[nfbmi-talk] Touchable Ink

[Kane Brolin]

On 5/9/17, 'Graves, Diane' dgraves at icrc.IN.gov [nfb-indiana]
<nfb-indiana at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>  ...  I would be very interested in hearing more about the production of Braille
> via commercial printers. I had no idea that this technical advancement was a
> possibility.

Yes!  The reason we've not heard much about this, is that most of the
R&D going on in this regard, appears to be happening outside the
United States.  I've read about this mostly from sources on blindness
that come (ugh ... better sit down ... wait for it)--from outside the
Federation.  But I am talking with Gary Wunder about breaking some of
this down in a forthcoming piece in "The Braille Monitor."  I've just
not had time as yet to research and write it to the standard of
thoroughness this topic deserves.  But here is a quotation from one of
my sources, a firm called Brisk Insights which is headquartered in
Nottingham, England:

"One of the new technologies is touchable ink. This is still in
developing mode but, eventually it will come out in the market.
Touchable Ink promises to decrease the total cost of printing Braille
print or text for blind users from the current cost of US$1.1 per
embossed A4-sized page to just 3 cents per page using a standard
printer. Moreover, there won't be a need to pay a high cost around
$2,850 for a Braille embosser printer. This new process will remove
all the obstacles related with Braille printing ..."

In case you want to read the whole of this business whitepaper
yourself, it's entitled "Tactile Printing Technology Market And
Forecasts To 2022."
http://www.briskinsights.com/report/tactile-printing-technology-market

It appears Samsung is involved in development of touchable ink
technology, as well as the internationally known marketing firm J.
Walter Thompson.  This work appears to be done in Bangkok at the JWT
facilities there.  So the video content on the following site is
difficult for us to understand, since it is voiced in the Thai
language.  Not sure if it contains subtitles or not, but it would be
interesting to have a pair of eyes look at this to see if English
translation is readily available.
https://www.jwt.com/en/bangkok/work/touchableink/

-Kane