Bringing Braille back with better display technology
From: Michigan Engineering - 12/24/2015
By: Nicole Casal Moore

Today, blind people fluent in Braille can read computer screens through
refreshable displays that convert words to raised dots – but only one line at
a time.

For the sighted, imagine a Kindle that presents just 40 characters per page,
says Sile O'Modhrain, an associate professor of Music, Theatre and Dance at
U-M, who is blind. Forty characters amounts to about 10 words.

The process is slow. 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, who is also in the School of Information, has teamed up with
engineering researchers to build a better Braille display - one that could
show the equivalent of a whole Kindle screen at once. In addition, it could
translate beyond text, rendering graphs, charts, spreadsheets, maps, and
complicated equations in a medium the blind could more fully understand with
their fingertips.

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Reading a computer screen in Braille is a cumbersome process today. The
visually impaired people who rely on the system of raised dots only have
access to one line at a time. Beyond that, current systems don't translate
charts or graphs. A team of researchers from Michigan Engineering and the
School of Music, Theater and Dance are working on a solution. Their
technology, which has been described as a leader in the field, relies on
pneumatic use of liquid or air to shrink the mechanism and expand it so it
can display more at once. Their goal is for it to display the equivalent of a
page of Kindle text at once.

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A small team of researchers from the University of Michigan recognizes the
limitations of current RBDs and is working to build a better mousetrap. To do
so, they’ve essentially scrapped the existing design and are building an
Refreshable Braille Display from the ground up to have a form factor closer to
a standard tablet, which would present blind readers with more possibilities.
If they succeed, the group’s innovations will result in a vastly superior
device.

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Read the entire article and view a video (3:05) at:
http://www.engin.umich.edu/college/about/news/stories/2015/december/bringing-braille-back-with-a-better-display-technology

Links:
Sile O'Modhrain
http://www.somodhrain.com/palpable/default.html

Brent Gillespie
https://me-web2.engin.umich.edu/pub/directory/bio?uniqname=brentg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~brentg

The Holy Braille: A Tablet for the Visually Impaired
http://www.popsci.com/quest-for-holy-braille

Feeling Is Believing
https://www.computerpoweruser.com/article/23018/feeling-is-believing

Digital Braille: The Holy Braille Project
http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/workshop/rollcall/digital-braille-the-holy-braille-project.html