[nabs-l] Fw: Touchscreen Braille Writer

[David Andrews]

It seems to me that you folks are getting all 
worked up over nothing.  As I understand it, the 
software is for input only, and would run on a 
tablet like the iPad with access through 
voiceover.  Some people prefer Braille input, 
some qwerty, some fleksy or another system.

Dave

At 10:29 PM 1/3/2013, you wrote:
>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