the next time I get an iPad or similar from a school district for a student I need to remember to have the sighted/hearing people turn on voiceover for me and at least work with me to get braille up and running. Because once I took it out of the box I realized voiceover wasn't on. Thankfully triple clicking the side button got it up and talking but it does my deaf ass not a bit of good. For some reason the USB-C braille display wasn't being recognized. So... I got out my iPhone which was connected to the Mantis braille display and I put the iPhone next to the iPad and turned on live captions using braille access. Now, the iPhone takes the spoken output from the iPad and turns it into braille which allowed me to navigate the touchscreen with one hand while reading the captioned output with my other hand. I navigated to Settings, and once I opened up voiceover settings and opened braille, the USB-C braille display was finally recognized and I had direct braille access. Being a Deafblind assistive tech instructor is sometimes a lot about finding workarounds for the shit that goes sideways. Anyway, the iPad is now up and running and functional. I think it's time for better living through chemicals because y'all! 🙄😮‍💨🍃