Not only that, but our students' daily language and vocabulary are increasing at a dramatic rate! Humanware's Classmate Reader has changed the world for the students within our program.

I love the fact that I can now communicate with family members who are deaf. Also I am a deaf blind person so the DBC sure comes in handy. I love the fact that I can send a message with the DBC and then my family members can send a message back to me. I love the fact that I can now read the message and keep the communication going. I also love the fact that now I can use the DBC as a TTY to call my family and keep in touch.

View Plus has been invaluable, allowing us to emboss the regular classroom materials for these students. Since the ViewPlus allows us to interline print what is Brailled, anyone can assist the student with their work, not just the teachers and TAs in the school who have learned Braille. It is truly a great tool for everyone in our school and enables the blind students to participate in the activities that the sighted students do.

I'm able to do more with my BlackBerry device and Oratio as a first version of the product, than I've seen and heard first hand with other first versions of other products. I'm able to use my BlackBerry device with the help of Oratio for BlackBerry and keep up with my sighted counterparts. At times, I've even surpassed them and had to help them with the simplest tasks on their own BlackBerry devices! Oratio is a fantastic product which I truly believe is a benefit to the blind and/or visually impaired person desiring or in need of using a BlackBerry.

I struggled with reading. The fact that English is my second language made reading even more difficult. To make reading easier, my vision teacher introduced me to the Victor Reader ClassicX when I was in sixth grade. I LOVE this piece of technology! It is really easy to use, very intuitive, and I was using in with no problems within about a month of being introduced to it. For me, the Victor Reader is really a life-saver and makes possible many of the things I thought would be impossible.

Not be able to read was the worst thing about my sight lose. The Victor Reader allowed me to enjoy story's again.

As a math major in university, I have a volunteer record a peer's handwritten notes onto DAISY cd's, which I listen to on a DAISY reader from HumanWare. This allows me to bookmark important formulas or concepts to refer to later, and ensures I have access to all visual material (such as graphs) that I might miss in lecture. This resource is invaluable, and I'd be lost without it.

The Smartview 360 was invaluable in helping me adapt to my new way of life. Finally without struggles, I could do paperwork, read lengthy documents and do everyday tasks such as mail and paying bills at the office. The camera ability to see distances allowed me to use it to see the speakers and powerpoint presentations at medical and other meetings. On a personal level, it has been great for my home life too in applying makeup, threading a needle to sew, doing crosswords which I terribly missed and in general, giving me my life back as it was before the loss of vision.

Video magnification is essential. Without it I could not read labels and prices while shopping, balance my check book, write checks or notes by hand, read addresses on letters, labels on prescriptions, the mail itself, find places on maps, enjoy pictures, or make sense of all of the clutter on forms. I can make some sense of TV so long as I sit close, but need well lit magnification to get the right channel and sound level. These are life tools.

My Pocket Viewer is an invaluable tool – I write natural history books, essays and monographs, website and magazine articles describing the habits and habitat of the fascinating bio-diverse wildlife species that occur here in “America’s only Tropical Rainforest.’ I would be lost without the portability of my trusty Humanware Pocket Viewer – it has helped me to remain productive and meet or exceed publication deadlines – by using it constantly, I am still extremely ‘able’ despite my perceived disability.

The sense of freedom and triumph could probably only be understood by someone who, like me, had never been able to do something like this before unaccompanied. Thanks to the Breeze, this summer will be far less isolating for me than the last one. I've learned how to get to a mall and restaurant, my church, and a few other places including a centre where I volunteer once a week mentoring young people.

It is really satisfying to see the growth in my clients’ independence as they realize what the Trekker Breeze enables them to do.

I don't know how I ever got along without the Breeze. It has kept me from getting lost, and made traveling more efficient for me on countless occasions.

I have been using a Humanwear Trekker Breeze since August 2010 and it's the best aid I have along with my cane. I think of my Breeze as a friend and a helper so I would really like to let people know what a huge difference the Breeze can make to their independence and freedom.

I use my Voice Note daily both at work and at home and frankly, I can’t live without it. After several months of using it, my supervisor allowed me to demonstrate it to other staff members to raise awareness of what adaptive tools can do to prepare the blind and visually impaired for various kinds of work. So it's been a win, win situation and I thank the people of humanware for my Voice Note Empower QT!

Andrew had issues with taking his spelling test on a Perkins Braillewriter because the teacher could not score his test at the same time as other children. Now that he has learned how to use the Braille Note, Andrew takes his spelling tests in the classroom and when done prints his test out and gets it graded at the same time as the other kids. It is devices like the Braille Note that allow my son to be able to experience the classroom the same way his classmates do. It has helped his self-confidence and for that I am grateful! Thank you HumanWare.

I've been able to edit HTML code efficiently. -- When I call Dell's tech support line, I'm able to read off my customer ID. -- During my last year in college, notetaking was more efficient. -- As the webmaster for the National Alliance of Blind Students, I often use the Braille Note's braille display to read notes I prepare prior to board meetings. -- Dialing phone numbers is more efficient.

I rely on a voice note Apex, having retired the Empower for a newer Humanware model. I am just as pleased with it as I was with the first device and plan to use it for many years to come. It is an intuitive little machine, lightweight, portable, and able to interface with my personal computer with improved software tools. What impresses me the most is the improvements in internet accessibility and the ergonomic wrist rest below the QUARTY keyboard. This design improvement allows my hand to rest upon it so I have less wrist fatigue when typing for extended periods of time. Thank you Humanware for providing this great machine so people like me can continue to lead independent, productive lives.

My success story is my daughter. Her name is Julia. She is 5 years old and attends Kindergarten at Battle Grove Elementary School. This school year, with the help of her teachers, she has learned the basic functions of the BrailleNote taker. She is such a smart little girl, she reads very well and is constantly challanging us to push her even harder. With all of the advances in technology, it is only a matter of "what can the world handle" when it comes to my daughter, not what can she handle.

I love the Planner to help me schedule committee meetings and doctor appointments. I have used the alarm feature to wake me up in the morning. It works just great. The Address Book feature is wonderful for looking up telephone numbers and for sending emails. An excellent, very useful and fun product - the Apex. Thank you.

The use of Braille Note takers revolutionized many aspects of my life, and brought Braille back in to my world in a new way. For myself, one of the most thrilling concepts about me and my BrailleNote is the idea that the Braille world, which I thought I had lost has come back alive, and will always be part of me, how I work, and who I am. The BrailleNote allows me to be competitive, and still keep using Braille to eternity. I am looking forward to exploring many more uses I have still not touched upon for my BrailleNote. Some day, should I need to get an iPhone; the good part will be that I’ll be able to use it with my BrailleNote.

I have used the Braillenote for taking notes during Church, reading the songs that we sing during Church, taking notes at different conventions, reading the Bible, and reading books for enjoyment. Also, having the Braillenote requires me to practice my Braille, since I did not learn Braille as a youngster, I need to keep practicing the skill so that I do not lose it. The Voicenote and Braillenote both have made improved my life tremendously.

I have used VoiceNote and BrailleNote products for the past ten years. Before that, the Keynote Companion saw me through university. I now use the BrailleNote Apex for wordprocessing, email, diary and recording phone records. It even gets a workout on my laptop as a braille display from time to time. When people see me working on an Apex, they are immediately assured that they can have confidence in my ability to get the job done.

In confronting my blindness, the one thing I wanted to do was stay in my same junior high school with my same friends and lead my normal life. The BrailleNote and Oratio have been instrumental in allowing me to stay on that path. I use the BrailleNote in all my classes and I have been able to maintain a near straight “A” report card over the past year. I have a hope that any child that is blind will be able to use a BrailleNote to help them advance in school and become a productive adult. In addition, my social life has not missed a step either in part to HumanWare's Oratio. You can probably imagine how important text messaging is to kids these days and having Oratio on my Blackberry has been a God send.

With my Braille notetaker, I now have a voice in the classroom and have been able to make a number of presentations. It has opened up so many avenues of communication.

I am a totally blind United Methodist pastor. I use the Apex for almost everything I do: searching the internet for sermon resources, writing my sermon, referencing different Bible translations, connecting to my GPS to visit parishioners, writing the bulletin, and so much more. Everything I need for my work with people is on that Apex and strapped over my robe on Sunday mornings, it guides me through each part of the service, from the hymns to the scripture reading, from noting the prayer requests to reading the sermon outline. It frees me up to be fully independent and fully available to those I have been called to serve.

I am thankful that the wireless internet process has been simplified and now such book formats as National Library Service digital books and Audible are recognized by this outstanding machine. With every new model of this impressive note taker the features I have come to rely on are only improved upon and the new features allow for even more accessibility to the ever changing technology of this day and age.

I am an avid user of the BrailleNote Apex. I started out by using a BrailleNote MPower which worked well, but I quickly outgrew it. I am now using a BrailleNote Apex BT for my personal and school use. I can connect the BrailleNote Apex to the laptop and use it as a Braille display. I love how it supports many external devices. It's so fast and snappy on the internet! I can email, instant message with friends using the Keychat application, surf the internet and more.

My student was a Braille reader, but a very slow one and we were supposed to increase his reading speed as one of his goals. We started using the Braille Note to talk back and forth and then he was able to obtain a Braille Note with a Qwerty keyboard. This gave him so much more independence when out in the community, as he could write a message, use the speech to talk to someone, and they could respond by typing a message on the standard keyboard, and he could read the Braille display.

One thing I couldn't live without is my BrailleNote Apex. I can surf the web (with sites such as Google) when I am doing a research project or just to find information much faster than a regular computer.

I use my BrailleNote constantly. I love for the first time in my life to be able to read my own e-mail and to send out e-mail. I gave up teaching after only 48 short years. I then started following my interest in poetry. I started writing poems about many subjects. The result being that I published my book called DIE DAILY: Dream, Improve, Enjoy. The whole entire book was written with my wonderful BrailleNote. The book is exactly 200 pages long in print, and about 375 pages in braille.

I use my victor reader to record voice lessons, choir rehearsals and mp3 files of music I am rehearsing. The variable speed control allows me to practice slowly until i get the part perfected, then, speed it up to the designated tempo. I really am pleased with the amount of material I can store on the victor reader and the book mark feature allows me to locate passages in music I want to review.

During my last semester of undergraduate study, I was required to student-teach Spanish at my local high school. The Stream allowed me to test my students using an external speaker. I played audio clips of Spanish conversations, and students were to answer questions on their computers and save them to text files. Although I had a computer that allowed me to read text files, nothing is as small and compact as the Stream. The Stream has been, and will continue to be, an integral part of my life.

My stream is my most important item in my bag. Through the years I have used a digital recorder, tape recorder, I Pod and all together they weighed me down. Now I take the one device and am set. Thank God for the makers of the VR Stream!

My Victor Reader Stream served me well on several more occasions, and provided a means for me to relax with a good book and plenty of music when the hectic days were done.

Thanks to the Victor Reader Stream I can now go to meetings very well prepared. Not only does the VRS hold my music collection, talking and audio books, descriptive movies and voice recordings of the meetings and conventions I’ve attended, but two functions make it a real asset at every meeting I attend. First is the fact that I can highlight topics within the materials I bring to meetings. As the meeting agenda moves along I track the highlighted material and am prepared to discuss my concerns. The second function that has saved and kept me involved with discussions is the BRS word search function. It even comes in handy at the grocery store when searching for something like ketchup and the search reveals Aisle 4. Love this new technology, thanks!

I clip the Stream on my belt, plug in the head set and dance away. Now for the real success: I have the cue sheets recorded several weeks before the new dances will be introduced in class so that when the time comes, I'm up to speed immediately. I'm not the best dancer, but I'm the oldest and certainly the only blind clogger. I jokingly call myself "the world's oldest blind clogger". I love dancing with Victor.

This product is allowing me to complete a Doctoral Degree in History. Due to the compact size of the reader and strong battery life I can read / study anywhere as easily as a sighted person can read a book.

Once upon a time, about two years ago, I was introduced to my best piece of technology called the Victor Reader Stream. Now since I have gotten well acquainted with the victor reader stream, I just call him Victor. I am a recently graduated master’s student and when I started my program two years ago, I felt relieved to have the victor reader stream become a part of my life. Being able to have talking book files, text files, audio files, etc, at the touch of my fingers, felt like magic.

Ever since I placed that reader in my hand, I have done nothing but make up for lost time. The time I lost reading, thumbing through bookshelves and filling my mind with knowledge. The use of my VR Stream has impacted and improved my life as a teacher and learner in unspeakable ways.

The memory card holds voice notes, speech recordings, my favorite music, over one hundred audio books and much more. Using a computer screen reader and an ear bud to listen to a manuscript, I can record a reading on the VRS in my own voice for playback during conference and critique meetings. Feedback recordings at those meetings enable me to make changes to improve a manuscript without sighted help. This feature rich, powerful product is a blessing to own. I am seldom found without my Victor Reader Stream. It tucks neatly into a shirt pocket, jacket or purse. One never knows when a good book idea might pop up and I want to be ready when it does.

The “sleep” button proved invaluable. If I happened to fall asleep, I didn’t need to search through all the information to find the spot where I drifted off. I knew the segment of time that had elapsed, and could navigate quickly to that point. I am so happy with my new guide and grateful for my VictorReader Stream which aided in my training.

I have used the Victor Reader Stream to learn to play the piano. Since the book was in Daisy format, navigating to specific areas of the book was effortless. Skipping back or forward was a breeze. Bookmarking spots I deemed important allowed me to review specific material with ease. All of this made my learning to play piano a much more enjoyable and productive experience. I certainly won’t be playing at Carnegie Hall any time soon, but the personal achievements I’ve made and the sense of self-fulfillment have been extremely satisfying. I can attribute my success to the tools I now have at my disposal, including RFB (now known as Learning Alley) and technology such as the Victor Reader Stream.

I ride my bike, I go to gym three times a week, and I am good to go. Better than before. Riding, working out at the gym, what is with me on the high road to recovery? Yes: My Victor Stream Reader. Steady throughout. I wish every blind person had access to this technology. I swear by it.

I love my Victor Reader Stream, I think that it is a given for all of us fortunate enough to have one. I use it for all the usual stuff talking books, music dvs movies and text documents etc. It does help me stay organized and always handy for a note. This brings me to the most cherished success stories I have thus far using the Victor Reader Stream.