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.

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

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.

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.

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.