#CSUNATC22 Audio: A Multi-Format Future For The Multi-Line canute

Transcribed by Grecia Ramirez

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Now, here s J.J. Meddaugh.
J.J. MEDDAUGH: Blind Bargains virtual Exhibit Hall coverage, CSUN 2022 and beyond and across the pond. Hey. I rhymed myself. I will have an award for me later. No. I m just kidding.
Ed Rogers, Managing Director, and Charlie Harding, Marketing Distribution Manager for Bristol Braille Technology. The Canute is alive, and we have updates to share. Welcome back to the podcast.
ED Rogers: Thank you very much. It must have been a couple years.
CHARLIE HARDING: Hi.
JM: Yes. Absolutely. And this is your first time, I think, Charlie, on this?
CH: It is my first time, so thanks for having me.
JM: Yeah. Sounds great. And we ll get back to you in just a second, Charlie. Welcome.
I want to talk to Ed first though because we ve been talking about the Canute for a few years, and you got a bit of a head start on some of the other multiline things that have been out there. The Canute has actually shipped. We ve seen units in hand. But why don t you go ahead and give an update on the current status of the Canute and what s going on.
ER: Yeah. We started shipping right at the start of 2020, about the same time as the pandemic, actually. And
JM: What a time.
ER: -- we shipped perfect timing. We shipped a batch of machines out, our very first commercial machines. And then, again, at the end of 2021, we shipped another batch out. And what we are focusing on now is on making sure that the customers that have those machines can actually start to do some more interesting things with them. Because we built these machines and we sold these machines as eBook readers. This is a paperless Braille page, a full Braille library. And, of course, as it s got nine lines, you get the kind of context that you don t get on any other Braille Display because it s 40 cells by nine lines. That s a third of a Braille Ready File, a BRF file.
So that was our initial focus. But we re now starting to think about varying the uses people put the Canute to.
JM: So before we get into what some of the people are using the Canute for, let s just talk about that. The Canute, like you said, has gone through a couple different runs now. But I know there s been certainly, the part shortage has been affecting lots of different industries and such. How are things looking as far as the Canute users in so far as people who want to think about getting into the Canute?
ER: Well, we ve been very heavily affected like many, many factory-owned businesses and like a lot in this industry. At this moment, the machines that are out there are the machines that are available, so there s very limited stocks for people wanting to buy them. But there s hope that the situation can resolve itself soon. These things are being worked and we re working through them. But meanwhile, we do have machines out there in the field being used, and yeah. We hope to go back into production very soon. Like I said, we finished our last one just at the at the start of 2022.
JM: Yeah. I can realize that too. It s a product that is specialized and takes a certain set of parts, so I think there s an expectation that it s not the type of product that you re going to order today, and you re going to have these things delivered tomorrow; right?
ER