[nfbwatlk] FW: Tablets and Accessibility

[Mike Freeman]

From: Mary Helen Scheiber [mailto:MHScheiber at seattlelh.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2011 8:32 AM
To: k7uij at panix.com
Subject: FW: Tablets and Accessibility 

 

>From Mary Helen 

 

10-11-11 8-30AM 

 

Hi Mike, 

 

The article below is very interesting. I wonder if the Stanford program
plans to market their device. Maybe the NFB Technology inventors can contact
them for that marketing and perfecting of the idea below. 

 

Please post this article to the NFBW List Serve. 

 

Sincerely, 

 

 Mary Helen Scheiber 

Braille Production Specialist 

Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc.

2501 South Plum Street 

P.O. Box 14959 

Seattle, WA 98144

Phone: 206-322-4200 Ex 2403

Dir: 206-973-4003 

fax: 206-329-3397 

email:

mhscheiber at seattlelh.org 

Our Mission: "To create and enhance opportunities for independence and
self-sufficiency of people who are blind, Deaf-Blind, and blind with other
disabilities."

 

  _____  

From: Josh Russell 
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2011 8:10 AM
To: BCU
Subject: Tablets and Accessibility 

Good Morning All, 

Here is an article I wanted to pass on regarding an App that would make
tablets accessible to the blind: 

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 <http://www.physorg.com/tags/doctoral+candidate/>  at
Stanford studying computational mathematics
<http://www.physorg.com/tags/computational+mathematics/> . "Originally, our
assignment was to create a character-recognition
<http://www.physorg.com/tags/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, 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 <http://www.physorg.com/tags/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."

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 Braillewriters: "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, and followed with the chemical equation for 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."

 

 

 

Josh Russell 

Executive Assistant 

*Please let me know your preferred format for documents

The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc.  

Direct 206-436-2141 | Main 206-322-4200

Email:  jrussell at seattlelh.org <mailto:jrussell at seattlelh.org >    |  Web:
http://www.seattlelighthouse.org <http://www.seattlelighthouse.org >  

 

Our  Mission: “To create and enhance opportunities for independence and
self-sufficiency of people who are blind, Deaf-Blind, and blind with other
disabilities.”