Reader opens e-displays to the vision-impaired
Rotating-wheel reader translates text from e-displays into Braille
By Margaret Quan
From: Electronic Engineering Times - October 4, 1999 - page 65

Gaithersburg, MD. - The National Institute of Standards and Technology's
Information Technology Laboratory has initiated a program to make the text
displayed on electronic devices more accessible to the blind and
vision-impaired. Some of the current research includes the investigation of
the display aspects of electronic-bookreaders and the development of a new
Braille display technology to improve accessibility to electronic text-based
media such as electronic books. 

John Roberts, program manager for the Advanced Display Technology Systems Lab
within the Information Technology Lab, explained that he and researcher
Oliver Slattery became interested in the idea last year when Judith Dixon, an
official at the Library of Congress involved in accessibility issues,
suggested that there was a need to make such technologies as electronic books
accessible to all people, especially the blind. Roberts, who said he has
always been interested in accessibility, wanted to design a device that would
increase the quality of life for the estimated 750,000 blind people in the
United States, as well as for the millions of low-vision people in the
country. 

Cheaper, more compact Many blind people do not have access to Braille
displays. The displays, which have a line of 40 Braille characters and
hundreds of actuators, can stretch to the size of piano keyboards to
accommodate all the characters in a continuous line, and they cost between
$10,000 and $15,000. 

Roberts' goal was to design a more affordable, portable device that would
enable blind people to read electronic books as well as the text on other
electronic devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and computers.
He also wanted to reduce the cost of such devices by a factor of 10 and make
them more reliable by reducing the number of actuators. 

"I feel it's important [to work on accessibility devices] because people who
need them represent a tremendous intellectual asset to the country," Roberts
said. 

While the blind can in theory use voice systems to access electronic devices,
Roberts explained that not everyone can use them and added that the systems
are often not as accurate as Braille for precision work. For instance, he
pointed out that if a blind person wanted to write a computer program, the
person would use Braille, not speech technology. With that in mind, Roberts
and Slattery took up the challenge offered by Dixon and decided to create a
Braille interface for electronic books. 

Slattery was given the job of building the prototype and devised a rotating
wheel-based design for a Braille electronic-book reader. He used Labview
instrument control software, a National Instruments board with relays,
transducers, and other materials to create the prototype. 

The Braille reader takes words of text displayed on an electronic book or
PDA, and converts them, via Labview software, into Braille. The instructions
for the Braille symbol are sent as a digital signal to a relay board and then
a transducer board, which triggers a solenoid to create a Braille symbol. The
solenoid interacts with the wheel, which has Braille cells placed along the
edge. There are 12 internal actuators inside the wheel base and three
external actuators on the wheel. When the actuators are triggered, they write
dots on the cells as the wheel turns. The user places two fingers on two
exposed Braille cells and reads the Braille as the wheel moves. 

The rotating wheel is designed to mesh with the way Braille users read, by
brushing their finger over lines of Braille, Roberts explained. Braille is
read that way because the human sense of touch is more sensitive when the
finger is moving over the material, rather than when it is still. The compact
wheel format allows for long lines of text and continuous reading: important
considerations for average Braille users, who read 120 to 125 words per
minute. Braille, like English, is a language that does not make sense if it's
not a continuous string. 

Military roots 

Braille was invented by Louis Braille of France in the 19th century. He based
Braille on an old French military code that employed dots to represent words
and text. The code allowed soldiers to read instructions in the dark. Braille
modified the code and it became the language used by many blind people. There
are two kinds of Braille. Grade One Braille is character-for-character
replacement, and Grade Two Braille represents contractions, words or
two-letter sequences. 

The Institute prototype uses Grade One Braille, but Roberts said a commercial
version of the device could use either Grade One or Grade Two Braille, and
the device could be miniaturized and made portable. The approach could also
be implemented with a board of power transistors instead of the mechanical
relays Roberts and Slattery used because they allowed the researchers to
build the device faster. Roberts believes electronic-book reading is a
natural application for the Braille reader and suggests that it be integrated
with, or attached to other reader devices and computers. The next step for
the inventors is to make the Braille more readable and to get feedback from
Braille readers on how well it works. 

In the meantime, the two inventors have filed for a patent. No company has
stepped forward to produce the device yet. 


Caption: Prototype of Braille reader developed by the Advanced Display
Technology Systems Lab makes electronic books and PDAs accessible to the
blind. 

