I suspect the hangup with this idea may be the actual pressure required to
hold the dots up under our little bashing fingers! I saw a single cell
prototype done with air pressure and at 80PSI any reasonable touch pressed
the dot down immediately. Hope I'm wrong, we sure need a cheap big display.
tom Fowle WA6IVG
On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 12:58:24PM -0600, Jim Shaffer wrote:
> I know we've heard this before, but here's something I got, from an NFB
> e-mail list, being worked on for braille...
> -----------------------------------
> Michigan Engineering
>
>
>
> Today, blind people fluent in Braille can read computer screens through
> refreshable mechanical displays that convert the words to raised dots – but
> only one line at a time.
>
>
>
> For the sighted, imagine a Kindle that showed just 40 characters per page,
> says Sile O’Modhrain, an associate professor in the University of Michigan
> School of Music, Theatre and Dance and the School of Information, who is
> blind. Forty characters amounts to about 10 words.
>
>
>
>
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> The process is cumbersome. It doesn’t give context. It’s expensive. And O’Modhrain
> believes it’s one of the factors contributing to Braille’s declining use.
> Even though fluency in the nearly 200-year-old code is linked with higher
> employment and academic performance for the visually impaired, fewer blind
> people are learning and using it. Taking Braille’s place are text-to-speech
> programs that make it easier and faster to consume electronic information,
> but at the same time, hold back literacy.
>
>
>
> So O’Modhrain has teamed up with engineering researchers to build a better
> Braille display – one that could show the equivalent of a whole tablet
> screen at once. In addition, it could translate beyond text, rendering
> graphs, charts, maps and complicated equations in a medium the blind could
> understand with their fingertips.
>
>
>
> “What we’re trying to build in this project is full-page tactile screen for
> something like a Kindle or an iPad where you could just display refreshable
> text in real time,” O’Modhrain said. “Relative to what’s done today and how
> that’s done, it’s a complete paradigm shift.”
>
>
>
> In the 1950s, about half of blind children learned to read Braille,
> according to the National Federation of the Blind. Today, that number is
> just 10 percent. Yet 80 percent of blind people who are employed know
> Braille. Those numbers don’t tell the whole story, as definitions and health
> outcomes have evolved over the years. But the trend they suggest is real,
> the researchers say.
>
>
>
> “When you’re learning to read and write, it’s hard to find a substitute for
> physically encountering text – whether it’s in visual or tactile form,” O’Modhrain
> said. ”There are many studies that show that listening to something is not
> the same as reading it.”
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> The system she is developing with Brent Gillespie, an associate professor of
> mechanical engineering, and Alex Russomanno, a doctoral student in the same
> department, would make e-reading for the blind more efficient and a lot less
> expensive. Today, a commercial one-line Braille display costs around $5,000.
> If you were to directly scale up the mechanism behind it to show a whole
> page, it would cost around $50,000, Russomanno says. The U-M researchers’
> aim to offer that capability at just $1,000 per device.
>
>
>
> How can they make a bigger display at a fraction of the cost? They believe
> the answer is microfluidics – a branch of engineering centered on tiny chips
> with channels that guide the flow of liquid or air. In many ways,
> microfluidic chips resemble the integrated circuits of computers.
>
>
>
> “We use the equivalent of electronic logic and circuitry,” Russomanno said.
> “When I say that, I’m referring to the way a computer works, with
> transistors and resistors. Except our circuit is not electronic at all. It’s
> fluidic. Instead of high voltage and low voltage you have high pressure and
> low pressure, and instead of electric current flow you have fluid flow and
> you can achieve the same basic logic features.”
>
>
>
> Like the 0s and 1s that undergird computing, Braille is a binary code. Each
> Braille cell, which is sometimes a letter and sometimes a whole word,
> contains six dots that can either be raised or flat to convey different
> information.
>
>
>
> “The dots are either there or they’re not,” O’Modhrain said. “That’s why
> this circuit is so elegant.”
>
>
>
>
>
> Play Video
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> Michigan engineers have developed technology that may soon lead to a
> refreshable braille tablet the size of a Kindle.
>
>
>
> Their system uses air to move bubbles of pressurized air that raise or lower
> the Braille dots. And whereas other approaches require a dedicated
> information channel for each dot, theirs can control a long string of dots
> with just two input valves. The length of the dot string is limited only by
> the time it takes the information (high or low pressure/raised or lowered
> dot) to get to its end point.
>
>
>
> There’s also overlap in the manufacturing processes of electronic and
> fluidic circuits. Microchips are made all at once, rather than
> transistor-by-transistor. In the same way, the researchers can mold as many
> Braille dots as they like with one batch process. They say this will be key
> to economically making a full-page display.
>
>
>
> Right now they’re working on shrinking their fluidic circuits to fit under
> Braille dots, which would be smaller than a peppercorn. They envision a
> system where up to 10,000 dots are powered by 10,000 microfluidic chips.
>
>
>
> "We would like to think a device like this would make reading electronic
> Braille more attractive again, make it close to the experience of reading a
> traditional book," O'Modhrain said. "Another challenge is convincing
> educational authorities to teach Braille again. It has dropped out of the
> system in terms of the education of blind people and we think it’s important
> to bring Braille back."
>
> Judy s.
> Follow me on Twitter at QuackersNCheese
> <https://twitter.com/QuackersNCheese>
>
> On 1/15/2016 2:44 AM, Katherine Petersen (Redacted sender katherine_petersen
> for DMARC) wrote:
>
> Nope, it says the page doesn't seem to exist. :)
> --Katherine
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Susan Lumpkin
> Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2016 7:37 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: U-Michigan developing full screen tablet
> braille display for $1,000
>
> I couldn't get the link to work, Sue, could you? Thanks.
>
> Susan
>
> Susan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sue Stevens
> Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2016 9:24 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: U-Michigan developing full screen tablet
> braille display for $1,000
>
> Yes, this is indeed wonderful news!! Thanks, Judy, for sharing.
>
> Sue S.
>
>
> On 14/01/2016, Judy s. <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> It's about time someone tackled this, and came up with something that
> doesn't have a price that's ridiculously high. From the article:
> "What we’re trying to build in this project is full-page tactile
> screen for something like a Kindle or an iPad where you could just
> display refreshable text in real time," O’Modhrain said. "Relative to
> what’s done today and how that’s done, it's a complete paradigm shift." ...
> "The U-M researchers' aim to offer that capability at just $1,000 per
> device."
>
> http://www.engin.umich.edu/college/about/news/stories/2015/december/br
> inging-braille-back-with-a-better-display-technology
>
> --
> Judy s.
> Follow me on Twitter at QuackersNCheese
> <https://twitter.com/QuackersNCheese> <https://twitter.com/QuackersNCheese>
> --
> JJim, KE5AL
>
>
> ---
> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
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