Introduction to Brailchem

• What is Brailchem
• Usage
• Periodic Table Application
• Molecule Browser Application
• Overview of Keyboard Commands

Brailchem is a tool to help blind and visually impaired students to study chemistry. Visually impaired students have to deal with special difficulties during their study such as understanding information commonly presented visually (e.g. structures of organic molecules) or learning structurally complicated relations without using its visual presentation (e.g. periodic table of elements). The purpose of Brailchem is to present chemical information using computers in a way accessible to blind and visually impaired students.

Brailchem is developed as a part of the ICT project.

Brailchem contains two subapplications: molecule browser and periodic table of elements. The subapplications can be started from corresponding menu items in the Application menu. If you want, you can run each of the applications in one or more separate windows, created from the File / New Window menu.

Brailchem is an internet oriented application. It consists of two parts: a client and a server. The server, basically invisible to the user, provides all chemical data to the client. The client is dumb and does not know anything about chemical elements or molecule structures, it is just a presentation tool of data retrieved from the server. So in order to work the client must be connected to internet and have access to a Brailchem server. One such server is already preset in the application and it is used by default; if you would like to use another one, you can set it in the client preferences dialog.

To start using Brailchem, look into its menus, read available help and try to use the available subapplications. All important information about current state of the program and performed actions is printed in the application window status bar.

For now there is just a single special global command key in Brailchem:

Of course, you can additionally use menu access keys. Other command keys are specific to particular Brailchem subapplications.

The following sections describe the Brailchem subapplications.

Periodic table provides information about elements, their properties and relations. You can navigate through it using arrow keys while pressing the Shift modifier. Pressing an element button using the Enter key shows complete information about the given element.

For the purpose of easier orientation the periodic table is split according to the traditional presentation style in two parts: The main periodic table and the table of lanthanoids and actinoids. You can jump into the main table by pressing Control+T and into the table of lanthanoids and actinoids by pressing Control+Shift+T.

Summary of basic periodic table command keys:

You can limit the periodic table view by using filters. Filters can reduce the set of browsable periodic table elements to only those elements which satisfy given criteria based on some of element properties (such as group or oxidation number). You enable filters by specifying them in the Filters box below the periodic table. If you specify more than one filter, only those elements which satisfy all the given conditions are present in the resulting filtered set. Defined filters can be disabled or enabled using the check box in the filters box.

You can use the following keyboard shortcuts to work with filters:

These shortcuts are composed of sequences of several keys. First press the Control+F key and then the second key.

A special filter is the Set of elements filter. You activate it by pressing the Change button in the Set of elements filter. Then you are directed to the periodic table where you can insert or remove elements into or from the custom element set by pressing their buttons with the Enter key. The following additional command keys are available during element set selection:

Right now this application serves mostly as a proof of concept of communication between the client and the server. This application is in development and will change significantly.

Global

Periodic Table