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

Sun Jan 6 16:49:16 UTC 2013

Hi,

What would be really impressive to me would be an app which could
toggle from an accessible touch-screen braille keyboard and qwerty
keyboard.  Hook that up with a braille display on an IPad and you'd be
set.  :)

On 1/5/13, David Andrews <dandrews at visi.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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/crazy4clarinet104%40gmail.com
>

-- 
Kaiti