A New Kind of Braille Reader
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CREDIT: David Pankhurst |
For the blind, accessing the Internet is a chancy business. Text-to-speech is all very well, but it has its limitations. Many blind people use Braille to access the written word, and there are Braille readers for computers. But most are expensive, on the order of thousands of dollars.
David Pankhurst, who writes the blog Utopia Mechanicus, decided there had to be a better way. Now he is trying to raise $1,500 on IndieGoGo to build some prototypes and start the road to production.
Pankhurst’s device takes computer text and displays the Braille letter by putting a small 3x2 grid under the fingers, rather like the reverse of the printers that once moved the print head to type a certain letter. In this case the letter is a set of dots that are raised or lowered depending on what letter it is.
As of this writing Pankhurst has raised about $730. If he can get it to production it will be one step towards bringing literacy to more people, and that’s no bad thing.
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