[nabs-l] Fw: Touchscreen Braille Writer

Fri Jan 4 04:21:16 UTC 2013

Hello everyone,
I'm sorry for the double post… But I feel like I need to clarify. Already, this idea is being modified in apps where we can use of virtual braille writer on the touch screen of an iPhone or an iPad. I see a decent amount of value and that, I think.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 3, 2013, at 9:06 PM, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Oh how I wish these smart, creative guys had talked with blind people
> before inventing this thing! Unless I missed something, does this
> tablet have speech or Braille output? How is the blind user supposed
> to be able to read his/her notes? I'm not sure if any current tablets
> are accessible. Even if one is, I don't think the ability to write in
> Braille rather than in QWERTY matters that much. The appeal of the
> overpriced Braille notetaker is the Braille output, not the Braille
> keyboard! Oh....Wow! That's all I can say.
> If I were these guys I would go ahead with the Braille character
> recognizer. That actually has some utility. It would allow a blind
> schoolchild to convert his Brailled homework to print that his teacher
> could read, or a blind college student to Braille math equations, scan
> them and send them to her professor. If these Stanford students had
> actually talked with blind people, they would have learned that blind
> people successfully use apps that involve taking pictures of print.
> Taking pictures of Braille would be easier, not harder, than what
> already exists.
> It continually blows my mind how many people make it a personal
> passion to work on improving the lives of blind people in one way or
> another, without really educating themselves on what is already out
> there or what real live blind folks actually need.
> Arielle
> 
> On 1/3/13, Brandon Keith Biggs <brandonkeithbiggs at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> Below is an article I was sent about a new app. I am not a fan of the way
>> the creator views blind people, but I do think having a Braille Writer on
>> the tablet would be very nice. It is so much faster to type texts in Braille
>> 
>> than in print LOL...
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Brandon Keith Biggs
>> 
>> 
>> STANFORD SUMMER COURSE YIELDS TOUCHSCREEN BRAILLE WRITER
>> Home<http://engineering.stanford.edu/> »
>> About<http://engineering.stanford.edu/about> » News &
>> Updates<http://engineering.stanford.edu/about/news> » Stanford summer course
>> 
>> yields touchscreen Braille writer
>> <http://engineering.stanford.edu/print/node/148>
>> In a two-month summer course on high-performance computing, promising
>> undergrads compete to create innovative applications. This summer's winner
>> developed a touchscreen Braille writer that stands to revolutionize how the
>> 
>> blind negotiate an unseen world by replacing devices costing up to 10 times
>> 
>> more.
>> Andrew Myers
>> 
>> Each summer, under the red-tiled roofs and sandstone of Stanford, the Army
>> High-Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC) invites a select group
>> of undergraduates from across the country gather for a two-month immersion
>> into the wonders of advanced computing.
>> 
>> Some of the undergraduates are gathered into teams. Some work alone. All are
>> 
>> assigned mentors and tasked with a challenge. They compete, American
>> Idol-style, for top honors at the end of the summer.
>> 
>> The competition is made possible in part by a collaboration between the U.S.
>> 
>> Army and several university and industry partners that makes up the AHPCRC.
>> 
>> Adam Duran is one such undergraduate, a student both lucky and good. He is
>> now in his senior year at New Mexico State University. Last June, he came to
>> 
>> Stanford at the suggestion of one of his professors. His mentors were Adrian
>> 
>> Lew, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and Sohan Dharmaraja,
>> 
>> a doctoral candidate at Stanford studying computational mathematics.
>> 
>> "Originally, our assignment was to create a character-recognition
>> application that would use the camera on a mobile device — a phone or
>> tablet — to transform pages of Braille into readable text," said Duran. "It
>> 
>> was a cool challenge, but not exactly where we ended up."
>> 
>> BIGGER FISH
>> 
>> Even before Duran arrived for the summer, Lew and Dharmaraja began to talk
>> to the Stanford Office of Accessible
>> Education<http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae>, people whose profession
>> is helping blind and visually impaired students negotiate the world of
>> higher learning. It became clear that there were bigger fish to fry.
>> 
>> While a Braille character reader would be helpful to the blind, Lew and
>> Dharmaraja learned, there were logistics that were hard to get around.
>> 
>> "How does a blind person orient a printed page so that the computer knows
>> which side is up? How does a blind person ensure proper lighting of the
>> paper?" said Duran. "Plus, the technology, while definitely helpful, would
>> be limited in day-to-day application."
>> 
>> "It was a nice-to-have, not a must-have," said Dharmaraja.
>> 
>> So, the three began to ask questions. That is when they stumbled upon a
>> sweet spot.
>> 
>> "The killer app was not a reader, but a writer," said Dharmaraja.
>> 
>> "Imagine being blind in a classroom, how would you take notes?" said Lew.
>> "What if you were on the street and needed to copy down a phone number?
>> These are real challenges the blind grapple with every day."
>> 
>> There are devices that help the blind write Braille, to send email and so
>> forth, but they are essentially specialized laptops that cost, in some
>> cases, $6,000 or more. All for a device of limited functionality, beyond
>> typing Braille, of course.
>> 
>> "Your standard tablet has more capability at a tenth the price," said
>> Duran.
>> 
>> "So, we put two and two together. We developed a tablet Braille writer,"
>> said Dharmaraja, "A touchscreen for people who can't see."
>> 
>> [http://engineering.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/imagecache/700wide/news%20-%202012%200505%20-%20touchscreen%20braile%20writer.jpeg]Sohan
>> 
>> Dharmaraja, a doctoral candidate at Stanford, demonstrates how the software
>> 
>> works.
>> 
>> First, however, the student-mentor team had to learn Braille. Originally
>> developed for the French military, Braille is a relatively simple code with
>> 
>> each character made up of variations of six dots - or bumps, really -
>> arranged in a 2-by-3 matrix. The blind read by feeling the bumps with their
>> 
>> fingertips.
>> 
>> As any computational mathematician will tell you, such a matrix yields
>> two-to-the-sixth minus one variations, or 63 possible characters. These 63
>> characters are enough for a Western alphabet plus 10 numerical digits, with
>> 
>> several left over for punctuation and some special characters.
>> 
>> Over the years, however, those 63 characters got quickly gobbled up -
>> through the addition of character-modification keystrokes, the total grew
>> and now includes chemical, mathematical and other symbols.
>> 
>> CHALLENGE
>> 
>> A modern Braille writer looks like a laptop with no monitor and an eight-key
>> 
>> keyboard - six to create the character, plus a carriage return and a delete
>> 
>> key.
>> 
>> Duplicating the Braille keypad on a touch-based tablet seemed simple enough,
>> 
>> but there was at least one significant challenge: How does a blind person
>> find the keys on a flat, uniformly smooth glass panel?
>> 
>> Dharmaraja and Duran mulled their options before arriving at a clever and
>> simple solution. They did not create virtual keys that the fingertips must
>> find; they made keys that find the fingertips. The user simply touches eight
>> 
>> fingertips to the glass, and the keys orient themselves to the fingers. If
>> the user becomes disoriented, a reset is as easy as lifting all eight
>> fingers off the glass and putting them down again.
>> 
>> "Elegant, no?" said Lew. "The solution is so simple, so beautiful. It was
>> fun to see."
>> 
>> Beyond the price difference, touchscreens offer at least one other
>> significant advantage over standard Braille writers: "They're customizable,"
>> 
>> Dharmaraja noted. "They can accommodate users whose fingers are small or
>> large, those who type with fingers close together or far apart, even to
>> allow a user to type on a tablet hanging around the neck with hands opposed
>> 
>> as if playing a clarinet."
>> 
>> "No standard Braille writer can do this," said Professor Charbel Farhat, the
>> 
>> chair of the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department and executive director
>> 
>> of the summer program. "This is a real step forward for the blind."
>> 
>> SHOWING OFF
>> 
>> In a demo, Duran donned a blindfold and readied himself before the
>> touchscreen. He typed out an email address and a simple subject line. Then
>> he typed one of the best-known mathematical formulas in the world, the
>> Burgers Equation<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgers%27_equation>, and
>> followed with the chemical equation for
>> photosynthesis<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis> - complex
>> stuff - all as if writing a note to his mother.
>> 
>> For Duran, who has an uncle who is blind, the greatest joy was in seeing a
>> blind person using his creation for the first time. "That was so awesome,"
>> he said. "I can't describe the feeling. It was the best."
>> 
>> In the immediate future, there are technical and legal hurdles to address,
>> but someday, perhaps soon, the blind and visually impaired may find
>> themselves with a more cost-effective Braille writer that is both portable
>> and blessed with greater functionality than any device that went before.
>> 
>> "AHPCRC is an excellent model for outreach, which not only trains
>> undergraduate students in computational sciences but also exposes students
>> to real-world research applications," said Raju Namburu, the cooperative
>> agreement manager for AHPCRC.
>> 
>> The center addresses the Army's most difficult scientific and engineering
>> challenges using high-performance computing. Stanford University is the
>> AHPCRC lead organization with oversight from the Army Research Laboratory.
>> 
>> As for his summer courses, Farhat is optimistic. "Let's remember," he points
>> 
>> out, "This was a two-month summer project that evolved because a few smart
>> people asked some good questions. I'm always amazed by what the students
>> accomplish in these courses, but this was something special. Each year it
>> seems to get better and more impressive."
>> 
>> Andrew Myers is associate director of communications for the Stanford School
>> 
>> of Engineering.
>> 
>> Video
>> 
>> Watch: Stanford Course Yields Touchscreen Braille
>> Writer<https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100361023253469>
>> 
>> Thursday, October 6, 2011
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>> 
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