Vibrating Touch Screen Puts Braille at the Fingertips
From: New Scientist - 03/31/2009
By: Anil Ananthaswamy

Jussi Rantala of Finland's University of Tampere is working on a project that
would allow the visually impaired to use touch-screen devices such as
iPhones. Rantala's research team is working with a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet,
which has a touch screen with a piezoelectric material that vibrates when an
electric signal is applied to it. They have installed software that uses a
single pulse of intense vibration to signify raised dots, and a longer
vibration of several weaker pulses for an absent dot. In testing, the
researchers found that having users place a finger anywhere on the screen and
hold it still was the best approach for receiving vibrations for reading. The
mobile device then displays a character by vibrating the sequence of six
dots, which is 360 milliseconds apart. "It took some time for them to start
reading, because this representation is totally different from anything else
that they had previously used," Rantala says. Eventually, volunteers were
able to read a character in 1.25 seconds. The team will now focus on
presenting words and sentences with Braille characters for vibrating touch
screens. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127015.700-vibrating-touch-screen-puts-braille-at-the-fingertips.html

Link:
Vibrating Touchscreen Devices Could Get Braille Tweak for Blind Users
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/touchscreen-tech-could-get-braille-tweak-blind-users