[Electronics-talk] The first elevated-Pin Braille Smartphone Gets A Prototype

[David Andrews]

>
>The First Elevated-Pin Braille Smartphone Gets A Prototype
>
>Incoming text gets translated into braille through little pins, 
>constantly moving up and down to convey what's happening in the phone.
>
>By Colin Lecher
>Popular Science, April 22, 2013.
>
>With smartphone interaction mostly relying on sight, since there's 
>no tactile difference to what's on the screen, some blind people 
>have turned to apps to make up the difference. These apps can do 
>some pretty impressive things, like determine the denomination of 
>currency or read text out loud, rendering braille unnecessary for some tasks.
>
>But those were workarounds, to make up for the inability to create 
>an actual braille interface. For about three years, a team of 
>inventors in India have been working on a smartphone that can turn 
>apps and text into braille. Now they've got a prototype.
>
>The phone, from the Centre for Innovation Incubation and 
>Entrepreneurship in Ahmedabad, translates text into braille by 
>elevating pins: after the text or email or webpage comes in, the 
>pins form a braille version that the user can touch to read. It's 
>not clear what operating system the phone will run on--Android? Something else?
>but according to the Times Of India, it'll feature "all other 
>elements" that your more traditional smartphone would have.
>
>The creators, led by inventor Sumit Dagar, are shooting for a 
>release by the end of 2013. Starting price? Just less than 10,000 
>rupees, or about $185.
>
>[Times Of India]
>
>from:http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2013-04/inventors-make-braille-sm
>artphone-blind