Brltty is the usual daemon for providing braille accessibility. It is able to auto-detect USB devices, but not serial devices (it would be unsafe). distributions (see CategoryDistributions) often provide a "cheat code" way to configure serial devices: at CD-ROM boot prompt, you can type
something brltty=driver,device,table
"something" depends on the distribution (it can be blind, install, or even nothing in ubuntu for instance)
"driver" is the driver code for your terminal, vs for instance, see http://www.mielke.cc/brltty/doc/Manual-BRLTTY/English/BRLTTY-11.html for a list.
"device" is ttyS0 or ttyS1 for instance for a serial terminal, or usb: for a USB terminal, or bluetooth:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx for a bluetooth device with ID xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx.
"table" is the name of the braille table to be used, fr_FR for instance, see http://www.mielke.cc/brltty/doc/Manual-BRLTTY/English/BRLTTY-6.html for a list.
A typical example is hence
something brltty=vs,ttyS0,fr_FR
For getting french braille on a VisioBraille connected to the first serial port.