[nabs-l] Fw: Touchscreen Braille Writer

Fri Jan 4 04:29:44 UTC 2013

Maybe, I just want to know whether the software they created would run
on a device that has accessible output of some sort, like VoiceOver.
If not, then the Braille touchscreen is pretty much useless.
Personally, as a Braille reader and longtime Braille Note and Braille
Lite user, I feel like typing in Braille without the Braille output
would be awkward and not very helpful. But maybe others disagree with
me?
In any case I think their first idea of the Braille character
recognizer has much greater utility, and their reasons for abandoning
it are without much basis.
Arielle

On 1/3/13, Kirt <kirt.crazydude at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> nabs-l mailing list
>>> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> nabs-l:
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/arielle71%40gmail.com
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> nabs-l mailing list
>> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> nabs-l:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/kirt.crazydude%40gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> nabs-l mailing list
> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> nabs-l:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/arielle71%40gmail.com
>