[Nfbf-l] More than a Line: What the Future Holds for Refreshable Braille

[Alan Dicey]

Dear Friends,
I thought some would be interested in this article.
With Best Regards,
God Bless,
Alan
Plantation, Florida

More than a Line: What the Future Holds for Refreshable Braille
Braille Technology by Deborah Kendrick
Refreshable Braille displays have been an integral piece of the access 
technology landscape for people who are blind and deaf-blind for more than 
three decades now. Some have taken the form of simple peripherals, "dumb" 
add-ons that display the text appearing on a computer screen in Braille.
Others have been far more complex, enabling text input and manipulation as 
well as relaying vast amounts of vital information regarding the appearance 
of text.
Still other displays have the built-in features for highly sophisticated 
personal digital organizers, enabling easy and efficient Braille input and 
output for creating documents, reading books, Web browsing, database 
management, and a host of other functions.

Braille displays over these 30 years have been available in various weights 
and sizes (from a few ounces to 15 pounds or so) and have offered as few as 
one Braille cell and as many as 85. Most widely used Braille displays, 
however, have been those peripherals and stand-alone devices featuring 
between 18 and 40 eight-dot Braille cells.

Whether a refreshable Braille device features 12 cells or 80, however, one 
common denominator has been that all cells are arranged in a single 
horizontal line. While the notion of reading full screens, full documents, 
and indeed, entire books on a single 18-, 32-, or 40-character line strikes 
the uninitiated as hopelessly cumbersome, users of Braille have found it an 
easy enough adjustment to make. For Braille users, the independence and 
control afforded by refreshable Braille has been so truly extraordinary that 
accessing desired information in a continuous linear fashion has been a 
welcome adjustment considered well worth any inconvenience. Any Braille user 
who grew up prior to the advent of refreshable Braille clearly remembers the 
scarcity of Braille material and the difficulty of carrying even a few 
Braille books around all day.

With the advent of refreshable Braille machines, we Braille users could 
suddenly carry hundreds of books, create and edit our own documents, read 
and write e-mail, browse the Web, manage databases, maintain calendars, and 
more and this all in a device less than half the size of a single hard copy 
Braille volume. To have such access to and command of written information in 
the familiar environment of Braille makes that single line, albeit sometimes 
only long enough to hold a few words, easy enough to tolerate.

Reaching for More
Meanwhile, alongside the celebration of such a revolution in information 
access, the human imagination stretches to embrace future possibilities.
Delicious rumors of a someday, someway, perhaps maybe possible multi-line 
refreshable Braille display have circulated and been on the dream lists of 
avid Braille users for just about as long as braille displays themselves 
have been in our hands. While countless individuals who read and write 
Braille have adapted to (indeed, sometimes prefer) reading books on a single 
refreshable line of Braille cells, the notion of more than one such line on 
a display is tantalizing. For reading certain types of material (science, 
mathematics, or poetry, to name but a few), the availability of more than 
one line to provide context can, quite simply, enable a reader to comprehend 
concepts and formats that are, at best, elusive when presented as one 
continuous Braille line.

Center for Braille Innovation
When Brian Mac Donald assumed the role of president at National Braille 
Press (NBP) in Boston five years ago, he spent a year or so getting the lay 
of the land, restructuring, stabilizing existing operations, and looking at 
the future of Braille. Already, National Braille Press was offering its 
materials in electronic as well as hardcopy paper formats, but Mac Donald 
recognized that more efficient methods for promoting Braille literacy were 
needed. The Center for Braille Innovation was formed to explore and develop 
ways in which technology could be used to promote Braille literacy.

Deane Blazie, renowned pioneer who introduced the first personal notetaker 
designed for Braille users, the Braille 'n' Speak, in 1987, immediately 
became involved as did Mike Romeo, another access technology pioneer and 
past employee of Blazie Engineering. By pooling the talents of Blazie, 
Romeo, and dozens of others contributing input and research, the Center for 
Braille Innovation has seen two significant projects emerge.

First, a Braille tablet called B2G (Braille to Go) is a multi-function 
robust Android device with a 20-cell Braille display, ergonomic Braille 
keyboard, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, onboard microphone, speakers, 
and the flexibility of installing Android apps to do anything from reading 
your junk mail to mapping your route to the library. The B2G is expected to 
be available by summer 2013 and at a price significantly lower than other 
Braille notetakers currently available.

The other project occupying the Center for Braille Innovation has been the 
pursuit of a multi-line refreshable braille display. National Braille Press 
is a leading producer of Braille textbooks and proficiency tests at all 
educational levels, where the need for tactile graphical representations is 
particularly important.

By 2015, Brian Mac Donald explained in a recent phone interview, most 
educational testing (state proficiency tests and others) will be presented 
to all students in electronic formats. Thus, students who are blind will 
need an electronic equivalent, a means of accessing both text and graphical 
material in a real-time digital environment.

The major stumbling block for individuals and organizations worldwide 
attempting to address the multi-line refreshable Braille issue has been 
cost. Mac Donald cited, for example, a device funded by the German 
government that could display a full page but at a per-unit cost of 45,000 
Euros! Most of that obviously prohibitive cost sprang from the Braille cells 
used.

Piezoelectric cells, the Braille cells typically employed in refreshable 
Braille products, are readable, resilient, and expensive. Currently, an 
18-cell Braille display sells for around $2,000 and a 40-cell display from 
$3,000 to $6,000. Following these examples, then, a four, five, or six-line 
display might cost in the range of $25,000 to $40,000, prices which are 
clearly beyond the reach of most Braille users.

Welcoming Nitinol
The Center for Braille Innovation has explored a variety of Braille cell 
construction possibilities, from polymer to rubber bands as Mac Donald puts 
it, and has finally found what may be the answer.

Nitinol, an alloy comprising roughly equal parts nickel and titanium, is 
known for remarkable shape memory capabilities. When heated, nitinol wire 
contracts, but when cooled, it still retains its shape. It is also 
relatively inexpensive.

In 2012, a prototype display using nitinol for its tactile representation 
was developed by the Center for Braille Innovation. The display features 5 
lines of 40 Braille cells, each with an array for a tactile graphic above 
these lines. The possibilities of such a display, particularly in the realms 
of science and mathematics, could represent an entirely new paradigm in 
accessing information and visual concepts for children and adults who are 
Blind.

At this point, no one knows for sure what the resulting unit will look like.
Will it have four lines or ten lines or somewhere in between? Will it have a 
mechanism for depicting bar charts and illustrations above, below, or beside 
the text? To what extent will the user be able to manipulate the information 
that the unit displays? These and countless other questions regarding the 
final product are issues yet to be resolved.

What we know for sure is that Brian Mac Donald and the NBP Center for 
Braille Innovation are determined to find a solution for presenting students 
who are blind with digital information, both text and graphics, in an 
electronic environment equivalent to that of sighted students and at an 
affordable price. Whether the resulting Braille display will be in the hands 
of users this year or next is still unknown, but what does seem clear is 
that there will be a multi-line Braille display that includes a space for 
tactile graphical representations, and its cells will be made from nitinol.

The refreshable Braille display that is "more than a line" is finally 
looming in our foreseeable future.
http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw140205
American Foundation for the Blind. .
AccessWorld is a trademark of the American Foundation for the Blind.

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