This driver allows BRLTTY to access braille displays through BrlAPI. Multiple instances of brltty can hence be run, one using the real braille driver, the others accessing it through the API. Each instance of BRLTTY can use a different screen driver thanks to the -x command-line option. For example, in a gnome desktop you can run a second BRLTTY that reads gnome-terminal by running brltty -b ba -x as from your X session. Another example is accessing the Linux console of a remote host: ssh -R 4102:localhost:4101 root@theremotehost brltty -b ba -B host=localhost:1 This will forward your local BrlAPI port (4101) to the remote machine (as 4102, i.e. :1), where you can then run brltty and tell it to connect to localhost:1. This will however take complete control of your braille device. To restrict the control to some local console (e.g. console 4), you can use e.g. ssh -R 4102:localhost:4101 root@theremotehost WINDOWPATH=4 brltty -b ba -B host=localhost:1