[nabs-l] David Pillischer wasRE: Fw: Touchscreen Braille Writer

[David Andrews]

Sighted electronics is gone, he has a new 
company.  The info is at work though, so will have to wait until Monday.

Dave

At 10:25 PM 1/3/2013, you wrote:
>Goodness!
>I can't believe I misspelled David's name again!
>It's David Pillischer, and he used to run Sighted Electronics.
>What happened to him?
>I couldn't find his number or E-mail online, anymore.
>His Braille writer that I mentioned in a 
>previous post is the sollution to the problem here.
>Thanks, Joshua
>________________________________________
>From: nabs-l [nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] on 
>behalf of Kirt [kirt.crazydude at gmail.com]
>Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2013 10:17 PM
>To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
>Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Fw: Touchscreen Braille Writer
>
>Brandon,
>I'll wait to see how this actually pans out. 
>Incidentally, I have done several time test 
>comparing my speed riding the same text on a 
>braille keyboard and on a regular keyboard. It 
>turns out I am consistently faster with the 
>QWERTY keyboard
 And I know I am definitely i 
>QWERTY keyboard
 And I know my braille typing 
>speed is well above average. I'm curious to see 
>if anyone else has done something similar, and, if so, what their results were?
>
>Sent from my iPhone
>
>On Jan 3, 2013, at 8:50 PM, "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